DOC.
503
APRIL
1918 525
503. To
David
Hilbert
[Berlin,]
Friday
[12
April
1918][1]
Highly
esteemed
Colleague,
That
was
terribly
bad
luck
I
had,
not
being
able
to
see
you
while
you
were
traveling
through, despite your
having
been
so
nice
as
to look
me up. Yesterday
was
the
second
time,
after
a 3-1/2-month
confinement to
my room,
that
I could
attend
a
meeting
of
the
Academy,[2]
and
I
used
the
occasion to eat dinner
af-
terwards
at
a
friend’s,
without
having
to
go
out
especially
for it.
Through
the
maid’s
negligence,
I received
your
kind little
card
so
late that
now
I
cannot seek
you
out
anymore.
I
am very disappointed
at
having
thus been
deprived
of
the
pleasure
of
seeing
you.
I
take the
opportunity
to
thank
you warmly
for
having
arranged
that
I
receive
that
scientific
prize,
the
substantialness of which
put
me
in
a
state of
happy
astonishment.
I
can imagine
that
you
were a
critical factor in
the
decision.[3]
You
can
imagine
how much I would
like
to be
present
at Planck’s lectures in
Gottingen.[4]
But
I
believe
it
unlikely
that
I
could afford
myself
this
pleasure,
be-
cause
my mobility
has been diminished
very
much
by
the
gastric
ulcer.
Recently,
for
inst.,
I
had
a
nasty
attack that
had
apparently
been
brought
on
by my having
played
the
fiddle for
just
an
hour
or so.
My
friend Ehrenfest wrote
me
a
postcard,
from which
I gather
that
he has
written
you
a
quite
foolish
letter but
which he
doubts
you
received.
It
is
a reply
to
a
friendly
invitation
he
had
received from
you
and Planck in which he
presents
in
detail
why
he
feels
unable to
come
to
Germany now.[5]
His
understandable
bitterness
over
politics
has
swollen to
such
a degree
that
now
he must
give
vent
to
his
heart
on
such
an
entirely
unsuitable occasion.
I
am
convinced
that
you
see
the
decent
fellow
behind this
clumsy,
almost childish
conduct and do not hold
this blunder
against
him
so
much. Such
a
character
is
surely a
thousand
times
more
welcome
than the
many
miserable fawners who
populate
our
faculties in
the
main. Please do inform
me
whether
you
have received his
letter,
so
that
I
can
answer
him and-give him
a
good dressing
down. I
am
going
to write to him
as
follows:
Dearest little
Paul, imagine you
had been
appointed
to
Göttingen
a
few
years
ago
instead
of to
Leyden,
and in
the
spring
of
1918
you
had
amicably
invited
our
colleague
Keesom and
you
received from him
a
knock
on
the
head![6] I
believe
you
would be
less
than
enchanted
by
it and would
rather
proclaim
that
Keesom
was a
lout.-(Application
example
for
the
relativity
principle.)
I
have been
exchanging
a
bit
of
correspondence
with Prof. Klein
regarding
the
energy
principle.[7] My
tvo’s
are being
rejected by
everyone as
unkosher.[8]
But