Elsa took great joy in foraging for the food he found comforting. She was resourceful and wealthy enough to commandeer the eggs and butter and bread he liked, even though the war made such staples hard to come by. Every day she cooked for him, doted on him, even found him cigars. Her parents helped as well by having them both over for comforting meals.27
The health of his younger son, Eduard, also was precarious. Once again he had fevers, and in early 1917 his lungs became inflamed. After receiving a pessimistic medical prognosis, Einstein lamented to Besso, “My little boy’s condition depresses me greatly. It is impossible that he will become a fully developed person. Who knows if it wouldn’t be better for him if he could depart before coming to know life properly.”
To Zangger, he ruminated about the “Spartan’s method”—leaving sickly children out on a mountain to die—but then said he could not accept that approach. Instead, he promised to pay whatever it took to get Eduard care, and he told Zangger to send him to whatever treatment facility he thought best. “Even if you silently say to yourself that every effort is futile, send him anyway, so that my wife and my Albert think that something is being done.”28
That summer, Einstein traveled back to Switzerland to take Eduard to a sanatorium in the Swiss village of Arosa. His ability to use science to rise above personal travails was illustrated in a letter he sent to his physicist friend Paul Ehrenfest: “The little one is very sickly and must go to Arosa for a year. My wife is also ailing. Worries and more worries. Nevertheless, I have found a nice generalization of the Sommerfeld-Epstein quantum law.”29
Hans Albert joined his father on the journey to take Eduard to Arosa, and he then visited when Einstein was staying with his sister, Maja, and her husband, Paul Winteler, in Lucerne. There he found his father bedridden with stomach pains, but his uncle Paul took him hiking. Gradually, with a few rough patches, Einstein’s relationship with his older son was being restored. “The letter from my Albert was the greatest joy I’ve had for the past year,” he told Zangger. “I sense with bliss the intimate tie between us.” Financial worries were also easing. “I received a prize of 1,500 crowns from the Viennese Academy, which we can use for Tete’s cure.”30
Now that he had moved into the same building as Elsa and she was nursing him back to health, it was inevitable that the issue of a divorce from Mari would arise again. In early 1918, it did. “My desire to put my private affairs in some state of order prompts me to suggest a divorce to you for a second time,” he wrote. “I am resolved to do everything to make this step possible.” This time his financial offer was even more generous. He would pay her 9,000 marks rather than what had now become a 6,000 annual stipend, with the provision that 2,000 would go into a fund for their children.*
Then he added an amazing new inducement. He was convinced, with good reason, that he would someday win the Nobel Prize. Even though the scientific community had not yet fully come to grips with special relativity, much less his new and unproven theory of general relativity, eventually it would. Or his groundbreaking insights into light quanta and the photoelectric effect would be recognized. And so he made a striking offer to Mari: “The Nobel Prize—in the event of the divorce and the event that it is bestowed upon me—would be ceded to you in full.”31
It was a financially enticing wager. The Nobel Prize was then, as it is now, very lucrative, indeed huge. In 1918, it was worth about 135,000 Swedish kronor, or 225,000 German marks—more than 37 times what Mari was getting annually. In addition, the German mark was starting to collapse, but the Nobel would be paid in stable Swedish currency. Most poignantly, there would be some symbolic justice: she had helped Einstein with the math and proofreading and domestic support for his 1905 papers, and now she could reap some of the reward.
At first she was furious. “Exactly two years ago, such letters pushed me over the brink into misery, which I still can’t get over,” she replied. “Why do you torment me so endlessly? I really don’t deserve this from you.”32
But within a few days, she began to assess the situation more clinically. Her life had reached a low point. She suffered pains, anxieties, and depression. Her younger son was in a sanatorium. The sister who had come to help her succumbed to depression and had been committed to an asylum. And her brother, who was serving as a medic in the Austrian army, had been captured by the Russians. Perhaps an end to the battles with her husband and the chance of financial security might, in fact, be best for her. So she discussed the option with her neighbor Emil Zürcher, who was a lawyer and a friend.
A few days later she decided to take the deal. “Have your lawyer write Dr. Zürcher about how he envisions it, how the contract should be,” she replied. “I must leave upsetting things to objective persons. I do not want to stand in the way of your happiness, if you are so resolved.”33
The negotiations proceeded through letters and third parties through April. “I am curious what will last longer, the world war or our divorce proceedings,” he complained lightly at one point. But as things were progressing the way he wanted, he merrily added, “In comparison, this little matter of ours is still much the more pleasant. Amiable greetings to you and kisses to the boys.”
The main issue was money. Mari complained to a friend that Einstein was being stingy (in fact he wasn’t) because of Elsa. “Elsa’s very greedy,” Mari charged. “Her two sisters are very rich, and she’s always envious of them.” Letters went back and forth over exactly how the prospective Nobel Prize money would be paid, what right the children would have to it, what would happen to it if she remarried, and even what compensation he would offer in the unlikely event that the prize was never awarded to him.34
Another contentious issue was whether his sons could visit him in Berlin. On barring that, Mari held firm.35 Finally, at the end of April, he surrendered this final point. “I’m giving in about the children because I now believe you want to handle matters in a conciliatory manner,” he said. “Maybe you will later take the view that the boys can come here without reservation. For the time being, I will see them in Switzerland.”36
Given Mari’s poor health, Einstein had tried to work out another option for the two boys: having them live in nearby Lucerne with his sister, Maja, and her husband, Paul Winteler. The Wintelers were willing to take custody of their nephews, and they took the train to Bern one day to see if this could be arranged. But when they arrived, Zangger was away, and they wanted his help before discussing things with Mari. So Paul went over to see his feisty sister Anna, who was married to Michele Besso, to see if they could have a room for the night.
He had planned not to tell Anna the purpose of their mission, as she had a protective attitude toward Mari and a hair-trigger sense of righteous indignation. “But she guessed the purpose of our coming,” Maja reported to Einstein, “and when Paul confirmed her suspicions a torrent of accusations, scoldings, and threats poured forth.”37
So Einstein wrote a letter to Anna to try to enlist her support. Mari, he argued, was “incapable of running a household” given her condition. It would be best if Hans Albert went to live with Maja and Paul, he argued. Eduard could either do the same or stay in a mountain-air clinic until his health improved. Einstein would pay for it all, including Mari’s costs in a sanatorium in Lucerne, where she could see her sons every day.
Unfortunately, Einstein made the mistake of ending the letter by pleading with Anna to help resolve the situation so that he could marry Elsa and end the shame that their relationship was causing her daughters. “Think of the two young girls, whose prospects of getting married are being hampered,” he said. “Do put in a good word for me sometime to Miza [Mari] and make it clear to her how unkind it is to complicate the lives of others pointlessly.”38
Anna shot back that Elsa was the one being selfish. “If Elsa had not wanted to make herself so vulnerable, she should not have run after you so conspicuously.”39
In truth, Anna was quite difficult, and she soon had a falling out with Mari as well. �
�She tried to meddle in my affairs in a way that reveals potential human malice,” Mari complained to Einstein. At the very least, this helped improve relations between the Einsteins. “I see from your letter that you also have had problems with Anna Besso,” he wrote Mari just after they had agreed to the divorce terms. “She has written me such impertinent letters that I’ve put an end to further correspondence.”40
It would be a few more months before the divorce decree could become final, but now that the negotiations were complete, everyone seemed relieved that there would be closure. Mari’s health improved enough so that the children would remain with her,41 and the letters back and forth from Berlin and Zurich became friendlier. “A satisfactory relationship has formed between me and my wife through the correspondence about the divorce!” he told Zangger. “A funny opportunity indeed for reconciliation.”42
This détente meant that Einstein had an option for his summer vacation of 1918: visit his children in Zurich, or have a less stressful holiday with Elsa. He chose the latter, partly because his doctor recommended against the altitude, and for seven weeks he and Elsa stayed in the Baltic Sea resort of Aarenshoop. He brought along some light beach reading, Immanuel Kant’s Prolegomena, spent “countless hours pondering the quantum problem,” and gloried in relaxing and recovering from his stomach ailments. “No telephones, no responsibilities, absolute tranquility,” he wrote to a friend. “I am lying on the shore like a crocodile, allowing myself to be roasted by the sun, never see a newspaper, and do not give a hoot about the so-called world.”43
From this unlikely vacation, he sought to mollify Hans Albert, who had written to say he missed his father.“Write me please why you aren’t coming, at least,” he asked.44 Einstein’s explanation was sad and very defensive:
You can easily imagine why I could not come. This winter I was so sick that I had to lie in bed for over two months. Every meal must be cooked separately for me. I may not make any abrupt movements. So I’d have been allowed neither to go on a walk with you nor to eat at the hotel . . . Added to this is that I had quarreled with Anna Besso, and that I did not want to become a burden to Mr. Zangger again, and finally, that I doubted whether my coming mattered much to you.45
His son was understanding. He wrote him letters filled with news and ideas, including a description and sketch of an idea he had for a pendulum inside a monorail that would swing and break the electric circuit whenever the train tilted too much.
Einstein had rebuked Hans Albert, unfairly, for not finding some way to visit him in Germany during the vacation. That would have required Mari to waive the provision in their separation agreement that barred such trips, and it would also have been sadly impractical. “My coming to Germany would be almost more impossible than your coming here,” Hans Albert wrote, “because in the end I am the only one in the family who can shop for anything.”46
So Einstein, yearning to be nearer to his boys, found himself briefly tempted to move back to Zurich. During his Baltic vacation that summer of 1918, he considered a combined offer from the University of Zurich and his old Zurich Polytechnic. “You can design your position here exactly as you wish,” the physicist Edgar Meyer wrote. As Einstein jokingly noted to Besso, “How happy I would have been 18 years ago with a measly assistantship.”47
Einstein admitted that he was tormented by the decision. Zurich was his “true home,” and Switzerland was the only country for which he felt any affinity. Plus, he would be near his sons.
But there was one rub. If he moved close to his sons he would be moving close to their mother. Even for Einstein, who was good at shielding himself from personal emotions, it would be hard to set up household with Elsa in the same town as his first wife.“My major personal difficulties would persist if I pitched my tent in Zurich again,” he told Besso, “although it does seem tempting to be close to my children.”48
Elsa was also adamantly opposed to the prospect, even appalled. She begged Einstein to promise it would not happen. Einstein could be quite solicitous about Elsa’s desires, and so he backed away from a full-time move to Zurich.
Instead, he did something he usually avoided: he compromised. He retained his position in Berlin but agreed to be a guest lecturer in Zurich, making month-long visits there twice a year. That, he thought, could give him the best of both worlds.
In what seemed like an excess of Swiss caution, the Zurich authorities approved the lecture contract, which paid Einstein his expenses but no fee, “by way of experiment.” They were in fact wise; Einstein’s lectures were initially very popular, but eventually attendance dwindled and they would be canceled after two years.
The Social Democrat
Which would finish first, Einstein had wondered half-jokingly to Mari, the world war or their divorce proceedings? As it turned out, both came to a messy resolution at the end of 1918. As the German Reich was crumbling that November, a revolt by sailors in Kiel mushroomed into a general strike and popular uprising. “Class canceled because of Revolution,” Einstein noted in his lecture diary on November 9, the day that protestors occupied the Reichstag and the kaiser abdicated. Four days later, a worker-student revolutionary council took over the University of Berlin and jailed its deans and rector.
With the outbreak of war, Einstein had become, for the first time, an outspoken public figure, advocating internationalism, European federalism, and resistance to militarism. Now, the coming of the peace turned Einstein’s political thinking toward more domestic and social issues.
From his youth as an admirer of Jost Winteler and a friend of Friedrich Adler, Einstein had been attracted to the ideal of socialism as well as that of individual freedom. The revolution in Berlin—led by a collection of socialists, workers’ councils, communists, and others on the left—caused him to confront cases when these two ideals conflicted.
For the rest of his life Einstein would expound a democratic socialism that had a liberal, anti-authoritarian underpinning. He advocated equality, social justice, and the taming of capitalism. He was a fierce defender of the underdog. But to the extent that any revolutionaries edged over toward a Bolshevik desire to impose centralized control, or to the extent that a regime such as Russia’s struck him as authoritarian, Einstein’s instinctive love of individual liberty usually provoked a disdainful reaction.
“Socialism to him reflects the ethical desire to remove the appalling chasm between the classes and to produce a more just economic system,” his stepson-in-law wrote of Einstein’s attitudes during the 1920s. “And yet he cannot accept a socialist program. He appreciates the adventure of solitude and the happiness of freedom too much to welcome a system that threatens completely to eliminate the individual.”49
It was an attitude that remained constant. “Einstein’s basic political philosophy did not undergo any significant changes during his lifetime,” said Otto Nathan, a socialist, who became a close friend and then literary executor after Einstein moved to America. “He welcomed the revolutionary development of Germany in 1918 because of his interest in socialism and particularly because of his profound and unqualified devotion to democracy. Basic to his political thinking was the recognition of the dignity of the individual and the protection of political and intellectual freedom.”50
When the student revolutionaries in Berlin jailed their rector and deans, Einstein got to put this philosophy into practice. The physicist Max Born was in bed that day with the flu when his telephone rang. It was Einstein. He was heading over to the university to see what he could do to get the rector and deans released, and he insisted that Born get out of bed and join him. They also enlisted a third friend, the pioneering Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer, perhaps in the belief that his specialty might be more useful than theoretical physics in accomplishing the task.
The three took the tram from Einstein’s apartment to the Reichstag, where the students were meeting. At first their way was blocked by a dense mob, but the crowd parted once Einstein was recognized, and they were ushered to a confer
ence room where the student soviet was meeting.
The chairman greeted them and asked them to wait while the group finished hammering out their new statutes for governing the university. Then he turned to Einstein. “Before we come to your request to speak, Professor Einstein, may I be permitted to ask what you think of the new regulations?”
Einstein paused for a moment. Some people are innately conditioned to hedge their words, try to please their listeners, and enjoy the comfort that comes from conforming. Not Einstein. Instead, he responded critically. “I have always thought that the German university’s most valuable institution is academic freedom, whereby the lecturers are in no way told what to teach, and the students are able to choose what lectures to attend, without much supervision and control,” he said. “Your new statutes seem to abolish all of this. I would be very sorry if the old freedom were to come to an end.” At that point, Born recalled, “the high and mighty young gentlemen sat in perplexed silence.”
That did not help his mission. After some discussion, the students decided that they did not have the authority to release the rector and deans. So Einstein and company went off to the Reich chancellor’s palace to seek out someone who did. They were able to find the new German president, who seemed harried and baffled and perfectly willing to scribble a note ordering the release.
It worked. The trio succeeded in springing their colleagues, and, as Born recalled, “We left the Chancellor’s palace in high spirits, feeling that we had taken part in a historical event and hoping to have seen the last of Prussian arrogance.”51
Einstein then went down the street to a mass meeting of the revived New Fatherland League, where he delivered a two-page speech that he had carried with him to his confrontation with the students. Calling himself “an old-time believer in democracy,” he again made clear that his socialist sentiments did not make him sympathetic to Soviet-style controls. “All true democrats must stand guard lest the old class tyranny of the Right be replaced by a new class tyranny of the Left,” he said.
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