438 DOCS.
429,
430
JANUARY
1918
Looking
forward
to
your highly
valued
response
with
great interest,
I
am
respectfully,
yours very truly,
A.
Einstein.
430.
From Karl
Scheel
Dahlem,
Berlin, 28
Werder
St., 5
January 1918
Esteemed
Colleague,
I
heard
yesterday
to
my dismay
from Mr.
Jahnke[1]
that
you
must
keep
to
bed for
an
extended
period,[2]
which
I
regret very
much. On
the other
hand, Mr.
Jahnke told
me
that,
despite your
confinement
to
bed, you
are
able to
occupy
yourself
with
things
other than
your
illness. This
gives me
the
courage
to turn
to
you
with
two confidential matters.[3]
1)
A Mr.
Vrkljan,[4]
who has
applied
for
membership
in
the
Society
in
a
special-
delivery
letter,
sent
me
the
enclosed
paper
for
publication
in
the
Verhandlungen.
I
would not like to
bear the
responsibility entirely
on
my own,
and
that
is
why
I
ask
you
for
a
brief statement of
your opinion.
We
cannot be
overly
severe
in
these
bad times
nowadays,
of
course.
I
would
naturally
still have to clean
up
the
paper stylistically.
2)
As
you
probably know,
Mr. Planck
is
celebrating
his 60th
birthday
on April
23rd.
It
has been
suggested
that the
event be observed
by
arranging
the
meeting
of
the
Society
on
April
26
in his
honor,[5]
to
which invitations
are
extended
widely,
at
which
an
address is
delivered
(possibly Warburg)[6] on
Planck,
then
3
or
4
summarizing
talks about
Planck’s
fields
of research
(e.g.,
Einstein,
Sommerfeld,
Born,
Laue).
What
would
you
think
of this?
If
you
consider this
plan worthy
of
discussion, namely,
in
the
sense
that
it
would
please
Planck,
I
am
very willing
to devote
myself
to
the realization
of
this
plan.
But then it
would be advisable
that
we
discuss
the details
sometime.
Perhaps
your
state of
health
could
tolerate
my visiting you once.
It
does not
matter,
of
course,
that
you
would be
lying
in bed.-Maybe
you
can
leave
me a
message
sometime
by telephone
at
the
Reich
Institute
(Wilhelm 5515).
With best
wishes for
your recovery
and kind
regards, yours very truly,
Scheel.