3 0 0 D O C . 3 6 1 M A R C H 1 9 2 0 going to Holland.[4] From there I shall be able to send you 1000 francs and the same again in the summer. Sending it out from here is out of the question because our money is worthless abroad (not worth much here, either).[5] Right now I’m looking for a place with a sailboat at a northern German lake where we can go in mid-July. I invite both of you so that we can spend your summer vacation together. I can’t go to Switzerland because it’s too expensive. Talk this plan over with Mama so that I have time to arrange everything properly. Please also write me exactly when your vacations start and when they are over. I would be terribly pleased to be able to be alone with the two of you somewhere once. We’d be out in the country- side the whole day long. It would do all three of us good. Crazy things have been happening here again, God knows what else lies in store for us. One week we had no lights, gas, occasionally even no water. The university was closed.[6] I had a magnificent new violin built for me by a local violin maker.[7] It sounds beautiful. But I fear there won’t be a piano for us during our country stay, and Mama probably won’t want you to stay here. But maybe it is possible for us to have a sailboat and a piano there. Both of you write me soon about school and whatever else you are up to. At your age, d[ear] Albert, I went to Switzerland and was already supposed to go to the Poly. But I was only admitted a year later, after I had attended the cantonal school in Aarau for another year.[8] Warm greetings to you both, yours, Papa. Best regards to Mama. 361. To Heinrich Zangger [Berlin,] 26 March 1920 Dear Zangger, I received your postcard late, of course, because of the political carnival.[1] Thank you for your efforts. The viewpoint of preferring to employ a Swiss is thor- oughly comprehensible to me.[2] Scherrer is competent and diligent, even though he isn’t really a theoretician. Bernoulli, however, is incompetent taking him on would be sabotage.[3] H. A. Lorentz and Ehrenfest are offering Epstein a paid pos[ition] in Leyden, despite there being nothing vacant there.[4] The Dutch do much for science for its own sake. In Switzerland that’s still lacking.[5] One shouldn’t forget that wealth has its obligations.
Previous Page Next Page