l x x x v i I N T R O D U C T I O N T O V O L U M E 1 6 The most substantial birthday gift planned was one that, ultimately, was never bestowed. The Einsteins’ long-running efforts to purchase a summer residence gathered momentum and almost came to fruition in the course of this volume. Even in July 1928, Einstein remained pessimistic and blamed the failure of their attempts on the “women’s inability to make decisions” (Doc. 242). Apparently, they consid- ered various locations over time, including Zuoz, Lake Constance, and the Schlachtensee in Berlin (Docs. 28, 300). The first indication that a different location in Berlin near the water was being contemplated appeared in November 1928, when Einstein told Eduard that he would receive a little hermit’s house on the Havel for his upcoming birthday (Doc. 321). According to Plesch’s autobiog- raphy, his personal initiative prompted the lord mayor of Berlin, Gustav Böß, to propose the plan for his city to purchase a summer house and garden for Einstein’s fiftieth birthday “as a mark of the deep esteem in which he was held.”[66] Various locations for the villa were proposed, including Neu-Cladow (Doc. 468). However, by early March 1929, Einstein stated that the plan had definitively been abandoned: “all these projects are ill-starred, since in the end nothing comes of them.” Instead the Einsteins would themselves purchase a summer house in the vicinity (Doc. 416). Apparently, the city’s efforts faltered on political opposition within the Berlin municipality, and in May, Einstein asked Böß to abandon the plan altogether (Doc. 527). In the end, the city resolved to gift Einstein only a plot of land. He would be expected to personally fund the villa’s construction. But even this pro- posal met with staunch political opposition: German national members of the mu- nicipal parliament repeatedly delayed the allocation of RM 20,000 for acquisition of land in the village of Caputh, near Potsdam. This led to embarrassing newspaper reports about the city’s ineffectualness.[67] Another significant gift was the planting of a forest in Palestine, to be named af- ter Einstein. The project was initiated in February 1929 by the Ehren-komitee für den Einstein-Wald in Berlin, led by prominent members of the Berlin Jewish com- munity. The Einstein Forest would see the planting of 10,000 trees at the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Anavim, northwest of Jerusalem, on land acquired by the Jewish National Fund (Doc. 467).[68] The present Einstein was clearly most excited about was a new sailboat he even- tually named Tümmler (porpoise). Three friends—the German-Jewish bankers Siegfried Bieber and Otto Jeidels and the American-Jewish banker Henry Goldman—gifted him the vessel, a seven-meter single cabin cruiser built by the shipbuilding engineer Adolf Harms (see Docs. 446, 460, and Illustration 26).[69]