“When I’m not with you, I feel like I’m not perfect. When I’m sitting, I’d rather walk; when I’m walking, I want to go home; when I’m having fun, I want to study; when I’m studying, I can’t sit still and concentrate; and when I go to bed, I’m dissatisfied with how I spent my day. /…/ Gentle kisses from your Albert.”
“I long terribly for a letter from my beloved little witch. I can hardly believe that we will be apart for so long. I am only now realising how wildly in love with you I am.”
“I still miss you, my dear little ‘right hand’. Even though I can go where I want, I don’t belong anywhere – I miss your little hands and your glowing mouth, full of tenderness and kisses.” (Albert Einstein in a series of letters to Mileva Marić, summer 1900)
In 1987, the publication of the hitherto closely guarded love letters between Albert Einstein and Serbian physicist Mileva Marić, his first wife, gave the public a glimpse into the intimate emotional world of their youth. Countless biographers and connoisseurs of the most famous scientist of the twentieth century and the author of the theory of relativity have been left speechless by the newly revealed facts of Einstein’s youth, and in particular by the details of Albert and Mileva’s love story. While it shaped Mileva’s tragic fate for a lifetime, for Albert it represented only one period of a successful, rich and fulfilled life.
Today, we know of 54 letters from the period between 1897 and 1903, when they married. Only ten of them are Milev’s, and they were not published for the first time as part of Einstein’s Collected Works until more than thirty years after his death. Their first son, Hans Albert, had wanted to publish them earlier, as it was his wife who found them among his mother’s estate, but the content was in many ways controversial. This is why the executors of Einstein’s will were prevented in court from publishing them immediately, in an attempt to protect his idealised image and his sacrosanct cult of personality.
The letters shed light not only on the details of the romantic relationship between the lovers, but also on their scientific and professional collaboration, which until then was little known. While Mileva’s biographers in particular had previously pointed to the importance of her contribution to some of Albert’s most groundbreaking scientific discoveries, the publication of the letters sparked a heated debate on the subject in wider scientific circles. In addition, a fascinating correspondence between Mileva and her best friend has survived, giving us further insight into Mileva’s world.
Mileva Marić was an extraordinary woman. One of the first women physicists in the world, and especially in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, she managed, thanks to her talent and perseverance, to make it to university and become the first female student of physics and mathematics at the renowned Zurich Polytechnic. Her moving story epitomises the plight and struggles of women intellectuals at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.
At the Polytechnic, a serious and dedicated girl met the charismatic and sparkling Albert – she was twenty-one, he only seventeen. A deep intellectual friendship developed into a strong and long-lasting love affair, despite the disapproval of their families and the judgement of those around them. It produced three children, but it was also Einstein’s most fruitful scientific years.
How actively she actually helped him develop his theories will probably remain an unsolved mystery. But Mileva undoubtedly played an important role in Einstein’s success, however history may wish to evaluate her today. She stood by him at crucial moments as a lover, a wife, the mother of his children and a kindred scientific spirit.
It is therefore all the more sad to learn that their journey together came to a literally humiliating end for Mileva – she never recovered emotionally and physically from it. The end of the marriage was long and extremely painful for Mileva, and Einstein’s proverbially benevolent, kind and gentle character showed a surprisingly dark side. That is why his supporters guarded so carefully the correspondence, which in many ways already showed the outlines of a man who was capable of plunging the great love of his life into despair and abject suffering. And yet he showed surprisingly little remorse and absolutely no empathy or understanding.
The relationship between Albert and Mileva changed not only in a romantic sense, but also in an intellectual one. In the beginning she was his partner, a clever physicist and mathematician, but in the end she was, in his opinion, just an emotionally unstable and clumsy housewife, or as he wrote in 1913 in a letter to his cousin, then his mistress and future wife, Elsa Löwenthal: “Mileva is an unfriendly, humourless creature…/…who by her mere presence destroys others’ joy of life”. In a letter to a friend, he even complained that he regretted having children with an inferior person!
How could a relationship full of mutual respect, romantic longing and sincere love have turned into such vile contempt and scorn in the space of fifteen years?
A lame little girl with an astonishing mind
Mileva Marić was born on 19 December 1875 to her mother, Marija, and father, Milos, in the duchy village of Titel, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The little girl with the piercing black eyes immediately became her father’s favourite. On her mother’s side, she had a congenital genetic dislocation of the hip and had a slight limp throughout her life, which made her shy and self-conscious, especially in childhood. But from a very early age it became clear that she was extremely intelligent. She showed a particular talent for mathematics and science, although she excelled in all areas. She played the piano beautifully and later even considered studying music, and she was also good at painting.
But times have not been kind to women’s education, especially not in traditionally masculine fields, which mathematics and physics undoubtedly are. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, girls could attend vocational secondary schools from 1868, but the first girls’ gymnasium was not established until 1892. The doors of universities remained closed to women until the end of the nineteenth century, although from 1878 onwards, in some cases, they were allowed to attend lectures with special permission. Of course, without the possibility of taking examinations, let alone graduating.
But Mileva was lucky. Despite the fact that her entire schooling was an administrative bump in the road, her devoted father gave her unconditional support. Otherwise, at best, she could have become a music teacher after high school. But Miloš was not only a model father, he was also wealthy enough to ensure that his daughter could attend school where the conditions for girls were the best. After a girls’ high school in Novi Sad, where she was by far the best student, she attended for a while a grammar school in Šabac in the Kingdom of Serbia, because there girls had the same right to education as boys.
Her father’s career then took the family to Zagreb, where he had to apply for a special permit to allow his daughter to attend the Royal High School. She was granted it, but this only meant that she could sit exams, not attend classes. Nevertheless, she got excellent grades, and then they even granted her request to attend physics classes together with the students. It was becoming more and more obvious that mathematics and physics were right up her street.
Her desire to continue her studies led her, with the help of her father, to Switzerland in 1894, where she enrolled at the High School for Girls in Zurich. Switzerland was one of the few countries where, despite all the social conservatism, girls were allowed to study regularly at university. After her matriculation in 1896, she enrolled in the summer semester at the medical faculty of the University of Zurich, successfully completing it, but in October of the same year she preferred to follow her heart. She enrolled to study mathematics and natural sciences.
Her good results in the entrance exams made her one of the first women to be admitted to the national polytechnic university, now called the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), which is still a prestigious world academic institution. In a class of five students, Mileva was the only woman. Little did she know that a classmate, Albert Einstein, not yet 18, would change the course of her life.
Fatal attraction
Mileva Marić was not a woman of her time. A serious intellectual, she spent her free time playing music and reading professional literature. Although malicious and untrue rumours later spread that Mileva was not the least bit attractive, the petite dark-haired woman attracted the interest of many a student. So did the charmingly confused and romantic Albert, who had always been very receptive to the opposite sex and later became a real magnet for women.
They became friends and spent more and more time together. Both were hard-working students and excelled in physics, as the surviving publicly available certificates attest. But Mileva was much more dedicated and a regular attendee, while Albert could not bear to attend lectures where – as he himself claimed – he learned nothing new and where the professors just lectured on the same old stuff. He also always had problems with authority. “I followed some of the lectures closely, but otherwise I did a lot of ‘junk’ and studied the masters of theoretical physics at home with a holy zeal.”
Because he was not systematic in his studies, he needed help to prepare for his exams, and that came in the form of a close friend and classmate, and above all a mathematical genius, Marcel Grossman. His and Mileva’s notes were Albert’s lifeline. Alongside him, Marcel and Mileva, the fourth feather of the four-feathered clover was Michele Besso, soon to be Albert’s and Mileva’s best friend. The group created a world of their own, stretched between going to university, nights spent with books and difficult scientific debates, as well as going to cafés and musical evenings. Above all, they had something else in common – they were all foreigners, the men were Jewish and Mileva was Orthodox, all recently arrived in Switzerland. They had to deal with anti-Semitism, sexism and discrimination in general on a daily basis.
After a year, Mileva decided to temporarily interrupt her studies in Zurich and continue them in Heidelberg, where the famous Professor Lenard, whose lectures on theoretical physics were world famous and who later became a Nobel Prize winner, taught. Mileva was fascinated by his lectures and wrote to Albert: “Professor Lenard’s lecture yesterday was really very interesting; we are now talking about the kinetic theory of gases.” This topic was important in the development of one of Einstein’s landmark theories of 1905, the Brownian theory of motion. It is therefore legitimate to ask how much the knowledge Mileva shared with Albert helped.
Since she was unable to graduate as a woman in Heidelberg, some believe that she retreated there for fear of feeling too strongly attached to Albert. On the other hand, in those days, temporary visits to other universities to broaden one’s horizons were a fairly regular practice, especially if they were taught by eminent experts in specific fields.
During Milev’s stay in Heidelberg, a rich written correspondence between the two young lovers begins, showing the growing affection they showed for each other. Mileva had already told her family about Albert, and he persistently urged her to return to Zurich as soon as possible.
Indeed, she soon returned and, with Albert’s help, successfully continued her studies without interruption. At the girls’ boarding house where she lived not far from where Albert lived, she became close friends with a handful of girls, also students. Her faithful friend Helene Kaufler, née Savić, stood by her side years later during the most difficult hardships of her life. Years later, Helene’s grandson, Dr Milan Popović, published a collection of letters between his grandmother and Mileva – some of them even Einstein’s, addressed to Helene – covering a period of more than forty years.
Albert and Mileva’s relationship deepened after her return. They spent all their time in her room, absorbed in their books, and her friends from the boarding house reported: ‘In her room, in complete silence, we always found together Mica (as she was affectionately called by those closest to her, n.a.) and Albert, who we had not at all assumed would one day become such a great man. Whenever we came for tea, they were both doing their homework. /…/ When he wasn’t busy, he played the violin. I (Milana Bota, a friend, op.a.) accompanied him on the piano, while Mica strummed the tambura. Albert liked to listen to the Duchess’s songs, for which Mica had a great sense. He was a real virtuoso on the violin.”
Life has been exhausting, but wonderful at the same time. Those were Mileva’s best years.
Together we will be the happiest people in the world
“Without you, I have no confidence, I find no joy in my work, not in my life. /…/ I can’t wait to hold you, to squeeze you tight and to live with you again. We’ll get back to work and the money will be as good as new /…/,” is how the statuesque Albert poured his feelings onto the paper of his many love letters to Mila. They even gave each other cute nicknames like Doxerl (for her) and Johanzel (for him). In their letters, they teased each other, stung each other and, above all, professed their boundless love for each other. Albert was always a great joker and once sent Mila a letter with the outline of his sole so that she could knit him socks.
As their relationship grew more and more serious, Einstein’s family eventually had to find out about it, but they were outraged by Albert’s choice. The one who despised Albert the most was his mother, Pauline Einstein. She was despondent at the news that her beloved son was even planning to marry a lame Orthodox woman. Einstein wrote to Mileva that “my mother threw herself on the bed, buried her head in the pillow and began to cry like a child”. Then she commented wryly: “She is a bookworm like you – and you need a wife. By the time you’re 30, she’ll be an old crone. /…/ You are destroying your future and blocking your way through life. This woman cannot get into any decent family. If she gets a child, you’ll be in a good mess.” These last words were a grim premonition of the future.
Pauline wrote to a friend: ‘This Miss Marić is a great blight on my life and if it were in my power I would use every means to drive her from my horizon. She is downright antipathetic to me.”
Mileva’s letters to her friend Helena show how hurt she was by her future mother-in-law’s contempt.
They both spent longer holidays with their parents, Albert in Italy, Mileva in Novi Sad. Albert was always the target of criticism at Mileva’s expense and his mother was constantly talking about the so-called ‘Doxerl Affair’. She did not choose her words and often made fun of Mileva’s appearance, but Albert was also not known for his diplomatic skills and reported to his chosen one without a hair on his tongue: “Your photograph made a great impression on my mother. While she was looking at it attentively, I said with deep sympathy: ‘Yes, yes, she is certainly a very clever girl.’ I have suffered a good deal of pricking, among other things, for this, but I do not find it in the least unpleasant.”
In Einstein’s defence, it is worth noting his disgust at this kind of behaviour. He described his family, especially his mother and sister, who had been close to him all his life, as petty bourgeois, and he had strong doubts about his mother’s intellectual abilities. At the same time, he was very proud of his little, clever intellectual Doxerl, so different from other women of the time. “We understand each other’s dark soul so well.”
Family conflicts were soon forgotten as the years of studying together slowly came to an end and the final exams and the thesis had to be prepared. Their grades were always good, so no one expected the impending disaster. Mileva’s grades in the so-called mid-term exams were also above average and her thesis proposal had already been accepted. She was looking forward to the work and research that lay ahead. In addition, she had already secured a position as a librarian at the Polytechnic, although she had also been offered an assistant professorship.
Then, in July 1900, she failed the final diploma oral exams for the first time and the final average was not sufficient for the diploma. All the other classmates did well, although Albert was at the tail end of the class. But he still had his diploma in his pocket, while Mileva did not. Marić’s sympathetic biographers insist that she also or mainly fell because she was a woman, a foreigner and, to top it all, the companion of Albert Einstein, who himself did not have a very good record with the professorial staff.
When she tried for a second one a year later, she was already pregnant. Mileva’s happy and carefree years were over forever.
Lieserl
After a break with family, both Mileva and Albert returned to Zurich, he in search of a job, she in the hope that by studying hard she would pass her exams. In order to stay in Switzerland and have access to the laboratory, she enrolled again in the last semester of her studies. Life was much less carefree, as Albert never got an academic job – he was considered to be a peculiar, even unadjusted, and certainly disrespectful young man, and the word spread all over Europe. But Albert never knew how to throw a gun in the corn, he wrote hundreds of applications and joked at his own expense: “God gave a donkey a hard skin for a reason.” He earned his bread by giving private lessons in music and mathematics, but even these were not very successful.
In May 1901, in a bid to escape the everyday, they spent the most romantic holiday of their lives together on Lake Como in Italy, where they conceived their first child, in all likelihood. Three months pregnant, Mileva once again failed her bachelor’s exam under severe psychological pressure. Unmarried and without a diploma, she returned to her home estate in shame and told her parents two pieces of bad news at the same time. Father Milos, who had always supported his daughter and believed in her brilliant scientific future on the basis of her exceptional intellectual abilities, was desperate. But he welcomed his daughter with open arms and stood by her side as always, both during the difficult pregnancy and the even more difficult childbirth.
Given the social norms and customs of the time, it was best for the unmarried Mileva and Albert to keep their pregnancy a secret. In addition, Einstein was applying for a job at the patent office in Bern and for Swiss citizenship, so he had to show exemplary behaviour.
Mileva gave birth in secret, away from the prying eyes of her neighbours in Novi Sad and her friends in Zurich. Far away from the love of her life and the father of her newborn baby, a girl named Lieserl. Lieserl became the best-kept secret of Einstein’s life, as the existence of the child only came to light in the 1980s, when the correspondence between Albert and Mileva was finally published. To this day, despite numerous attempts, no one has been able to find an official register or any other proof of the girl’s birth or existence. So far, only three letters have been found in which Mileva and Albert mention Lieserl.
Albert, for example, never told his family about it. Even after a very difficult birth, when Mileva was too weak even to write letters, Albert never came to visit. But at least at the beginning, he still thought about having a child. Among other things, he suggested to Marić that it was better to breastfeed her herself than to feed her with cow’s milk, which he thought might make her look foolish. “Is she healthy and is she crying properly yet? What kind of daddy does she have? Which of us does she look more like? /…/ I’m already so in love with her, and I don’t even know her yet! /…/ When you feel a bit better again, you have to draw her for me. /…/ Your Johanzel.”
What happened to the little girl cannot be said with certainty. There are several theories. What is clear is that Mileva left her temporarily in the care of her native village, where her father had fostered her in the hope that her parents would come looking for her sooner or later. Lieserl contracted scarlet fever at the age of two and most probably died of it. Some sources claim that she survived and was given up for adoption, perhaps even to Mileva’s best friend Helena Kaufler, then married to Savić, or to friends in Budapest.
Djordje Krstić, a physicist and Mileva Marić’s biographer, claims that Mileva’s father Miloš demanded that Albert find a job, marry Mileva and take the child, otherwise the child would be given up for adoption. Albert clearly wanted the child with him at least for a while: “/…/ The only remaining problem that would have to be solved is how we could have our Lieserl with us; I would not like to see her given away. Ask your father, he is an experienced man. /…/,” he wrote to Mileva.
The little girl is probably really dead, although, as I said, all official traces of her existence have been erased. The question arises whether the letters and other evidence about the child were destroyed in order to preserve the scientist’s immaculate honour and reputation.
In any case, Einstein spoke less and less about his daughter, and her fate left a deep imprint on Mileva’s state of mind. She missed her terribly and blamed herself for abandoning her throughout her life. She never confessed the depths of her suffering to anyone. Perhaps that is why she later became so protective of her sons.
With the help of Grossman’s father, Albert finally got a job at the patent office in Bern and had to accept that the doors of academia would remain closed to him, at least temporarily. On his deathbed, his father finally gave him permission to marry Mileva and after seven years the lovers were married in 1903. Slowly, their life began to take on the outlines of a settled life.
The Untied Scientist
Albert supplemented the more miserable salary he received for his six-day work commitment at the patent office with private tuition. What little time he had left he devoted to his own physics work. In the beginning, Mileva also often took part in discussions with friends and studied scientific papers. She also attended the meetings of the private Akademie Olimpija (Olympia Academy), a circle founded by Einstein and his friends.
Shortly afterwards, their second child, a boy named Hans Albert, was born. In Bern, they were able to afford a bigger apartment with a beautiful view of the Alps and enjoy a bohemian life surrounded by nature, friends and music. “So, I’m a married man. /…/ Mileva takes fantastic care of everything, is a good cook and always in a good mood,” he wrote to his friend Bess.
Even an advanced mind such as Einstein’s was uncritically embedded in the established social framework of the time. He had no doubts about the place of women in marriage and in the joint household. He admired Mileva for her cleverness, but it was still taken for granted that she cooked, sewed and looked after the home. Gone were the days when he played the violin and she the piano. Although everything was fine and dandy on the surface, the first cracks slowly began to appear in their relationship.
Mileva increasingly turned her attention to motherhood and her dream of an academic career became increasingly unrealistic. Meanwhile, Einstein was steadily coming to his first insights that would revolutionise science.
Millau’s contribution to Albert’s scientific ideas and findings is a controversial topic. One could say that there are two camps. The former argue that Mileva was virtually an equal partner in Albert’s first groundbreaking scientific works. Opponents argue that Mileva’s name does not appear in any scientific text and that she is never mentioned specifically. But even this is not true, and insiders say that a reviewer of the first paper on special relativity said that the paper was signed with both Einstein and Marić (actually it should have been Marity, which was the Hungarian form of the surname Marić). When the paper was then published in the prestigious journal Annals of Physics, Mileva’s surname disappeared. Some even believe that her paper was deliberately suppressed and the written evidence destroyed.
There is ample evidence that she was actively involved in the creation of many other articles. She also later helped him prepare lectures. In particular, she would correct and complete mathematical calculations, for which she had more talent than Albert. She herself would not have wanted to sign them, as she had no degree and was a woman, which could have been detrimental to Albert’s career. All this at a time when another remarkable woman was breaking scientific ground – Marie Curie and her husband Pierre had just won the Nobel Prize in 1905. What an ideal role model she was for Mileva and her hopes of a career with Albert.
Years later, when he had already won the Nobel Prize for his quantum explanation of light and the photoeffect (which he had written about in 1905), and when they were quarrelling about money, as they had done so many times before, his ex-wife wrote to him as follows:
“/…/ I’ve been involved in your science projects from the beginning. I won’t talk about whether I was equal or not, because that’s hard to measure. I suppose you will say that others have also participated. That is true, but you will have to admit that in this case I was the most important contributor. I have been involved in all your articles. Even the ones that, as it turned out later, were crucial for your career, published in the Annals of Physics 1905. /…/
Our reason was simple: you were trying to get a job as a professor, and the more papers you published, the better chance you had of getting one. /…/ Besides, would it have made any sense for me to sign my name because I was without a degree? You will remember that I used to write renewals of scientific journals and articles published in the English-speaking world under your name, because you had no idea about English, as you still do today. /…/ I have not forgotten my reason for our agreement. I had Lieserl in mind. I believed that your better and better paid job, which you wanted, would make it easier for us to return our little girl. /…/”
Be that as it may, and even if the letters are not sufficient proof, no one disputes the fact that in the early years of their life together they spent long hours and evenings together over books, notebooks and manuscripts. Even their first son, Hans Albert, has told of this. It is clear from their correspondence that they had many discussions on professional and scientific topics and that Albert shared all his thoughts with his wife, Mica. Given the small number of Mileva’s letters that survive compared to Albert’s, it is difficult to judge the historical truth. It is certainly not black and white.
Calm before the storm
1905 was a watershed year for Einstein’s science. Years of work and thought finally paid off, and he published four peer-reviewed papers that shaped the whole of twentieth-century physical science and our understanding of time, space, energy and matter. It was also the time of the most famous equation of all time, E=mc2 . When he submitted his last paper, he and his wife Mileva celebrated as they had not done in a long time. “Both of us, oh my, dead drunk under the table”, witness the postcard they both signed the next day.
But even after this miraculous year, Einstein still failed to get an academic position immediately, and he continued to work at the patent office in Bern. It was not until 1909, after seven years at the office, that he got his first job at the University of Zurich. The Einsteins were 30 and 34 years old when they returned to Zurich, but Mileva felt rejuvenated. There were still many friends from their youth there, and the cheerful music was once again ringing from their apartment. A friend wrote: “The Einsteins have a real bohemian household.”
The enthusiasm for Einstein’s discoveries quickly spread around the world, and he began to be recognised as a genius. Invitations to lectures and conferences proliferated. He also spent a lot of time with his students, hanging out with them in cafés and encouraging them to think critically. He had less and less time for home. Mileva summed up her new life in Helena’s letters:
“My husband is currently at a meeting of German physicists in Salzburg, where he will give a lecture. He is already considered the best physicist in the German-speaking area and he is highly honoured. I am very happy about his success, because he really deserves it; but I hope and wish that this fame will not have a detrimental effect on his humanity. /…/ With this kind of fame, he does not have much time for his wife. /…/ But what can I do? One gets a pearl, the other a box. /…/ He works tirelessly on his problems, I could say he lives only for them. I am embarrassed to admit that we are unimportant to him and only second place. /…/” Mileva already saw in Albert a changed man.
In 1910 they had a second child, Eduardo. At the time of his birth, Halley’s Comet had just passed overhead, so Albert was not with Mileva. His science, as so many times before and so many times since, had the upper hand. Tete, as the boy was affectionately called, was a sensitive and gentle boy, very clever and extremely attached to his mother. Albert was also a good and funny father, who played the violin for hours, walked with his sons in the hills and made them original toys.
After two quiet years, Albert Einstein was offered a better-paid professorship in Prague in 1911. Mileva moved there only reluctantly. Prague at the beginning of the twentieth century was not an open multicultural environment, but a stifling city already breathing the spirit of the coming world conflict. The gulf between the German- and Czech-speaking elites was widening, and Slavic national pride was awakening. Mileva, however, was officially a member of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and she spoke German.
Albert did not bother with all this, or rather, he always fled to science when he had personal or emotional problems. He liked to be completely alone in his intellectual world and no one could disturb him. He often admitted this himself.
Then Berlin happened. Albert often travelled there for various lectures and symposia. He became close to some of the members of his family who lived there, especially his cousin Elsa, a divorcee with two daughters. Even before the Einsteins moved there, Albert had a suspiciously intimate correspondence with her. Once, when she congratulated him on his birthday, he wrote her off: “If you really want to make me happy, take some time and come here once for a few days.” In Berlin, he began to see her regularly and increasingly neglected his family.
In April 1914, he finally trampled on Mileva’s dignity. With the following words, he set the conditions under which he was still willing to live with her.
“A. You will make sure: 1. that my clothes, laundry and bedding are clean, 2. that I get three regular meals in my room, 3. that my bedroom and study are clean, and that I am the only one who uses my desk. B. You will give up all personal relations with me unless they are unavoidable for social reasons. /…/ C. You will observe the following rules in your relations with me: 1. You will not expect intimacy from me and you will not object to me in any way, 2. You may address me only if it is in my interest to do so. /…/ D. You will not belittle me in words or behaviour in front of our children.”
After some initial hesitation, Mileva decided that she could not accept such humiliation. She left her husband and the boys and returned to Zurich. On the day of their departure, Albert escorted them to the train station and even shed a few tears on the platform. But a day later he wrote to his new lover, relieved.
The last shreds of the once so passionate love between Albert Einstein and Mileva Marić have been washed away. In its place have taken Albert’s indifferent contempt and Mileva’s impassive despair.
Fighting for and with life
While Albert was writing a new chapter in his life and finally crowning his romance with Elsa with their marriage in 1919, Mileva was sinking into physical and emotional decline. On her return to Zurich, many family friends stood by her and her sons, but Mileva soon fell seriously ill. In addition to a series of minor heart attacks that confined her to a hospital bed, she most probably suffered a nervous breakdown and struggled with depression for a long time.
Einstein repeatedly branded her illness as imaginary. For three years, the once strong and proud woman was virtually bedridden. It was not until 1919 that she was actually able to get back on her feet. From then on, she lived only for her two sons. In 1926 she wrote: “My only joy is to have a boy by my side.”
She was also plagued by money problems. Although Albert sent her money regularly, it was not enough. Not only was she often ill, but Auntie’s younger son, who had always been ill, had received a devastating diagnosis: schizophrenia. From a promising and above-average intelligent medical student, he became increasingly violent and helpless as the years passed. Albert attributed his condition to ‘genetic reasons’ on Mileva’s part, as her younger sister Zorka was also personality-disordered.
Eduardo’s deteriorating condition was probably also due to the violent therapies of the period. Electroshocks, massive amounts of sedatives, even surgery were commonplace methods of treating mental illness. In any case, Eduard spent from 1930 until his death in 1965 in a mental hospital. Mileva devotedly cared for him until her death, while Albert never visited him again since his emigration to America in 1933.
The elder son Hans Albert became a successful hydraulic engineer, later a renowned expert and professor at Berkeley in the USA. At his father’s suggestion, he too left Europe because of the growing Nazi threat. Interestingly, Albert and Mileva were united in their disapproval of their son’s choice of love years after their separation. As if they had forgotten how Albert’s mother had made their lives miserable, they now jointly urged their own son not to marry his chosen wife, Frieda Knecht, whom Einstein Sr. had branded a dwarf and recommended to his son that it would be better not to have children with her!
In 1922, Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for his explanation of the law of photoelectric phenomena, one of the fields he had been working on in the years before the miraculous year 1905. They had already agreed in 1919, when they divorced, that all the prize money would go to Mileva. Many see it as evidence of Albert’s implicit recognition of Mileva’s contribution to his discoveries at the beginning of his career.
Be that as it may, Mileva invested the money in real estate and used it to pay for Eduardo’s treatment. In addition, she gave regular lessons in mathematics and piano. In general, the relationship between the ex-spouses calmed down and became quite friendly. Once Albert even sent her a special cactus for her cactus collection.
But Mileva has never recovered from all the blows of the post-relationship with the only love of her life. Her, Eduardo’s and her sister’s health problems, the disappearance of her brother on the Russian front, financial hardships, all these human tragedies turned a once proud and resilient young woman into a sad and unfulfilled woman.
In 1947, on her way to the hospital to visit Eduardo, she fell awkwardly, broke her leg and became unconscious. Then, in May 1948, she suffered a very weak stroke and was paralysed on her left side. She died on 4 August 1948, aged 73. Just before she died, she repeated only one word: “No. No. No.”
Only human
The myth of Albert Einstein is that of the immaculate man, the genius scientist and the humanitarian. Times magazine named him the most important figure of the 20th century. He was undoubtedly all of these things, but at the end of the day he was also only human, as his private life, and especially his relationship with Mileva Marić, testifies. In it, he revealed all sides of his personality that had been hidden from the public until the publication of his rich written correspondence in the 1980s.
In his autobiographical writings, he mentioned his first wife only once, even though she was such an important part of his life and the beginnings of his successful career.
But Mileva, despite her fears, is not and will not be forgotten. Her memory and her tragic life are ever more vivid, with schools and streets named after her, and in 2011, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Serbian National Theatre, she even had her own opera. May the tragic story of this remarkable woman be an everlasting reminder of the importance of the role of women in society today and in the past.
