einstein

affection, and it concluded on that note as well. “When the end came,” Einstein’s assistant Helen Dukas later said, “Hermann asked all of them to
leave the room, so he could die on his own.”
Einstein felt, for the rest of his life, a sense of guilt about that moment, which encapsulated his inability to forge a true bond with his father. For the
first time, he was thrown into a daze, “overwhelmed by a feeling of desolation.” He later called his father’s death the deepest shock he had ever
experienced. The event did, however, solve one important issue. On his deathbed, Hermann Einstein gave his permission, finally, for his son to
marry Mileva Mari . 88
Einstein’s Olympia Academy colleagues, Maurice Solovine and Conrad Habicht, convened in special session on January 6, 1903, to serve as
witnesses at the tiny civil ceremony in the Bern registrar’s office where Albert Einstein married Mileva Mari . No family members—not Einstein’s
mother or sister, nor Mari ’s parents—came to Bern. The tight group of intellectual comrades celebrated together at a restaurant that evening, and
then Einstein and Mari went back to his apartment together. Not surprisingly, he had forgotten his key and had to wake his landlady. 89
“Well, now I am a married man and I am living a very pleasant cozy life with my wife,” he reported to Michele Besso two weeks later. “She takes
excellent care of everything, cooks well, and is always cheerful.” For her part, Mari * reported to her own best friend, “I am even closer to my
sweetheart, if it is at all possible, than I was in our Zurich days.” Occasionally she would attend sessions of the Olympia Academy, but mainly as an
observer. “Mileva, intelligent and reserved, listened intently but never intervened in our discussions,” Solovine recalled.
Nevertheless, clouds began to form. “My new duties are taking their toll,” Mari said of her housekeeping chores and role as a mere onlooker
when science was discussed. Einstein’s friends felt that she was becoming even more gloomy. At times she seemed laconic, and distrustful as
well. And Einstein, at least so he claimed in retrospect, had already become wary. He had felt an “inner resistance” to marrying Mari , he later
claimed, but had overcome it out of a “sense of duty.”
Mari soon began to look for ways to restore the magic to their relationship. She hoped that they would escape the bourgeois drudgery that
seemed inherent in the household of a Swiss civil servant and, instead, find some opportunity to recapture their old bohemian academic life. They
decided—or at least so Mari hoped—that Einstein would find a teaching job somewhere far away, perhaps near their forsaken daughter. “We will
try anywhere,” she wrote to her friend in Serbia. “Do you think, for example, that in Belgrade people of our kind could find something?” Mari said
they would do anything academic, even teaching German in a high school. “You see, we still have that old enterprising spirit.” 90
As far as we know, Einstein never went to Serbia to seek a job or to see his baby. A few months into their marriage, in August 1903, the secret
cloud hovering over their lives suddenly cast a new pall. Mari received word that Lieserl, then 19 months old, had come down with scarlet fever.
She boarded a train for Novi Sad. When it stopped in Salzburg, she bought a postcard of a local castle and jotted a note, which she mailed from
the stop in Budapest: “It is going quickly, but it is hard. I don’t feel at all well. What are you doing, little Jonzile, write me soon, will you? Your poor
Dollie.” 91
Apparently, the child was given up for adoption. The only clue we have is a cryptic letter Einstein wrote Mari in September, after she had been in
Novi Sad for a month: “I am very sorry about what happened with Lieserl. Scarlet fever often leaves some lasting trace behind. If only everything
passes well. How is Lieserl registered? We must take great care, lest difficulties arise for the child in the future.” 92
Whatever the motivation Einstein may have had for asking the question, neither Lieserl’s registration documents nor any other paper trace of her
existence is known to have survived. Various researchers, Serbian and American, including Robert Schulmann of the Einstein Papers Project and
Michele Zackheim, who wrote a book about searching for Lieserl, have fruitlessly scoured churches, registries, synagogues, and cemeteries.
All evidence about Einstein’s daughter was carefully erased. Almost every one of the letters between Einstein and Mari in the summer and fall of
1902, many of which presumably dealt with Lieserl, were destroyed. Those between Mari and her friend Helene Savi during that period were
intentionally burned by Savi ’s family. For the rest of their lives, even after they divorced, Einstein and his wife did all they could, with surprising
success, to cover up not only the fate of their first child but her very existence.
One of the few facts that have escaped this black hole of history is that Lieserl was still alive in September 1903. Einstein’s expression of worry,
in his letter to Mari that month, about potential difficulties “for the child in the future,” makes this clear. The letter also indicates that she had been
given up for adoption by then, because in it Einstein spoke of the desirability of having a “replacement” child.
There are two plausible explanations about the fate of Lieserl. The first is that she survived her bout of scarlet fever and was raised by an
adoptive family. On a couple of occasions later in his life, when women came forward claiming (falsely, it turned out) to be illegitimate children of
his, Einstein did not dismiss the possibility out of hand, although given the number of affairs he had, this is no indication that he thought they might
be Lieserl.
One possibility, favored by Schulmann, is that Mari ’s friend Helene Savi adopted Lieserl. She did in fact raise a daughter Zorka, who was blind
from early childhood (perhaps a result of scarlet fever), was never married, and was shielded by her nephew from people who sought to interview
her. Zorka died in the 1990s.
The nephew who protected Zorka, Milan Popovi , rejects this possibility. In a book he wrote on the friendship and correspondence between Mari
and his grandmother Helene Savi , In Albert’s Shadow, Popovi asserted, “A theory has been advanced that my grandmother adopted Lieserl,
but an examination of my family’s history renders this groundless.” He did not, however, produce any documentary evidence, such as his aunt’s birth
certificate, to back up this contention. His mother burned most of Helene Savi ’s letters, including any that had dealt with Lieserl. Popovi ’s own
theory, based partly on the family stories recalled by a Serbian writer named Mira Ale kovi , is that Lieserl died of scarlet fever in September 1903,
after Einstein’s letter of that month. Michele Zackheim, in her book describing her hunt for Lieserl, comes to a similar conclusion. 93
Whatever happened added to Mari ’s gloom. Shortly after Einstein died, a writer named Peter Michelmore, who knew nothing of Lieserl,
published a book that was based in part on conversations with Einstein’s son Hans Albert Einstein. Referring to the year right after their marriage,
Michelmore noted, “Something had happened between the two, but Mileva would say only that it was ‘intensely personal.’ Whatever it was, she
brooded about it, and Albert seemed to be in some ways responsible. Friends encouraged Mileva to talk about her problem and get it out in the
open. She insisted that it was too personal and kept it a secret all her life—a vital detail in the story of Albert Einstein that still remains shrouded in
mystery.” 94
The illness that Mari complained about in her postcard from Budapest was likely because she was pregnant again. When she found out that
indeed she was, she worried that this would anger her husband. But Einstein expressed happiness on hearing the news that there would soon be a
replacement for their daughter. “I’m not the least bit angry that poor Dollie is hatching a new chick,” he wrote. “In fact, I’m happy about it and had
already given some thought to whether I shouldn’t see to it that you get a new Lieserl. After all, you shouldn’t be denied that which is the right of all
women.” 95
Hans Albert Einstein was born on May 14, 1904. The new child lifted Mari ’s spirits and restored some joy to her marriage, or so at least she told
her friend Helene Savi : “Hop over to Bern so I can see you again and I can show you my dear little sweetheart, who is also named Albert. I cannot
tell you how much joy he gives me when he laughs so cheerfully on waking up or when he kicks his legs while taking a bath.”