einstein

Adler made sure that the Zurich authorities, and for that matter everyone else, knew that he was officially stepping aside for his friend. “If it is
possible to get a man like Einstein for our university, it would be absurd to appoint me,” he wrote. That resolved the political issue for the councilor
in charge of education, who was a partisan Social Democrat. “Ernst would have liked Adler, since he was a fellow party member,” Einstein
explained to Michele Besso. “But Adler’s statements about himself and me made it impossible.” 32
So, at the end of June 1908, Kleiner traveled from Zurich to Bern to audit one of Einstein’s privatdozent lectures and, as Einstein put it, “size up
the beast.” Alas, it was not a great show. “I really did not lecture divinely,” Einstein lamented to a friend, “partly because I was not well prepared,
partly because being investigated got on my nerves a bit.” Kleiner sat listening with a wrinkled brow, and after the lecture he informed Einstein that
his teaching style was not good enough to qualify him for the professorship. Einstein calmly claimed that he considered the job “quite
unnecessary.” 33
Kleiner went back to Zurich and reported that Einstein “holds monologues” and was “a long way from being a teacher.” That seemed to end his
chances. As Adler informed his powerful father, “The situation has therefore changed, and the Einstein business is closed.” Einstein pretended to
be sanguine. “The business with the professorship fell through, but that’s all right with me,” he wrote a friend. “There are enough teachers even
without me.” 34
In fact Einstein was upset, and he became even more so when he heard that Kleiner’s criticism of his teaching skills was being widely circulated,
even in Germany. So he wrote to Kleiner, angrily reproaching him “for spreading unfavorable rumors about me.” He was already finding it difficult to
get a proper academic job, and Kleiner’s assessment would make it impossible.
There was some validity to Kleiner’s criticism. Einstein was never an inspired teacher, and his lectures tended to be regarded as disorganized
until his celebrity ensured that every stumble he made was transformed into a charming anecdote. Nevertheless, Kleiner relented. He said that he
would be pleased to help him get the Zurich job if he could only show “some teaching ability.”
Einstein replied by suggesting that he come to Zurich to give a full-fledged (and presumably well-prepared) lecture to the physics society there,
which he did in February 1909. “I was lucky,” Einstein reported soon after. “Contrary to my habit, I lectured well on that occasion.” 35 When he went to
call on Kleiner afterward, the professor intimated that a job offer would soon follow.
A few days after Einstein returned to Bern, Kleiner provided his official recommendation to the University of Zurich faculty. “Einstein ranks among
the most important theoretical physicists and has been recognized as such since his work on the relativity principle,” he wrote. As for Einstein’s
teaching skills, he said as politely as possible that they were ripe for improvement: “Dr. Einstein will prove his worth also as a teacher, because he
is too intelligent and too conscientious not to be open to advice when necessary.” 36
One issue was Einstein’s Jewishness. Some faculty members considered this a potential problem, but they were assured by Kleiner that
Einstein did not exhibit the “unpleasant peculiarities” supposedly associated with Jews. Their conclusion is a revealing look at both the anti-
Semitism of the time and the attempts to rise above it:
The expressions of our colleague Kleiner, based on several years of personal contact, were all the more valuable for the committee as well as
for the faculty as a whole since Herr Dr. Einstein is an Israelite and since precisely to the Israelites among scholars are inscribed (in numerous
cases not entirely without cause) all kinds of unpleasant peculiarities of character, such as intrusiveness, impudence, and a shopkeeper’s
mentality in the perception of their academic position. It should be said, however, that also among the Israelites there exist men who do not
exhibit a trace of these disagreeable qualities and that it is not proper, therefore, to disqualify a man only because he happens to be a Jew.
Indeed, one occasionally finds people also among non-Jewish scholars who in regard to a commercial perception and utilization of their
academic profession develop qualities that are usually considered as specifically Jewish. Therefore, neither the committee nor the faculty as a
whole considered it compatible with its dignity to adopt anti-Semitism as a matter of policy. 37
The secret faculty vote in late March 1909 was ten in favor and one abstention. Einstein was offered his first professorship, four years after he
had revolutionized physics. Unfortunately, his proposed salary was less than what he was making at the patent office, so he declined. Finally, the
Zurich authorities raised their offer, and Einstein accepted. “So, now I too am an official member of the guild of whores,” he exulted to a
colleague. 38
One person who saw a newspaper notice about Einstein’s appointment was a Basel housewife named Anna Meyer-Schmid. Ten years earlier,
when she was an unmarried girl of 17, they had met during one of Einstein’s vacations with his mother at the Hotel Paradies. Most of the guests
had seemed to him “philistines,” but he took a liking to Anna and even wrote a poem in her album: “What should I inscribe for you here? / I could
think of many things / Including a kiss / On your tiny little mouth / If you’re angry about it / Do not start to cry / The best punishment / Is to give me one
too.” He signed it, “Your rascally friend.” 39
In response to a congratulatory postcard from her, Einstein replied with a polite and mildly suggestive letter. “I probably cherish the memory of the
lovely weeks that I was allowed to spend near you in the Paradies more than you do,” he wrote. “So now I’ve become such a big schoolmaster that
my name is even mentioned in the newspapers. But I have remained a simple fellow.” He noted that he had married his college friend Mari , but he
gave her his office address. “If you ever happen to be in Zurich and have time, look me up there; it would give me great pleasure.” 40
Whether or not Einstein intended his response to hover uncertainly between innocence and suggestiveness, Anna’s eyes apparently snapped it
into the latter position. She wrote a letter back, which Mari intercepted. Her jealousy aroused, Mari then wrote a letter to Anna’s husband claiming
(wishfully more than truthfully) that Einstein was outraged by Anna’s “inappropriate letter” and brazen attempt to rekindle a relationship.
Einstein ended up having to calm matters with an apology to the husband. “I am very sorry if I have caused you distress by my careless behavior,”
he wrote. “I answered the congratulatory card your wife sent me on the occasion of my appointment too heartily and thereby re-awakened the old
affection we had for each other. But this was not done with impure intentions. The behavior of your wife, for whom I have the greatest respect, was
totally honorable. It was wrong of my wife—and excusable only on account of extreme jealousy—to behave—without my knowledge—the way she
did.”
Although the incident itself was of no consequence, it marked a turn in Einstein’s relationship with Mari . In his eyes, her brooding jealousy was
making her darker. Decades later, still rankling at Mari ’s behavior, he wrote to Anna’s daughter asserting, with a brutal bluntness, that his wife’s
jealousy had been a pathological flaw typical of a woman of such “uncommon ugliness.” 41
Mari indeed had a jealous streak. She resented not only her husband’s flirtations with other women but also the time he spent with male
colleagues. Now that he had become a professor, she succumbed to a professional envy that was understandable given her own curtailed scientific
career. “With that kind of fame, he does not have much time left for his wife,” she told her friend Helene Savi . “You wrote that I must be jealous of
science. But what can you do? One gets the pearl, the other the box.”
In particular, Mari worried that her husband’s fame would make him colder and more self-centered. “I am very happy for his success, because