Einstein (62 page)

In the piece explaining relativity that he had written for
The Times
of London, Einstein humorously hinted at the issues that could arise. “By an application of the theory of relativity, today in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew,” he wrote. “If I come to be regarded as a bête noire, the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!”
²⁹

It was not entirely facetious. Just months after he became world famous, the latter phenomenon occurred. He was told that he was to be given the prestigious gold medal of Britain’s Royal Astronomical Society at the beginning of 1920, but a rebellion by a chauvinistic group of English purists forced the honor to be withheld.
³⁰
Far more ominously, a small but growing group in his native country soon began vocally portraying him as a Jew rather than as a German.

Einstein liked to cast himself as a loner. Although he had an infectious laugh, like the barking of a seal, it could sometimes be wounding
rather than warm. He loved being in a group playing music, discussing ideas, drinking strong coffee, and smoking pungent cigars. Yet there was a faintly visible wall that separated him from even family and close friends.
³¹
Starting with the Olympia Academy, he frequented many parlors of the mind. But he shied away from the inner chambers of the heart.

He did not like to be constricted, and he could be cold to members of his family. Yet he loved the collegiality of intellectual companions, and he had friendships that lasted throughout his life. He was sweet toward people of all ages and classes who floated into his ken, got along well with staffers and colleagues, and tended to be genial toward humanity in general. As long as someone put no strong demands or emotional burdens on him, Einstein could readily forge friendships and even affections.

This mix of coldness and warmth produced in Einstein a wry detachment as he floated through the human aspects of his world. “My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and communities,” he reflected. “I am truly a ‘lone traveler’ and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude.”
³²

Even his scientific colleagues marveled at the disconnect between the genial smiles he bestowed on humanity in general and the detachment he displayed to the people close to him. “I do not know anyone as lonely and detached as Einstein,” said his collaborator Leopold Infeld. “His heart never bleeds, and he moves through life with mild enjoyment and emotional indifference. His extreme kindness and decency are thoroughly impersonal and seem to come from another planet.”
³³

Max Born, another personal and professional friend, noted the same trait, and it seemed to explain Einstein’s ability to remain somewhat oblivious to the tribulations afflicting Europe during World War I.“For all his kindness, sociability and love of humanity, he was nevertheless totally detached from his environment and the human beings in it.”
³⁴

Einstein’s personal detachment and scientific creativity seemed to be subtly linked. According to his colleague Abraham Pais, this detachment sprang from Einstein’s salient trait of “apartness,” which led him to reject scientific conventional wisdom as well as emotional intimacies. It is easier to be a nonconformist and rebel, both in science and in a militaristic culture like Germany’s, when you can detach yourself easily from others. “The detachment enabled him to walk through life immersed in thought,” Pais said. It also allowed him—or compelled him—to pursue his theories in both a “single-minded and single-handed” manner.
³⁵

Einstein understood the conflicting forces in his own soul, and he seemed to think it was true for all people. “Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being,” he said.
³⁶
His own desire for detachment conflicted with his desire for companionship, mirroring the struggle between his attraction and his aversion to fame. Using the jargon of psychoanalysis, the pioneering therapist Erik Erikson once pronounced of Einstein, “A certain alternation of isolation and outgoingness seems to have retained the character of a dynamic polarization.”
³⁷

Einstein’s desire for detachment was reflected in his extramarital relationships. As long as women did not make any claims on him and he felt free to approach them or not according to his own moods, he was able to sustain a romance. But the fear that he might have to surrender some of his independence led him to erect a shield.
³⁸

This was even more evident in his relationship with his family. He was not always merely cold, for there were times, especially when it came to Mileva Mari
, that the forces of both attraction and repulsion raged inside him with a fiery heat. His problem, especially with his family, was that he was resistant to such strong feelings in others. “He had no gift for empathy,” writes historian Thomas Levenson, “no ability to imagine himself into the emotional life of anyone else.”
³⁹
When confronted with the emotional needs of others, Einstein tended to retreat into the objectivity of his science.

The collapse of the German currency had caused him to urge Mari
to move there, since it had become hard for him to afford her cost of living in Switzerland using depreciated German marks. But once the
eclipse observations made him famous and more financially secure, he was willing to let his family stay in Zurich.

To support them, he had the fees from his European lecture trips sent directly to Ehrenfest in Holland, so that the money would not be converted into Germany’s sinking currency. Einstein wrote Ehrenfest cryptic letters referring to his hard currency reserves as “results which you and I obtained here on Au ions” (i.e., gold).
⁴⁰
The money was then disbursed by Ehrenfest to Mari
and the children.

Shortly after his remarriage, Einstein visited Zurich to see his sons. Hans Albert, then 15, announced that he had decided to become an engineer.

“I think it’s a disgusting idea,” said Einstein, whose father and uncle had been engineers.

“I’m still going to become an engineer,” replied the boy.

Einstein stormed away angry, and once again their relationship deteriorated, especially after he received a nasty letter from Hans Albert. “He wrote me as no decent person has ever written their father,” he explained in a pained letter to his other son, Eduard. “It’s doubtful I’ll ever be able to take up a relationship with him again.”
⁴¹

But Mari
by then was intent on improving rather than undermining his relationship with his sons. So she emphasized to the boys that Einstein was “a strange man in many ways,” but he was still their father and wanted their love. He could be cold, she said, but also “good and kind.” According to an account provided by Hans Albert, “Mileva knew that for all his bluff, Albert could be hurt in personal matters—and hurt deeply.”
⁴²

By later that year, Einstein and his older son were again corresponding regularly about everything from politics to science. He also expressed his appreciation to Mari
, joking that she should be happier now that she did not have to put up with him. “I plan on coming to Zurich soon, and we should put all the bad things behind us. You should enjoy what life has given you—like the wonderful children, the house, and that you are not married to me anymore.”
⁴³

Hans Albert went on to enroll at his parents’ alma mater, the Zurich Polytechnic, and became an engineer. He took a job at a steel company and then as a research assistant at the Polytechnic, studying
hydraulics and rivers. Especially after he scored first in his exams, his father not only became reconciled, but proud. “My Albert has become a sound, strong chap,” Einstein wrote Besso in 1924. “He is a total picture of a man, a first-rate sailor, unpretentious and dependable.”

Einstein eventually said the same to Hans Albert, adding that he may have been right to become an engineer. “Science is a difficult profession,” he wrote.“Sometimes I am glad that you have chosen a practical field, where one does not have to look for a four-leaf clover.”
⁴⁴

One person who elicited strong and sustained personal emotions in Einstein was his mother. Dying from stomach cancer, she had moved in with him and Elsa at the end of 1919, and watching her suffer overwhelmed whatever human detachment he usually felt or feigned. When she died in February 1920, Einstein was exhausted by the emotions. “One feels right into one’s bones what ties of blood mean,” he wrote Zangger. Käthe Freundlich had heard him boast to her husband, the astronomer, that no death would affect him, and she was relieved that his mother’s death proved that untrue. “Einstein wept like other men,” she said, “and I knew that he could really care for someone.”
⁴⁵