D O C U M E N T 5 J A N U A R Y 1 9 2 1 9
3. To Hendrik A. Lorentz
[Berlin,]1 January 1921
[Not selected for translation.]
4. To Frieda Huber
[Berlin, early
1921][1]
[Not selected for translation.]
5. To Heinrich Zangger
[Berlin, early
1921][1]
Dear Zangger,
Finally, I’m pulling myself together to write. The fragmentation of one’s inten-
tions by the motley array of duties is crippling, especially for a person made more
for concentration than for conformance. Your impressions of Paris don’t surprise
me. Among all Europeans one finds the Latin peoples have their hearts in the right
place and have preserved a certain simplicity of mentality. By contrast, there is
something subtle, shrewd about the Germans and Swiss. Perhaps it has something
to do with the climate. How should a person who is forced by the climate to confine
himself within his own four walls for 7 months a year have an open mind? And I
frankly confess that I find the Swiss particularly petty. I’ll never forget how univer-
sity president Vetter complained to me, while I was holding my relativity lectures
a couple of years ago in Zurich, about how much money the heating of my audito-
rium
cost![2]
No Frenchman could do that. God knows where your blood comes
from, that you are so very differently disposed from the northern Swiss in general,
whose brains are constantly centered around their dear francs.
I was very happy with the children. Albert has become a sound, independent fel-
low, self-assured, intelligent, modest. Little Tete also satisfied me, particularly as
regards his health. He is active, mischievous, yet not as intense and sound as Albert.
Both are somewhat mercantile in spirit—without any metaphysical yearning. I
would so much like all three of them to move to
Darmstadt.[3]
There they could