D O C U M E N T 1 4 3 S E P T E M B E R 1 9 2 0 2 6 7
I very much hope all is well with you and yours. Both our
boys,[4]
who are in the
same class at the Gymnasium, are already calculating with logarithms. We also are
doing well, after my dear
wife[5]
withstood a nasty sepsis just a year ago that
brought her to the brink of death. But now she is up and about again and more
cheerful than ever. Are you still not ripe for Zurich yet?
With best wishes to you and your wife, I am your friend,
M. Grossmann
Cord. greetings from my wife.
143. From Felix Ehrenhaft
Vienna XIX, 70 Grinzinger Street, 10 September 1920
Esteemed Mr. Einstein,
I have been intending to write you for 3 weeks. At the end of August, I received
the following letter, attached in carbon copy, which I initially considered a message
from a
crank.[1]
Alerted by the newspapers about the extremely deplorable and, for
our conditions, shameful
events,[2]
I remembered the letter and submitted it to our
State Secretary for Public
Health[3]
at his wish. The latter sent the letter to Die Frei-
heit in Berlin, as he later informed me. From there it found its way into our Arbei-
terzeitung,
etc.[4]
If you should be interested in the original, I shall be glad to send
it to you, which at the present time is in the hands of the mentioned gentleman, or
pass it on to you at the scientists’ convention, where I hope to meet
you.[5]
I cannot refrain from telling you how much I regretted those ugly proceedings.
Although the whole affair must leave you completely untouched, I can perhaps
grasp more than anyone else how much one suffers emotionally from such actions.
It is my heartfelt wish that this be reduced to a minimum with you.
Certainly, the discord that I experienced, and still take part in, does not compare
with yours; do not take this comparison as impertinence. I must tell you, though,
that I for my part still had to suffer much this year, and still do, from the unscrupu-
lous and even slanderous agitation staged against me by certain
quarters.[6]
I am very much looking forward to seeing you again at the scientists’ conven-
tion, where I myself intend to speak about radioactive emissions of isolated radio-
active test particles of the order of magnitude of 10
cm.[7]
You might find a free
hour so that I can discuss this with you a little in [Bad] Nauheim, which I would
appreciate very much.
Until the 17th, any messages from you can reach me in Vienna; in Nauheim I
was assigned accommodations at the Carlton Hotel.