454 DOCS.
446,
447
JANUARY
1918
446.
To Fritz Haber
[Berlin,]
29 January 1918
Dear
Haber,
Although
you
have
already
ruled out
receiving
an answer
to
your
nice
letter,[1]
I
now
have occasion to write
you
nonetheless. Your
commending
lines have
ac-
celerated
the
petition’s
effectiveness to such
an
extent
that
today already
the
news
arrived
that
no more
obstacles
stand
in
the
way
of Nordstrom’s
trip.[2]
Once
again,
thank
you very
much
indeed,
also in
the
name
of
Nordstrom,
who
will
probably
write
you
himself.
My
little letter
was
written in
a
brash rather
than
sensitive
tone;[3]
but the inanimate
characters do
not
convey
this. At
any
rate,
the
delicate consideration
you
have shown for
my caprices,
with
such
an
overwhelming
workload
as
yours,
has
filled
me
with
a
mixture of
joy
and
shame
which,
thank
heavens,
I
don’t have to
analyze.
Best
regards,
yours,
Einstein.
447.
From
Max
von
Laue
Würzburg, 40
Mergentheimer St.,
30 January 1918
Dear
Einstein,
I
thank
you
and Planck most
cordially
for
the kind letter of Jan.
25[1]
and ask
you
not
to
hesitate
to
make
this
answer
of mine accessible
to
him,
since
I
could
not
think
of
the
slightest
reason
for
not
showing equal
trust
in
him
as
in
you.
You
both
were
entirely right
in
seeing
that
the
question
of
my
relocation is
not
clear,
above
all,
to
what
extent
I
should draw
advantage
from
the foundation
of
the
K.
W.
Institute
for
my
move
there.[2] To
be
more
precise,
this
is
unclear
to
me
particularly
because I
know
that the
now
available funds
are
earmarked for
purely
material
disbursements.
One
or
two
years ago
it
overwhelmingly
seemed
as
though
Dr. Fleischer in Wiesbaden intended to endow
a
post
to be
designated
to
me
personally;[3]
and when I met Sommerfeld
in
August
1917
in
Berchtesgaden[4]
and
he
explicitly
mentioned,
without
any
actual
prompting,
that
he
had
just
happened
to be
corresponding
with Dr. Fleischer and
about
very inconsequential
matters,
I
was
led at
that
time already-August
1917-to
assume
that
my
sus-
picion was
correct.
But
this
may,
of
course,
have
changed
in
the
meantime. At
all
events,
it
is
a
matter of fact
that
Dr. Fleischer has not
concerned himself
with
me
for
many
months,
in contrast
to
the
period
from
the
end of
1915 to
the
close
of
1916.