In 1909 the Austrian Ministry of Education called to the vacant chair of experimental physics at Prague the Vienna physicist Anton Lampa, in spite of the first proposal by the philosophical faculty (Johannes Stark). Lampa was one the first physicists who had realized the great importance of the work of Albert Einstein, and in 1910 he successfully supported the idea of giving Einstein his first full professorship at the German University of Prague. Einstein continued to be on friendly relations with Lampa. Lampa’s letters to Einstein show that for Lampa the Prague years were the acme of his scientific career. After World War I he refused to become a loyal citizen of the new state of Czechoslovakia. He resigned his chair at the university and returned to Vienna, where he took a position in the Ministry of Education.