First offprint of Einstein’s last publication before fleeing Nazi-Germany, 1933

Albert EINSTEIN; Walther MAYER: SEMI-VEKTOREN UND SPINOREN. [Semi-Vectors and Spinors]. Sonderausgabe [Offprint] aus den Sitzungsberichten der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, physikalisch-mathematischen Klasse, XXXII (1932). Berlin: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften (in commission at Georg Reimer [Reichsdruckerei]), 24th January 1933.

Imperial 8vo (25,4:18,2 cm). 31 [1] pages. Letterpress on machine paper, in original publisher’s brochure on orange stock with black title printing.

First offprint in the original wrappers and new pagination, of this rare seminal paper, at the same time Einstein's last publication before having to leave Nazi-Germany.

Content: Present paper ist the last work by Einstein, co-authored once again by Walther Mayer, that was published in Weimar Germany (Weil no. 187 was printed before). The offprint was distributed by the Prussian exactly a week before the Nazis came to power on January 30th 1933. Einstein, and also Mayer, would have to flee Germany due to their Jewish origins only a few months later.

Einstein's work on semivectors "was stimulated by Ehrenfest's insistence on a better understanding of the relation between single-valued and double-valued representations of the Lorentz group . . . [Einstein and Mayer] went on to relate semivectors to the Dirac equation and to generalize the formalism to general relativity." (Pais, »Subtle is the Lord«, pp. 451-52)

Condition: Fine.

Reference: Alicke 152; Boni-Russ-L. 217; Schilpp-Shields 250; Weil 186 (quotes the pagination of the first separate printing, p. 522-550).