x x x I N T R O D U C T I O N T O V O L U M E 9
him, such as international reconciliation, various humanitarian initiatives, Jewish
matters, and the establishment of a Hebrew university in Jerusalem. For the first
time, he became engaged with philosophers interested in the theory of relativity.
As director of the KWIP, Einstein received forty-two grant applications. The
correspondence related to the application process and communications with the ap-
plicants, board of directors, board of trustees, financial officers, and banks respon-
sible for disbursing the awards are abstracted in the Calendar. Representative ex-
amples of applications and of Einstein’s responses are included as texts. Most of
Einstein’s correspondence with publishers concerning the reprinting of his writings
and their translation into English, French, and other languages has also been ab-
stracted in the Calendar.
Four correspondents stand out for the intensity and candor with which Einstein
writes to them and the breadth of subjects they cover. His exchanges with Paul
Ehrenfest, Hendrik A. Lorentz, Max Born, and Heinrich Zangger discuss myriad
issues, ranging from offers of academic appointments in Leyden and Zurich and his
financial and health problems, to the scientific, political, and humanitarian endeav-
ors that were of greatest interest or significance to him. His moving and witty let-
ters to these friends impart the most vivid account of Einstein during these turbu-
lent postwar months.
I I
Einstein’s concern for his ill mother and the shadow it cast on his personal life is a
running theme throughout most of this volume. Pauline Einstein, who had suffered
a recurrence of cancer in the fall of 1918, began experiencing increased discomfort
and pain in early 1919. With the first documents (Docs. 1–6) we find Einstein and
Elsa in Switzerland. He stayed there until mid-February, settling a financial agree-
ment concerning shares held in common with his brother-in-law, Paul Winteler, and
his uncle Jacob Koch. He visited his son Eduard in a sanatorium in Graubünden and
delivered a lecture cycle on relativity at the University of Zurich.
A few months later, when Einstein traveled to Zurich again for a second cycle of
relativity lectures beginning in late June and lasting until mid-August, he arranged
his visit so that he could commute weekly between Zurich and Lucerne for regular
visits to Pauline who, in mid-July, upon Einstein’s urging, had been transferred to
a private clinic (Doc. 70). As he wrote to his stepdaughters on his return to Berlin:
“My trip consisted of all sorts of serious but also sad duties; this time I saw nothing
of beautiful Switzerland except a lecture hall and a hopeless sickbed” (Doc. 90).
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