V O L U M E 8 , D O C U M E N T 3 4 6 a 5 3
Be sure always to be very nice with Mr. Zangger. He watches out for all of us so
touchingly during this difficult time, even though he has so much to
do.[9]
Just one more month left, then I’ll have you back! Kisses from your
Papa.
Give the enclosed letter to Prof.
Zangger.[10]
Vol. 8, 346a. From Hans Albert Einstein
Zurich, 1 June 1917
Dear Papa,
I’d like to write you once again, but I don’t quite know what. First of all, I’d like
to report that Tete is probably traveling to Arosa this week already.[1] He’s looking
forward to it enormously & draws attention to himself in the entire hospital garden,
because he jumps around everywhere.[2] Mrs. Zangger has offered to deliver Tete
up there.[3] It was actually arranged that Tete be packed in a package & delivered
up there by post. But now quite suddenly the undertaking has become serious; ear-
lier it was all just a vague idea.
You asked me how school is getting on. To this I must answer that my memory
has the following peculiarity: everything has great difficulty getting into my head,
but once it’s in there, it stays all right. This bad characteristic of my mind frequently
gives me no end of trouble, because while the others learn everything at school al-
ready, I have to gnaw at it for a long time at home before I can do it.[4] This causes
me a great deal of trouble now, especially in Latin. Now we are going through the
deponents from the 3rd, you see, & they simply refuse to get into my “bird's brain,”
as our Latin teacher calls it.[5]
In mathematics we now have 3 subjects:
1. Geometry. We have the textbook by Spieker-Benke, or something like that.[6]
We are now coming to the congruency of triangles, & I wonder very much how our
dear O. Scherrer will explain it.[7]
2. Algebra: We are at the very beginning, & often it’s so boring that everyone
yawns through the entire lesson. He just has to go through everything very slowly
in the beginning, because otherwise there will always be someone who is not able
to follow.
3. Arithmetic: Here we’re discussing a few individual cases of interest computa-
tion. Such as, for example: the interest rates; besides that, we’re repeating what we
did last year.