8 8 V O L U M E 8 , D O C U M E N T 4 7 1 b
The main thing is right now that Albert should go to Lucerne. I’ll ask my
brother-in-law to pick him up
immediately.[8]
I beg you to support me in this matter.
My sister is a highly intelligent and excellent person, in whom I have unlimited
trust. It will be wonderful for Albert there.
I want to keep Tete here until he has become somewhat stronger and gets to the
age when he must step into broader surroundings, i.e., until he is 12 or 13 years old.
Then Albert will be a student and independent, and Tete can come to Lucerne; in
any case, he will come back to Switzerland later. For I won’t send him to school
here. He will be in excellent care here physically. If his ailment returns, he’ll be sent
from time to time to the lake or into the mountains with Elsa or with her
daughters.[9]
I would never have taken him away from my wife. But since she can-
not keep him with herself now, anyway, it is certainly healthy and natural that I’d
want to have him with me. I am doing this not because I am yielding to an emotion-
al weakness of mine but because I consider it the right thing to do.
These constant interim solutions and seesawing are becoming more and more un-
bearable. If I could travel now, I would come right away. But that is out of the ques-
tion with my still unstable health, particularly in the current traveling conditions.
Would that your little girl were back to normal by the time you receive this letter.
Warm greetings from your
Einstein.
Vol. 8, 471b. To Heinrich Zangger
[Berlin, after 27 February 1918]
Dear friend Zangger,
An express letter has just gone out to
you,[1]
one major point of which I have to
immediately retract again, however, after speaking with Prof.
Rosenheim.[2]
I now
understand that we have to accommodate Tete permanently at high
altitude.[3]
Now
I submit to all your prescriptions without the least contradiction as concerns Tete,
and will pay for everything without objection. Please forgive me for all my unjus-
tified
meddling.[4]
You have been advocating the one and only correct view.
Again I urgently beg you please to give Albert to my sister.[5] He can, of course,
visit his mother as often as he wants. We shall have to accommodate her perma-
Father, I have sinned!!