D O C U M E N T 8 2 M A R C H 1 9 2 2 1 0 1 leave you the choice whether you would like to come on the 22nd of April, on the 29th of April or on the 6th of May.– Onnes will not be back here until the first days of May.[4] Lorentz will be back here around the 12th or the 15th of May.[5] So I would say that is the best time but I’m scared to death that you’ll steam off if I wait even a day longer. And if you leave me in the lurch, then I request my dismissal as chronicler of your activities.[6] !!!! So and now read this letter to the assembled women of the house so that they will help me out. With grumbled greetings, yours, Ehrenfest. Tschulanowsky will be inquiring of you in the coming days when you’ll be coming to Leyden because it’s important to him.[7] Addendum W. J. de Haas is very depressed and embittered: A couple of years ago prepara- tions were initiated for a professorship at Utrecht for Du Bois with a special labo- ratory for him (magnetism)—when he suddenly died. These efforts were continued and the faculty in Utrecht negotiated with De Haas. This has been going on now for about 2–3 years. The matter had certainly been dragging on but everyone was sure that it could not last much longer now and that De Haas would soon be called. Sud- denly and totally unexpectedly De Haas and all of us were able to gather from the state budget that the minister[8] was “abstaining” from the creation of this profes- sorship in connection with the general savings regulations “and is just giving a lec- tureship but will appoint it immediately.”– It is now, owing to numerous circumstances, becoming steadily more probable (I’m not saying “more certain”) that Ornstein,[9] albeit definitely not in consultation with the faculty, had guided this “savings wave” in this direction. In any event, it is a fact: 1.° That O. has spread himself out like a patch of oil throughout the entire experimental operations at Utrecht (Julius, during his illness, was not in a position to direct the laboratory either)[10] 2.° That his pupil Burger resigned at the incandescent lamp works in Eindhoven already in December in order to return to Utrecht.[11] —So it just remains to be seen (which nobody doubts) whether he is supposed to become the lecturer. O. is making ever more enemies with his loutishness—which often borders on the unbelievable.—Especially among such people as Fokker.[12] And it could become necessary one day that I take a stand against it. I feel the need to let you know about this now already. Previously—less out of neighborly love than simply
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