einstein

one letter. No one else, then or in recollections, ever mentioned the issue. The letter was written by an intense and love-struck young woman to a
dashing philanderer whose attentions she craved. Perhaps it was merely her fantasy, or her ploy to provoke Nicolai’s jealousy. As with much of
nature, especially human nature, the underlying reality, if there is such a thing, may not be knowable.
As it turned out, Einstein married Elsa in June 1919, and Ilse ended up remaining close to both of them.
Einstein’s family relations seemed to be improving on all fronts. The very next month, he went to Zurich to see his boys, and he stayed with Hans
Albert at his first wife’s apartment while she was away. Elsa seemed worried about that arrangement, but he reassured her in at least two letters
that Mari would not be around much. “Camping in the lioness’s den is proving very worthwhile,” he said in one, “and there’s no fear of any incident
happening.” Together he and Hans Albert went sailing, played music, and built a model airplane together. “The boy gives me indescribable joy,” he
wrote Elsa. “He is very diligent and persistent in everything he does. He also plays piano very nicely.” 60
His relations with his first family were now so calm that, during his July 1919 visit, he once again thought that maybe he should move there with
Elsa and her daughters. This completely flummoxed Elsa, who made her feelings very clear. Einstein backed down. “We’re going to stay in Berlin,
all right,” he reassured her. “So calm down and never fear!” 61
Einstein’s new marriage was different from his first. It was not romantic or passionate. From the start, he and Elsa had separate bedrooms at
opposite ends of their rambling Berlin apartment. Nor was it intellectual. Understanding relativity, she later said, “is not necessary for my
happiness.” 62
She was, on the other hand, talented in practical ways that often eluded her husband. She spoke French and English well, which allowed her to
serve as his translator as well as manager when he traveled. “I am not talented in any direction except perhaps as wife and mother,” she said. “My
interest in mathematics is mainly in the household bills.” 63
That comment reflects her humility and a simmering insecurity, but it sells her short. It was no simple task to play the role of wife and mother to
Einstein, who required both, nor to manage their finances and logistics. She did it with good sense and warmth. Even though, every now and then,
she succumbed to a few pretenses that came with their standing, she generally displayed an unaffected manner and self-aware humor, and in
doing so she thus helped make sure that her husband retained those traits as well.
The marriage was, in fact, a solid symbiosis, and it served adequately, for the most part, the needs and desires of both partners. Elsa was an
efficient and lively woman, who was eager to serve and protect him. She liked his fame, and (unlike him) did not try to hide that fact. She also
appreciated the social standing it gave them, even if it meant she had to merrily shoo away reporters and other invaders of her husband’s privacy.
He was as pleased to be looked after as she was to look after him. She told him when to eat and where to go. She packed his suitcases and
doled out his pocket money. In public, she was protective of the man she called “the Professor” or even simply “Einstein.”
That allowed him to spend hours in a rather dreamy state, focusing more on the cosmos than on the world around him. All of which gave her
excitement and satisfaction. “The Lord has put into him so much that’s beautiful, and I find him wonderful, even though life at his side is enervating
and difficult,” she once said. 64
When Einstein was in one of his periods of intense work, as was often the case, Elsa “recognized the need for keeping all disturbing elements
away from him,” a relative noted. She would make his favorite meal of lentil soup and sausages, summon him down from his study, and then would
leave him alone as he mechanically ate his meal. But when he would mutter or protest, she would remind him that it was important for him to
eat.“People have centuries to find things out,” she would say, “but your stomach, no, it will not wait for centuries.” 65
She came to know, from a faraway look in his eyes, when he was “seized with a problem,” as she called it, and thus should not be disturbed. He
would pace up and down in his study, and she would have food sent up. When his intense concentration was over, he would finally come down to
the table for a meal and, sometimes, ask to go on a walk with Elsa and her daughters. They always complied, but they never initiated such a
request. “It is he who has to do the asking,” a newspaper reported after interviewing her, “and when he asks them for a walk they know that his mind
is relieved of work.” 66
Elsa’s daughter Ilse would eventually marry Rudolf Kayser, editor of the premier literary magazine in Germany, and they set up a house filled with
art and artists and writers. Margot, who liked sculpting, was so shy that she would sometimes hide under the table when guests of her father arrived.
She lived at home even after she married, in 1930, a Russian named Dimitri Marianoff. Both of these sons-in-law, it turned out, would end up writing
florid but undistinguished books about the Einstein family.
For the time being, Einstein and Elsa and her two daughters lived together in a spacious and somberly furnished apartment near the center of
Berlin. The wallpaper was dark green, the tablecloths white linen with lace embroidery. “One felt that Einstein would always remain a stranger in
such a household,” said his friend and colleague Philipp Frank, “a Bohemian as a guest in a bourgeois home.”
In defiance of building codes, they converted three attic rooms into a garret study with a big new window. It was occasionally dusted, never tidied,
and papers piled up under the benign gazes of Newton, Maxwell, and Faraday. There Einstein would sit in an old armchair, pad on his knee.
Occasionally he would get up to pace, then he would sit back down to scribble the equations that would, he hoped, extend his theory of relativity into
an explanation of the cosmos. 67