Hermann
gave
in to him out of sheer good nature before he
was
himself
able to reach decisions in his business deliberations.
This
was
demonstrated
during
a
further change
in the
sphere
of
activity
of these two
very
different brothers.
Business sales
were
insignificant
in Germany, while
showing
great
promise
in
Italy.
The Italian
representative
of the firm then
proposed
moving the
plant
to
Italy.
Jakob
Einstein
was
at
once
so
taken
with
the idea that he
was
able to persuade Hermann Einstein to
make the
change, literally sweeping
him
along.
The
firm
in
Munich
was
liquidated.
The
lovely
estate
with the villa in which Albert Einstein
had
spent
a
happy childhood
was
sold to
a
building
contractor,
who
immediately
turned the handsome
grounds into
a
construction
site,
cutting down the
magnificent
old trees and
erecting
an
entire
row
of
ugly
apartment
houses.
Until the
time of their
move
the children
had
to watch
from the house
as
these
witnesses to
their most cherished
memories
were
destroyed.
The
plant
was
then transferred to
Pavia;
the
family
moved to
Milan
in
1894 and
a
year
later
to
Pavia. The
success
of the
enterprise
was
so meager,
however,
that by 1896 it had to be
liquidated.
Not
only
were
the
assets
of Albert Einstein's mother
lost
at this time, but
significant
contributions from relatives
as
well.
The
family
had
hardly anything
left. Their excessive confidence in
the firm's
Italian
representative, who had been
brought
in
as
a
partner,
apparently
contributed to this unfortunate
turn of events.
At this
point
the two
brothers,
so
dissimilar
in
nature, went
their separate
ways.
Without
prejudice,
Jakob took
a
step
which
Hermann could
not
decide
upon:
he accepted
a
position
as an
engineer
with
a
large
company,
and
soon won
trust and respect. In contrast,
Albert
Einstein's
father could not
bring
himself to take the
same
step
and
relinquish
his
professional independence.
In
particular,
he did
not want
to
bring suffering
on
his
wife,
who would have had
great
difficulty accommodating
herself
to
any
lower
standing
in the social
scale.
Against
the
perceptive
advice of his still
quite
young son,
he
founded
a
third
electrical factory,
in Milan. His cousin and
brother-in-law from Hechingen,
mentioned
earlier,
was
persuaded
to
finance the
enterprise,
even
though
he had lost
money
in the earlier
ventures.
A
capable
former master
mechanic,
who had
accompanied
the
two bothers from
Munich,
was
made technical
manager
of this small
factory.
But at this
time,
there already existed larger,
more
financially powerful
enterprises
of this
type
in
Italy, against
which
a
small
factory
in rented
space
could not
compete,
particularly
since
constant
financial problems limited
the
range
of its
activities.
The
firm
being
doomed to failure from the start, another crisis occurred
within
a
few
years,
liquidation
was
necessary,
and
most
of the
invested capital
was
lost.
With
money
provided
by
relatives,
Hermann
Einstein
then turned to
installing
power
stations, supplying
whole
villages
with
lighting.
This
time,
success
seemed to be his. But the
many
worries,
the
constant
feeling
of
personal dependence
on someone
else's
money
(how
much
more
difficult this is
to
bear than the
merely
occupational
dependence
on
one's employer!), all of these burdens had
undermined
his health, which until then had been robust. He
quickly
succumbed to
a
serious heart ailment and died in October
1902. His sad fate did
not
permit
him
even
to
suspect
that two
years
later his
son
would
lay
the
foundation of his future
greatness
and fame by
solving
an
urgent
problem
in
physics.
xvii