xl INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME
8
pardon
is
drafted
and
submitted
to
Vienna in
May
1917,
but
curiously
without
Einstein’s
signature.
III
The
sense
of
purpose
which informs Einstein’s drive to
provide a
solid institutional
base for his
assistant
Freundlich also
guides
him in the
personal sphere, though
the
clarity
of
goals
is clouded
by
the emotional stresses to which he is
subjected.
Once
the bloom is
off
the
rose
of
Einstein’s
marriage
to Mileva
Maric -sometime
by
the
end
of
the first decade
of
the
century
(if not
earlier)-Einstein has turned
his
romantic
interest
to his cousin
Elsa
Löwenthal Einstein.
By
summer
1914,
shortly
after
taking
up
residence in
Berlin,
Einstein
comes
to the conclusion that he must
rid
himself
of
his
wife. In
a
memorandum
(Doc. 22),
Einstein
sets
out
a
list of brutal
conditions,
under
which he is
prepared
to continue to live
together
with Mileva and
their
two young sons,
Hans
Albert
and Eduard.
To
Einstein’s
dismay,
Mileva
accepts
the
terms,
but
given
his
persistence,
she
finally relents, leaving
Berlin with
the
boys
at the end
of
July.
The terms
of
separation are
sketched out in the
Appen-
dix
of
this volume.
Having initially
threatened to divorce Mileva and
promised
to
marry Elsa,
who lives in
Berlin,
Einstein
comes away
in
summer
1914 with
what
is for him
an
almost ideal solution
that
necessitates
neither
action and enables him
to
enjoy a
self-sufficient
yet
protected
existence: he has
gained
his freedom
from
his first wife without
being
compelled
to
marry
his
cousin,
though
he is still able
to
avail
himself of
her
romantic and domestic attention.
The
pressure
from Elsa and
her
parents[6]
is
unrelenting,
however,
and in 1916
Einstein makes
a
concerted
effort
to
divorce Mileva. On
hearing
that
she has
as a
result suffered
a nervous
breakdown,
which he
initially assumes
she is
feigning,
he
breaks
off
his offensive. After
a
severe
bout
with
a
gastric
ulcer
leaves him bedrid-
den at the
beginning
of
1918, however,
he decides
once
and for all to
remarry,
calculating
quite
matter-of-factly
that
he will need
a
devoted
companion
at his side
who will
nurse
him
back to health
for
the rest
of
his
life. The
aspect
of
calculation
is
heightened by
the fact that while Einstein is insistent in his
desire
to
remarry,
it
is
a
matter
of
indifference to him
whether Elsa
or
her older
daughter
Ilse becomes
his
new
wife
(Doc. 545).
A
wry
counterpoint
to
this attitude
is offered
by
a
letter
in
October
1916
(Doc. 265),
in
which
in
high
moral
dudgeon
Einstein
dramatically
defends the
honor of
a
servant
girl,
of
whom
a neighbor
has
purportedly
taken
advantage.
In
spite
of
this somewhat histrionic
display,
it is
clear that
a
cavalier attitude
toward
women
is
part
of
Einstein’s
personal vocabulary.
In
one
of
the
more
reveal-
ing passages on
the
subject,
he
points
out
in
summer
1916 to his closest
friend,