was unclear, perhaps even in his own mind, whether he saw this as a liberation or a lament. But now he found himself comfortable in Princeton, with no desire to take wing again.
“Why should an old fellow like me not enjoy peace and quiet for once?” he asked his friend Max Born. So he told Schrodinger to pass along his sincere regrets. “I am sorry to say that he asked me to write you a definite no,” Schrodinger informed Lindemann. “The reason for his decision is really that he is frightened of all the ado and the fuss that would be laid upon him if he came to Europe.” Einstein also worried that he would be expected to go to Paris and Madrid if he went to Oxford, “and I lack the courage to undertake all this.”22
The stars had aligned to create for Einstein a sense of inertia, or at least a weariness of further wandering. In addition, Princeton, which he called a “pipe as yet unsmoked” on his first visit in 1921, captured him with its leafy charm and its neo-Gothic echoes of a European university town. “A quaint and ceremonious village of puny demigods strutting on stiff legs,” he called it in a letter to Elisabeth, the queen mother of Belgium since the death of the king.“By ignoring certain social conventions, I have been able to create for myself an atmosphere conducive to study and free from distraction.”23
Einstein particularly liked the fact that America, despite its inequalities of wealth and racial injustices, was more of a meritocracy than Europe. “What makes the new arrival devoted to this country is the democratic trait among the people,” he marveled.“No one humbles himself before another person or class.”24
This was a function of the right of individuals to say and think what they pleased, a trait that had always been important to Einstein. In addition, the lack of stifling traditions encouraged more creativity of the sort he had relished as a student. “American youth has the good fortune not to have its outlook troubled by outworn traditions,” he noted.25
Elsa likewise loved Princeton, which was important to Einstein. She had taken such good care of him for so long that he had become more solicitous of her desires, particularly her nesting instinct. “The whole of Princeton is one great park with wonderful trees,” she wrote a friend. “We might almost believe that we are in Oxford.”The architecture and countryside reminded her of England, and she felt somewhat guilty that she was so comfortable while others back in Europe were suffering. “We are very happy here, perhaps too happy. Sometimes one has a bad conscience.”26
So in April 1934, just six months after his arrival, Einstein announced that he was staying in Princeton indefinitely and assuming full-time status at the Institute. As it turned out, he would never live anywhere else for the remaining twenty-one years of his life. Nevertheless, he made appearances at the “farewell” parties that had been scheduled that month as fund-raisers for various of his favorite charities. These causes had become almost as important to him as his science. As he declared at one of the events, “Striving for social justice is the most valuable thing to do in life.”27
Sadly, just when they had decided to settle in, Elsa had to travel back to Europe to care for her spirited and adventurous elder daughter, Ilse, who had dallied with the romantic radical Georg Nicolai and married the literary journalist Rudolf Kayser. Ilse was afflicted with what they thought was tuberculosis but what turned out to be leukemia, and her condition had taken a turn for the worse. Now she had gone to Paris to be nursed by her sister, Margot.
Insisting that her problems were mainly psychosomatic, Ilse resisted medications and turned instead to prolonged psychotherapy. Early during her illness, Einstein had tried to persuade her to go to a regular doctor, but she had refused. Now there was little that could be done as the whole family, absent Einstein himself, gathered by her bed in Margot’s Paris apartment.
Ilse’s death devastated Elsa. She “changed and aged,” Margot’s husband recalled, “almost beyond recognition.” Instead of having Ilse’s ashes deposited in a crypt, Elsa had them put in a sealed bag for her. “I cannot be separated,” she said. “I have to have them.” She then sewed the bag inside a pillow so that she could have them close to her on the trip home to America.28
Elsa also carried back cases of her husband’s papers, which Margot had earlier smuggled from Berlin to Paris using French diplomatic channels and the anti-Nazi underground. To help get them into America, Elsa enlisted the help of a kindly neighbor from Princeton, Caroline Blackwood, who was on the same ship home.
Elsa had met the Blackwoods a few months earlier in Princeton, and they mentioned that they were going to Palestine and Europe and wished to meet some Zionist leaders.
“I didn’t know you were Jews,” Elsa said.
Mrs. Blackwood said that they actually were Presbyterian, but there was a deep connection between the Jewish heritage and the Christian, “and besides, Jesus was a Jew.”
Elsa hugged her. “No Christian has ever said that to me in my life.” She also asked for help in getting a German-language Bible, as they had lost theirs in the move from Berlin. Mrs. Blackwood found her a copy of Martin Luther’s translation, which Elsa clasped to her heart. “I wish I had more faith,” she told Mrs. Blackwood.
Elsa had taken note of what liner the Blackwoods were traveling on, and she purposely booked passage on it when she returned to America. One morning she brought Mrs. Blackwood into the ship’s deserted lounge to ask a favor. Because she was not a citizen, she was afraid that her husband’s papers might be held at the border. Would the Blackwoods bring them in?
They agreed, although Mr. Blackwood was careful not to lie on his customs declaration. “Material acquired in Europe for scholarly purposes,” he wrote. Later, Einstein came over in the rain to the Black-woods’ shed to collect his papers. “Did I write this drivel?” he joked as he looked at one journal. But the Blackwoods’ son, who was there, recalled that Einstein “was obviously deeply moved to have his books and papers in his hands.”29
Ilse’s death, accompanied in the summer of 1934 by Hitler’s consolidation of power during the “Night of the Long Knives,” severed the Einsteins’ remaining bonds with Europe. Margot immigrated that year to Princeton, after she and her odd Russian husband separated. Hans Albert soon followed. She was “not longing for Europe at all,” Elsa wrote Caroline Blackwood soon after returning. “I feel such a homelike feeling for this country.”30
When Elsa returned from Europe, she joined Einstein at a summer cottage he had rented in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, a quiet enclave on a peninsula near where Long Island Sound meets the Atlantic. It was perfect for sailing, which is why Einstein, at Elsa’s urging, decided to summer there with his friend Gustav Bucky and his family.
Bucky was a physician, engineer, inventor, and pioneer of X-ray technology. A German who had gained American citizenship during the 1920s, he had met the Einsteins in Berlin. When Einstein came to America, his friendship with Bucky deepened; they even took out a joint patent on a device they came up with to control a photographic diaphragm, and Einstein testified as an expert witness for Bucky in a dispute over another invention.31
