D O C U M E N T 3 2 9 A U G U S T 1 9 2 2 2 6 3 329. To Paul Ehrenfest [Berlin, on or after 21 August 1922][1] Dear Ehrenfest, The bad prognosis about little Wassi made me feel very sorry.[2] If it rests on a sound basis, I thoroughly approve of your plan to hand the child over to impersonal care. Valuable people should not be sacrificed for causes without any prospects, not even in this case. In that event it is good if you act quickly. I am glad that you are enjoying your brother[3] and his family so much and that this energetic man is a support for you in your dire trouble. I sent our note out to Mr. Scheel.[4] I left your last sentence standing unchanged even though I did not understand the suggestion at all. I can’t understand why the adjustment to the magnetic field should be more comprehensible by assuming in principle that the quantization was imprecisely realized. It would be good if you could elaborate on this to appease my literary conscience.[5] Dear Ehrenfest, I need your friendship as much, perhaps even more, than you do mine for my personal relationships are much feebler and sparser than yours and I have difficulty finding human contacts that make me feel good.[6] I spent a happy month with my boys in the hut [7] it was a true camping experience [Indianerle- ben] I told them a lot about you. Albert is a strong, independent fellow, but has lit- tle sense for the subtleties of human ways and little ability to empathize. The little one, by contrast, is softer, comical, fine, flexibly-minded, and sensitive he would happily fit in well among you. I have to show him to all of you sometime when it’s convenient. There is a very intelligent paper by Tetrode in the Zeitschrift für Physik about the quantum problem.[8] Maybe he’s right either way, by this paper he demonstrates that he is a first-ranking mind. Nothing has been as fundamentally gripping for me in a long time. We, incidentally, also once discussed the possible importance of the relativistic distance 0 (?) in solving the quantum problems. The weaknesses in his approach seem to me to be: 1) The law of electrodynamics is blamed for everything whereas there surely must be a formulation of the quantum laws in this subfield of mechanics. 2) In principle working with actions-at-a-distance is questionable, because it certainly cannot be applied to the general theory of rel[ativity]. Heartfelt greetings to all of you from your Einstein. My tour starts at the beginning of October.[9] My wife was quite ill but is recov- ered enough to probably be able to accompany me.[10] She sends her best regards.