einstein

Germany’s new left-wing government as “dictatorial,” and he demanded that it immediately call open elections, “thereby eliminating all fears of a
new tyranny as soon as possible.” 52
Years later, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazis were in power, Einstein would ruefully look back on that day in Berlin. “Do you still remember the
occasion some 25 years ago when we went together to the Reichstag building, convinced that we could turn the people there into honest
democrats?” he wrote Born. “How naïve we were for men of forty.” 53
Marrying Elsa
Just after the war ended, so did Einstein’s divorce proceedings. As part of the process, he had to give a deposition admitting adultery. On
December 23, 1918, he appeared before a court in Berlin, stood before a magistrate, and declared,“I have been living together with my cousin, the
widow Elsa Einstein, divorced Löwenthal, for about 4 ½ years and have been continuing these intimate relations since then.” 54
As if to prove it, he brought Elsa when he traveled to Zurich the following month to deliver his first set of lectures there. His opening talks, unlike
his later ones, were so well attended that, to Einstein’s annoyance, an official was posted at the door to prevent unauthorized auditors from getting
in. Hans Albert came to visit him at his hotel, presumably when Elsa was not there, and Einstein spent a few days in Arosa, where Eduard was still
recuperating in a sanatorium. 55
Einstein stayed in Zurich through February 14, when he stood before three local magistrates who granted his final divorce decree. It included the
provisions regarding his prospective Nobel Prize award. In his deposition, Einstein had given his religion as “dissenter,” but in the divorce decree
the clerk designated him “Mosaic.” Mari was also designated “Mosaic,” even though she had been born and remained a Serbian Orthodox
Christian.
As was customary, the decree included the order that “the Defendant [Einstein] is restrained from entering into a new marriage for the period of
two years.” 56 Einstein had no intention of obeying that provision. He had decided that he would marry Elsa, and he would end up doing so within
four months.
His decision to remarry was accompanied by a drama that was, if true, weird even by the standards of his unusual family dynamics. It involved
Elsa Einstein’s daughter Ilse and the pacifist physician and adventurer Georg Nicolai.
Ilse, then 21, was the elder of Elsa’s two daughters. Einstein had hired her as the secretary for the unbuilt Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics that
he was supposed to be creating (the only scientist who had been hired so far was his faithful astronomer Freundlich). A spirited, idealistic, swanlike
beauty, Ilse’s mystique was enhanced by the fact that as a child she had lost the use of an eye in an accident. Like a moth to flame, she was
attracted to radical politics and fascinating men.
Thus it was not surprising that she fell for Georg Nicolai, who had collaborated with Einstein in 1914 on the pacifist response to the German
intellectuals’ “Appeal to the Cultured World.” Among other things, Nicolai was a doctor specializing in electrocardiograms who had occasionally
treated Elsa. A brilliant egomaniac with a serious sexual appetite, he had been born in Germany and had lived in Paris and Russia. During one visit
to Russia, he kept a list of the women he had sex with, totaling sixteen in all, including two mother-daughter pairs.
Ilse fell in love with Nicolai and with his politics. In addition to being, at least briefly, his lover, she helped type and distribute his protest letters.
She also helped persuade Einstein to support the publication of Nicolai’s pacifist tome, The Biology of War, which included their ill-fated 1914
manifesto and a collection of liberal writings by Kant and other classical German authors. 57
Einstein had initially supported this publishing project, but in early 1917 had labeled the idea “entirely hopeless.” Nicolai, who had been drafted
as a lowly medical orderly for the German army, somehow thought that Einstein would fund the endeavor, and he kept badgering him. “Nothing is
more difficult than turning Nicolai down,” Einstein wrote him, addressing him in the third person. “The man, who in other things is so sensitive that
even grass growing is a considerable din to him, seems almost deaf when the sound involves a refusal.” 58
On one of Ilse’s visits to see Nicolai, she told him that Einstein was now planning to marry her mother. Nicolai, an aficionado of the art of dating
both mother and daughter, told Ilse that Einstein had it wrong. He should marry Ilse rather than her mother.
It is unclear what psychological game he was playing with his young lover’s mind. And it is likewise unclear what psychological game she was
playing with his mind, or her own mind, when she wrote him a detailed letter saying that the Ilse-or-Elsa question had suddenly become a real one
for Einstein. The letter is so striking and curious it bears being quoted at length:
You are the only person to whom I can entrust the following and the only one who can give me advice ... You remember that we recently spoke
about Albert’s and Mama’s marriage and you told me that you thought a marriage between Albert and me would be more proper. I never
thought seriously about it until yesterday. Yesterday, the question was suddenly raised about whether Albert wished to marry Mama or me. This
question, initially posed half in jest, became within a few minutes a serious matter which must now be considered and discussed fully and
completely. Albert himself is refusing to take any decision, he is prepared to marry either me or Mama. I know that Albert loves me very much,
perhaps more than any other man ever will. He told me so himself yesterday. On the one hand, he might even prefer me as his wife, since I am
young and he could have children with me, which naturally does not apply at all in Mama’s case; but he is far too decent and loves Mama too
much ever to mention it. You know how I stand with Albert. I love him very much; I have the greatest respect for him as a person. If ever there
was true friendship and camaraderie between two beings of different types, those are quite certainly my feelings for Albert. I have never
wished nor felt the least desire to be close to him physically. This is otherwise in his case—recently at least. He admitted to me once how
difficult it is for him to keep himself in check. But now I do believe that my feelings for him are not sufficient for conjugal life . . . The third person
still to be mentioned in this odd and certainly also highly comical affair would be Mother. For the present—because she does not yet firmly
believe that I am really serious. She has allowed me to choose completely freely. If she saw that I could really be happy only with Albert, she
would surely step aside out of love for me. But it would certainly be bitterly hard for her. And then I do not know whether it really would be fair if
—after all her years of struggle—I were to compete with her over the place she had won for herself, now that she is finally at the goal.
Philistines like the grandparents are naturally appalled about these new plans. Mother would supposedly be disgraced and other such
unpleasant things . . . Albert also thought that if I did not wish to have a child of his it would be nicer for me not to be married to him. And I truly
do not have this wish. It will seem peculiar to you that I, a silly little thing of a 20-year-old, should have to decide on such a serious matter; I can
hardly believe it myself and feel very unhappy doing so as well. Help me! Yours, Ilse. 59
She wrote a big note on top of the first page: “Please destroy this letter immediately after reading it!” Nicolai didn’t.
Was it true? Was it half-true? Was the truth relative to the observer? The only evidence we have of Einstein’s mother-daughter dithering is this