D O C . 9 7 A U G U S T 1 9 1 9 7 9 I can hardly start the associated experimental research in a penniless and disrupt- ed laboratory.[7] But all that will be straightened out. In assuring you of my admiration, both intellectual and moral, I am, in friend- ship, Jean Perrin Professor of Physical Chemistry, Sorbonne, Paris I am sending you these two publications. Please excuse the scribblings found on the second I did not have any others left. 97. To Hedwig Born [Berlin,] Sunday. [31 August 1919] Dear Mrs. Born, I have a completely miserable conscience toward both of you, quite particularly you, because I so rarely get down to writing. So that I don’t forget, first of all, I shall be glad to try to wangle funds from the K.W. Institute for your husband, if it’s pos- sible—when we have something to give out again.—[1] I will certainly look you up one day soon in your cozy nest,[2] if you aren’t already putting up some other un- welcome guest, just wait and see! The guess about Oppenheim is wrong my Acad- emy pay is connected not with his purse but with Mr. Koppel’s. I didn’t know at all that your husband’s chair is endowed by O., I only know about the observatory over there.[3] The relations between Oppenheim (junior) (I saw senior only one time) and us is of a purely private nature and is connected with the junior Mr. O.’s philo- sophical hobby-horse.[4] There is just one problem, in that I promised to stay not only with you but also with Mr. O., Junior, when I do come to Frankfurt the solu- tion to that is beyond my competence—it will solve itself somehow. That’s not nearly as malicious as Althoff’s retort to someone to whom he had promised a pro- fessorship but appointed someone else. He cheerfully and brashly said: “Well, do you really think you were the only one I had promised the professorship to?!”[5] Yesterday Stern was visiting me. He’s enthusiastic about Frankfurt and the institute.[6] I rather liked “Crime and Crime,” although Strindberg’s “A Dream Play” was incomparably better.[7] Mr. Bieberbach’s love and esteem for himself and his muse was priceless.[8] May God preserve him, for there’s no better way to live. In the old days, when peo- ple lived their lives in greater isolation, such originals among the univ. professors were virtually the rule, because they never dealt personally with anyone who was
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