1 3 2 D O C U M E N T 1 1 0 N O V E M B E R 1 9 2 5 his pro tem [2] bride, could basically only advise against it. Thereupon, telegram to Miss Friedel Knecht. She herself arrived here yesterday afternoon. I spoke with her alone for 2 hours with a completely negative outcome on her part. She merely stressed in response to all my expressed reservations that she still wanted to risk the experiment & that she has the feeling that Albert would be happy with her. Then, after dinner Albert took his, how should I say—Gschpusi[3] (derived from sponsalia)[4] to the hotel. Then, I described to Albert my very unfavorable impres- sions & talked to him again as if to a sick horse I again accomplished nothing other than that he became pensive & to my direct question as to whether he really was still considering a marriage against the warnings of everyone who had his interests in mind, all he said was he could not yet say, he was not yet clear himself. That’s all I was able to accomplish. My impression regarding Miss Knecht is that she’s a psychopath who has a pathologically exaggerated egocentricity. She has decidedly degenerative charac- teristics (dwarfish stature & nascent development of a goiter the skull formation also pathological: excessively large proportionally & leptosomic-schizothymic type).[5] She was completely self-confident & and obviously feels she can com- pletely manipulate Albert. Very explicit language makes no impression on her. To the contrary with Albert, who this morning, on his departure, seemed pensive and thanked me quite sincerely for all the unpleasant things I said to him (he didn’t leave for Zurich until about 1 o’clock). I implored him to hold off with the marriage for at least 2 years after his examination [6] if this succeeds, I consider the cause won, because his eyes will certainly be opened then as a result of the temporal & spatial distance however, it can still turn out differently, & that would be a pity for him, because I don’t believe that it will go well. By the way, Albert also told me that he didn’t intend to go to Kiel.[7] I suspect that his decidedly worse half of the not yet legal marriage is behind this decision. With Albert’s character, it is, of course, a mistake to energetically try to influ- ence him in any way. The best thing is to repeatedly emphasize to him at every op- portunity that presents itself that he has his destiny in his own hands as for me, I will not fail to spell that out to him whenever I have the opportunity. Sorry that I cannot report any better success to you I wanted to do what was best. By the way, your sincere letter to Albert,[8] which he gave me to read, had a very good effect. Sincerely yours, Anschütz