einstein

“There is no meaning to life outside of life itself,” Eduard declared in one of these aphorisms.
Einstein replied politely that he could accept this, “but that clarifies very little.” Life for its own sake, Einstein went on, was hollow. “People who live
in a society, enjoy looking into each other’s eyes, who share their troubles, who focus their efforts on what is important to them and find this joyful—
these people lead a full life.” 31
There was a knowing, self-referential quality in that exhortation. Einstein himself had little inclination or talent for sharing other people’s troubles,
and he compensated by focusing on what was important to him. “Tete really has a lot of myself in him, but with him it seems more pronounced,”
Einstein conceded to Mari . “He’s an interesting fellow, but things won’t be easy for him.” 32
Einstein visited Eduard in October 1930, and together with Mari tried to deal with his downward mental spiral. They played piano together, but
to no avail. Eduard continued to slip into a darker realm. Soon after he left, the young man threatened to throw himself out of his bedroom window,
but his mother restrained him.
The complex strands of Einstein’s family life came together in an odd scene in November 1930. Four years earlier, a conniving Russian writer
named Dimitri Marianoff had sought to meet Einstein. With great nerve and tenacity, he presented himself at Einstein’s apartment and was able to
convince Elsa to let him in. There he proceeded to charm Einstein by talking about Russian theater, and also to turn the head of Elsa’s daughter
Margot by engaging in a grand show of handwriting analysis.
Margot was so painfully shy that she often hid from strangers, but Marianoff ’s wiles soon brought her out of her shell. Their wedding occurred a
few days after Eduard had tried to commit suicide, and a distraught Mari made an unannounced visit to Berlin to ask her former husband for help.
Marianoff later described the scene at the end of his wedding ceremony: “As we came down the steps I noticed a woman standing near the portico.
I would not have noticed her, except that she looked at us with such an intensely burning gaze that it impressed me. Margot said under her breath,
‘It’s Mileva.’ ” 33
Einstein was shaken deeply by his son’s illness. “This sorrow is eating up Albert,” Elsa wrote. “He finds it difficult to cope with.” 34
There was, however, not much he could do. The morning after the wedding, he and Elsa left by train to Antwerp, from which they would sail for
their second voyage to the United States. It was a hectic departure. Einstein got separated from Elsa at the Berlin station, then lost their train
tickets. 35 But eventually they got everything together and embarked on what would be another triumphal American visit.
America Again
Einstein’s second trip to America, beginning in December 1930, was supposed to be different from his first. This time, there would be no public
frenzy or odd hoopla. Instead, he was coming for a two-month working visit as a research fellow at the California Institute of Technology. The
officials who arranged it were eager to protect his privacy and, like his friends in Germany, they viewed any publicity as undignified.
As usual, Einstein seemed to agree—in theory. Once it was known that he was coming, he was swamped with dozens of telegrams each day
with speaking offers and award invitations, all of which he declined. On the way over, he and his mathematical calculator, Walther Mayer, holed up,
working on revisions to his unified field theory, in an upper-deck suite with a sailor guarding the door. 36
He even decided that he would not disembark when his ship docked in New York. “I hate facing cameras and having to answer a crossfire of
questions,” he claimed.“Why popular fancy should seize on me, a scientist, dealing in abstract things and happy if left alone, is a manifestation of
mass psychology that is beyond me.” 37
But by then the world, and especially America, had irrevocably entered the new age of celebrity. Aversion to fame was no longer considered
natural. Publicity was still something that many proper people tended to avoid, but its lure had begun to be accepted. The day before his ship
docked in New York, Einstein sent word that he had relented to reporters’ requests and would hold a press conference and photo opportunity upon
his arrival. 38
It was “worse than the most fantastic expectation,” he recorded in his travel diary. Fifty reporters plus fifty more cameramen swarmed aboard,
accompanied by the German consul and his fat assistant. “The reporters asked exquisitely inane questions, to which I replied with cheap jokes,
which were enthusiastically received.” 39
Asked to define the fourth dimension in a word, Einstein replied, “You will have to ask a spiritualist.” Could he define relativity in one sentence? “It
would take me three days to give a short definition.”
There was, however, one question that he tried to answer seriously, and which he alas got wrong. It was about a politician whose party had risen
from obscurity three months earlier to win 18 percent of the vote in the German elections. “What do you think of Adolf Hitler?” Einstein replied, “He
is living on the empty stomach of Germany. As soon as economic conditions improve, he will no longer be important.” 40
Time magazine that week featured Elsa on its cover, wearing a sprightly hat and exulting in her role as wife of the world’s most famous scientist.
The magazine reported, “Because Mathematician Einstein cannot keep his bank account correctly,” his wife had to balance his finances and
handle the arrangements for the trip. “All these things I must do so that he will think he is free,” she told the magazine. “He is all my life. He is worth it.
I like being Mrs. Einstein very much.” 41 One duty she assigned herself was to charge $1 for her husband’s autograph and $5 for his photograph;
she kept a ledger and donated the money to charities for children.
Einstein changed his mind about staying secluded aboard ship while it was docked in New York. In fact, he seemed to pop up everywhere. He
celebrated Hanukkah with fifteen thousand people in Madison Square Garden, toured Chinatown by car, lunched with the editorial board of the New
York Times, was cheered when he arrived at the Metropolitan Opera to hear the sensational soprano Maria Jeritza sing Carmen, received the
keys to the city (which Mayor Jimmy Walker quipped were given “relatively”), and was introduced by the president of Columbia University as “the
ruling monarch of the mind.” 42
He also paid a visit to Riverside Church, a massive structure with a 2,100-seat nave, which had just been completed. It was a Baptist church, but
above the west portal, carved in stone amid a dozen other great thinkers in history, was a full-length statue of Einstein. Harry Emerson Fosdick, the
noted senior minister, met Einstein and Elsa at the door and gave them a tour. Einstein paused to admire a stained-glass window of Immanuel
Kant in his garden, then asked about his own statue. “Am I the only living man among all these figures of the ages?” Dr. Fosdick, with a sense of
gravity duly noted by the reporters present, replied, “That is true, Professor Einstein.”
“Then I will have to be very careful for the rest of my life as to what I do and say,” Einstein answered. Afterward, according to an article in the
church bulletin, he joked, “I might have imagined that they could make a Jewish saint of me, but I never thought I’d become a Protestant one!” 43
The church had been built with donations from John D. Rockefeller Jr., and Einstein arranged to have a meeting with the great capitalist and
philanthropist. The purpose was to discuss the complex restrictions the Rockefeller foundations were putting on research grants. “The red tape,”