Albert Einstein/Mileva Marić - the Love Letters

160 Pages·1994·7.863 MB·English

by  Albert Einstein, Jürgen Renn, Robert Schulmann

ALBERT EINSTEIN
Cladb y
JURGEN RENN AND
ROBERT SCHULMANN
SHAWN SMITH -
Albert Einstein/Mileva Mari¢
‘the
Edited and with an Introduction by
Jurgen Renn and Robert Schulmann
Translated by Shawn Smith
In 1903, despite the vehement objections of
his parents, Albert Einstein married Mileva
Mari¢, the companion, colleague, and conh-
dante whose influence on his most creative
years has given rise to much speculation. Be-
ginning in 1897, after Einstein and Mari¢ met
as students at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic,
and ending shortly after their marriage, these
fifty-four love letters offer a rare glimpse into
Einstein’s relationship with his first wife while
shedding light on his intellectual development
in the period before the annus mirabilis of
1905. Unlike the picture of Einstein the lone,
isolated thinker of Princeton, he appears here
both as the burgeoning enfant terrible of science
and as an amorous young man beset, along
with his fiancée, by financial and personal
struggles—among them the illegitimate birth
of their daughter, whose existence is known
only by these letters.
Describing his conflicts with professors and
other scientists, his arguments with his
mother over Mari¢, and his difficulty obtaining
an academic position after graduation, the let-
ters enable us to reconstruct the youthful Ein-
stein with an unprecedented immediacy. His
love for Marié, whom he describes as ‘“‘a crea-
ture who is my equal, and who is as strong
and independent as | am,” brings forth his se-
rious as well as playful, often theatrical nature.
After their marriage, however, Mari¢é becomes
less his intellectual companion, and, failing to
acquire a teaching certificate, she subordinates
her professional goals to his. In the final letters
Einstein has obtained a position at the Swiss
Patent Office and mentions their daughter one
last time to his wife in Hungary, where she is
assumed to have placed the girl in the care of
(continued on back flap)

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Albert Einstein
Mileva Marié
The Love Letters

Albert Einstein
Mileva Maric
Br The Love Letters
EDITED AND WITH AN
INTRODUCTION BY
JORGEN RENN AND
ROBERT SCHULMANN
TRANSLATED BY
SHAWN SMITH
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
Copyright © 1992 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Oxford
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Einstein, Albert, 1879-1955.
[Correspondence. English. Selections]
Albert Einstein/Mileva Marié—the love letters / with
an introduction by Jiirgen Renn and Robert Schulmann ;
translated from the German by Shawn Smith.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-691-08760-1
1. Einstein, Albert, 1879-1955—-Correspondence.
2. Einstein-Marié, Mileva, 1875—1948—Correspondence.
3. Physicists—Correspondence. I. Einstein—Mari¢, Mileva,
1875-1948. II. Renn, Jiirgen, 1956— . I. Schulmann,
Robert J., 1942—.IV. Smith, Shawn, 1968-. V. Title.
VI. Title: Love letters.
QC16.E5A4 1992
530”.092—dc20 91-40183
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