Elsa Einstein
Elsa Einstein (born January 18, 1876 in Hechingen , Hohenzollernsche Lande , † December 20, 1936 in Princeton , New Jersey , United States ) was the cousin and second wife of Albert Einstein . Elsa's maiden name was Einstein. When she married Max Löwenthal for the first time, she took on his last name. She got her maiden name back through her second marriage to Albert Einstein.
Childhood and youth
Elsa Einstein was the daughter of Rudolf and Fanny Einstein (née Koch) and was of Jewish faith. She was born in Hechingen at Schloßstraße 16 and had two sisters, Paula (1878–1955) and Hermine (1872–1942). Rudolf Einstein was a textile manufacturer in Hechingen. Elsa's mother was the sister of Pauline Einstein (née Koch), the mother of Albert Einstein. Her father was also a cousin of Albert Einstein's father Hermann Einstein .
Elsa and Albert Einstein already knew each other from childhood. Albert Einstein, born in Ulm , moved to Munich with his parents at the age of one and later grew up in Italy and Switzerland. During the family's regular visits to Munich, Elsa often played with her cousin Albert, who was three years her junior and who would later revolutionize physics with his theory of relativity . For his family as well as for his cousin Elsa, however, he remained the "Albertle" throughout his life. When Albert dropped out of high school in Munich in 1894 and followed his family to Milan to prepare for the Zurich Polytechnic, contact with Elsa was lost. To this day nothing is known about Elsa's own training in Hechingen.
First marriage to Max Löwenthal
In 1896 Elsa married the Berlin textile dealer Max Löwenthal (1864–1914). The two lived with their daughters Ilse (1897–1934) and Margot (1899–1986) in Hechingen. A third child, a son, was born in 1903 but died shortly after he was born. A year before the boy was born, Max Löwenthal went to Berlin for professional reasons . His family stayed in Hechingen.
In 1908 Elsa divorced her husband, but kept the name Löwenthal. She moved to Berlin with her two daughters and lived on the top floor of one of the comfortable, middle-class apartment buildings in the Bavarian Quarter (Haberlandstrasse 5). Her parents lived on the floor below. Albert Einstein's mother Pauline Einstein had also come to Berlin with relatives from Hechingen in 1910, but in 1911 had accepted a job as a housekeeper in Heilbronn in Württemberg .
Life at the side of the famous physicist
Albert Einstein , who was a professor at the University of Prague in 1911 and taught at the ETH Zurich from 1912 , met Elsa again around this time on a visit to Berlin. He hadn't seen her since she was a child in Munich. At that time Einstein was still married to Mileva Marić and lived with her and their two sons in Zurich . His mother's unalterable opinion that his marriage to Mileva was a big mistake had meanwhile become so much in line with the fact that the later separation and finally a divorce became apparent.
The relationship between 33-year-old Einstein and the then 36-year-old Elsa began around 1912. It is not known when Einstein gave his cousin the address of the Institute of Physics at ETH, but what is certain is that Elsa Löwenthal wrote to her cousin on his 34th birthday on March 14, 1913. There was a secret exchange of letters. When Einstein's visit to Berlin at the end of September 1913, when cousin and cousin got very close, Elsa thought it necessary to give her Albert some personal hygiene utensils, which he said with the words “... if you feel so unappetizing, find one friend more enjoyable for female tastes. ”left unused. In 1914, Einstein was called to Berlin by Max Planck . Einstein was enthusiastic - not least because of the proximity to Elsa.
Einstein's wife Mileva and their sons first moved to Berlin with them in the spring of 1914. But they returned to Zurich at the end of July 1914 because Einstein forced the separation. For Einstein, the farewell was already final. Mileva, on the other hand, vacillated between hope and despair for years. At the end of 1914, Einstein had most of the furniture shipped to Switzerland and moved into a smaller apartment himself, more in the center of the city, near Kurfürstendamm . “I am extremely satisfied with the breakup, even though I rarely hear from my boys. The peace and calm do me immensely, no less than the really nice relationship with my cousin, ”he said. Elsa's apartment in the Bavarian Quarter was a quarter of an hour's walk away.
Not yet 38 years old, Einstein fell seriously ill at the beginning of 1917. He had to cure a stomach disease through a strict diet and a quiet life. For the next four years Einstein suffered from a series of illnesses of varying intensity. He now formally moved into Elsa's apartment at 5 Haberlandstrasse. Now Elsa could better organize the care of the still convalescent.
From Berlin Einstein tried in 1915 and again in 1918 to persuade Mileva to divorce, among other things with the promise that he would give her the prize money if he received the Nobel Prize. The marriage was divorced on February 14, 1919 because of "natural intolerance" at the Zurich District Court. Regardless of the two-year marriage ban imposed on Einstein in the divorce decree by the Zurich district court, he went to the registry office in Berlin on June 2, 1919 and married his cousin Elsa. Elsa's daughters Ilse and Margot had already adopted the name Einstein and addressed their uncle in the family as "Albert", before third parties at least as "Father Albert".
Elsa was still an attractive, fun-loving and capable woman, not without an awareness of social status and receptive to her husband's fame. When addressed as "Frau Professor", she literally blossomed. But there was also all sorts of criticism among Berlin professors. Some are said to have criticized her level, others said she was shielding her husband like personal property, and still others blamed her and her addiction to fame for displeasing Einstein's public appearance. Elsa Einstein tried, however, to create an atmosphere for her Albert that was equally beneficial to both his damaged health and his work. She accompanied him on his many journeys. In 1929 she was the driving force behind the construction of her summer house in Caputh near Potsdam .
At first Elsa could still smile at her “Albertle” flirting, but in 1923 she was by no means sure of her husband. The young Betty Neumann from Graz had started work as a secretary and Einstein fell madly in love with her. This love ended at the end of 1924, when he wrote to her “he must look in the stars for what he was denied on earth”, a strangely lofty renunciation. Albert Einstein also had a close friendship with Antonie "Toni" Mendel († 1956), Bruno Mendel's aunt and mother-in-law . Guests at Einstein's couldn't fail to notice “that the relationship between him and his wife was inexplicably cool. Mrs. Einstein was there and yet not there ”. After the relationship with Betty Neumann ended, he continued to have affairs with attractive women.
Emigration to Princeton and death
In 1933 , when Hitler came to power , Einstein and Elsa emigrated to Princeton , New Jersey, USA . In 1934 Elsa's daughter Ilse fell seriously ill. In the middle of May of the same year Einstein accompanied Elsa to Belgenland in the port of New York, but let her travel to Europe alone. She could only help her daughter when she died. In August the ashes of Ilse, who was only 37 years old, were buried in Holland. In Princeton, Albert and Elsa bought a house at 112 Mercer Street in August 1935. But as soon as Elsa moved in, Elsa was frightened by the feeling that she would not be able to enjoy the new home for long. A swelling had appeared in the eye, which was diagnosed as a harbinger of serious circulatory and kidney problems. A painful winter followed, and the long summer freshness in the mild climate of the Adirondack Mountains on Saranac Lake in northern New York State brought only moderate relief. During the following months at Princeton, Einstein was so worried about his wife that “he went around miserable and depressed,” as Elsa said. “I never thought that he was so attached to me. It's good for you, too. ”She died on December 20, 1936 at her Princeton home.
Shortly before his own death, Einstein wrote to the son of his late friend Michele Besso : “What I admired most about him (Besso) is the fact that he did it for many years, not only in peace, but even to live in constant consonance with a woman - an endeavor in which I failed rather shamefully twice. "
Web links
literature
- Christof Rieber: Albert Einstein. Biography of a nonconformist. Ostfildern 2018, ISBN 978-3-7995-1281-7 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Family tree of the Einstein family (PDF).
- ^ [Christof Rieber: Albert Einstein. Biography of a nonconformist. Ostfildern 2018, p. 106]
- ↑ Prof. Dr. Josef Eisinger : Escape and Refuge - memories of an eventful youth (PDF file; 11.9 megabytes). Edited by Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance. Vienna 2019, ISBN 978-3-901142-74-1 , pp. 118–152, 239
- ^ Albert Einstein - A biography of Albrecht Fölsing .
- ↑ Mensch-einstein.de Michele Besso, Einstein's lifelong friend.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Einstein, Elsa |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Loewenthal, Elsa |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | second wife and cousin of Albert Einstein |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 18, 1876 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hechingen |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 20, 1936 |
| Place of death | Princeton, New Jersey |