Polytechnikum
Stuttgart, where
a
position
is vacant
&
wrote
again
to
Ostwald.
Soon
I
will have
honored
all
physicists
from the North
Sea
to the southern
tip
of
Italy
with
my
offer!
You
were
absolutely
right,
love, to
go
again to the
Engelbrechts.
Judging by previous
experience,
it is still the best
place
to
be. If
I will have
earned
some money
by
summer,
we
will
surely
take
our
little
trip
to
Venice
or
somewhere else together. How
delighted
I
would be! After
all, I
am
quite
a
stranger here
&
now
recognize
quite
clearly
what the little sweetheart's
love is compared with
parental
love. This is
as
different
as
day and night. I kiss
you
therefore
with all
my
heart and
you
should know that
your
devotion makes
me
so
happy
that without it
my
life would be
unspeakably
bleak. You
are
right
to go
often
to concerts,
particularly
to
the
splendid
mass
of
Bach. Write
me
how did
you
like
it.
But
now
I
must be off
to
the
library, otherwise it will be
getting
too
late.
Be
kissed
and
totally
crushed by
your
Johonzel
97.
TO
MILEVA MARIC
Milan Wednesday.
[10 April 1901]
Dear Miezchen!
If
you
knew better
your power
over
me,
you
little
witch,
you
would not constantly be afraid that
I
might
keep back all sorts of
things
from
you,
because this is
really
not
my
intention. I also want
to tell
you
immediately, love,
that
my
courage
and
my
good
cheer have
not been broken at
all, especially
because I
see
from
your
letter that
you
are
invariably
cheerful. So, today I
am
going
to
give
you
a
detailed
report
about
myself
because I
see
that
you
like that.
Last week I studied
electrochemistry
and chemical reactions from
Michele's
"Ostwald",
and the electron theory of metals in the library.
It's
easy
to
explain
what is
setting
me
against Planck's
considerations
on
the nature
of
radiation. Planck
assumes
that
a
completely
definite kind of resonators
(fixed
period
and
damping)
causes
the conversion of
energy
to radiation,
an
assumption
I cannot
really
warm
up
to.
Maybe
his
newest
theory
is
more
general.
I
intend
to have
a
go
at it. Dude's theory of electrons is
a
kinetic theory of
electric
and
thermal phenomena in
metals, entirely
in the
spirit
of
the kinetic
theory
of
gases.
If it
only
weren't for the
stupid
magnetism,
with which
we
know
so
little what to do!
Still,
I
do
believe
that Dude is
on
the
right track,
and his
conception actually
receives
quite
creditable confirmation
by
experiment.
I'll tell
you
more
about it another time. I have also somewhat
changed
my
idea
about the
nature
of latent heat in
solids,
because
my
views
on
the
nature
of radiation have again sunk back into the
sea
of haziness.
Perhaps
the future will
bring
something
more
sensible!
Ostwald hasn't written to
me
(ever),
neither has
a
professor
in
Stuttgart
to
whom I had turned, and there is
just
as
little in
prospect for
me
in
Italy.
But I
am
not the least
dicouraged
&
have
already weaned myself of the
anger,
which,
after all, stemmed mainly
from injured
vanity.
Battelli is in Pisa
&
Righi in Bologna. Prof.
Jung, Michele's uncle, promised that he'll recommend
me
there. Since
163