einstein

Mari accepted the terms. When Haber delivered her response, Einstein insisted on writing to her again “so that you are completely clear about
the situation.” He was prepared to live together again “because I don’t want to lose the children and I don’t want them to lose me.” It was out of the
question that he would have a “friendly” relationship with her, but he would aim for a “businesslike” one. “The personal aspects must be reduced to a
tiny remnant,” he said. “In return, I assure you of proper comportment on my part, such as I would exercise to any woman as a stranger.” 81
Only then did Mari realize that the relationship was not salvageable. They all met at Haber’s house on a Friday to work out a separation
agreement. It took three hours. Einstein agreed to provide Mari and his children 5,600 marks a year, just under half of his primary salary. Haber
and Mari went to a lawyer to have the contract drawn up; Einstein did not accompany them, but instead sent his friend Michele Besso, who had
come from Trieste to represent him. 82
Einstein left the meeting at Haber’s house and went directly to the home of Elsa’s parents, who were also his aunt and uncle. They arrived home
late from dinner to find him there, and they received the news about the situation with “a mild distaste.” Nevertheless, he ended up staying at their
house. Elsa was on summer vacation in the Bavarian Alps with her two daughters, and Einstein wrote to inform her that he was now sleeping in her
bed in the apartment upstairs. “It’s peculiar how confusingly sentimental one gets,” he told her. “It is just a bed like any other, as though you had
never slept in it. And yet I find it comforting.” She had invited him to visit her in the Bavarian Alps, but he said he could not, “for fear of damaging
your reputation again.” 83
The way to a divorce had now been paved, he assured Elsa, and he called it “a sacrifice” he had made on her behalf. Mari would move back to
Zurich and take custody of the two boys, and when they came to visit their father they could meet only on “neutral ground,” not in any house he
shared with Elsa. “This is justified,” Einstein conceded to Elsa, “because it is not right to have the children see their father with a woman other than
their own mother.”
The prospect of parting with his children was devastating for Einstein. He pretended to be detached from personal sentiments, and sometimes
he was. But he became deeply emotional as he imagined life apart from his sons. “I would be a real monster if I felt any other way,” he wrote Elsa. “I
have carried these children around innumerable times day and night, taken them out in their pram, played with them, romped around and joked with
them. They used to shout with joy when I came; the little one cheered even now, because he was still too small to grasp the situation. Now they will
be gone forever, and their image of their father is being spoiled.” 84
Mari and the two boys left Berlin, accompanied by Michele Besso, aboard the morning train to Zurich on Wednesday, July 29, 1914. Haber went
to the station with Einstein, who “bawled like a little boy” all afternoon and evening. It was the most wrenching personal moment for a man who took
perverse pride in avoiding personal moments. For all of his reputation of being inured to deep human attachments, he had been madly in love with
Mileva Mari and bonded to his children. For one of the few times in his adult life, he found himself crying.
The next day he went to visit his mother, who cheered him up. She had never liked Mari and was delighted that she was gone. “Oh, if your poor
Papa had only lived to see it!” she said about the separation. She even professed herself pleased for Elsa, although they had occasionally clashed.
And Elsa’s mother and father also seemed happy enough with the resolution, though they did express resentment that Einstein had been too
financially generous to Mari , which meant the income left for him and Elsa might be “a bit meager.” 85
The whole ordeal left Einstein so drained that, despite what he had said to Elsa just a week earlier, he decided that he was not prepared to get
married again. Thus he would not have to force the issue of a legal divorce, which Mari fiercely resisted. Elsa, still on vacation, was “bitterly
disappointed” by the news. Einstein sought to reassure her. “For me there is no other female creature besides you,” he wrote. “It is not a lack of true
affection which scares me away again and again from marriage! Is it a fear of the comfortable life, of nice furniture, of the odium that I burden myself
with or even of becoming some sort of contented bourgeois? I myself don’t know; but you will see that my attachment to you will endure.”
He insisted that she should not feel ashamed or let people pity her for consorting with a man who would not marry her. They would take walks
together and be there for each other. Should she choose to offer even more, he would be grateful. But by not marrying, they would be protecting
themselves from lapsing into a “contented bourgeois” existence and preventing their relationship “from becoming banal and from growing pale.” To
him, marriage was confining, which was a state he instinctively resisted. “I’m glad our delicate relationship does not have to founder on a provincial
narrow-minded lifestyle.” 86
In the old days, Mari had been the type of soul mate who responded to such bohemian sentiments. Elsa was not such a person. A comfortable
life with comfortable furniture appealed to her. So did marriage. She would accept his decision not to get married for a while, but not forever.
In the meantime, Einstein became embroiled in a long-distance battle with Mari over money, furniture, and the way she was allegedly
“poisoning” their children against him. 87 And all around them, a chain reaction was taking Europe into the most incomprehensibly bloody war in its
history.
Not surprisingly, Einstein reacted to all of this turmoil by throwing himself into his science.