prisons and other places. Elsa went with Einstein to some of the Monday evening meetings until the group was banned in early 1916.48
One of the most prominent pacifists during the war was the French writer Romain Rolland, who had tried to promote friendship between his country and Germany. Einstein visited him in September 1915 near Lake Geneva. Rolland noted in his diary that Einstein, speaking French laboriously, gave “an amusing twist to the most serious of subjects.”
As they sat on a hotel terrace amid swarms of bees plundering the flowering vines, Einstein joked about the faculty meetings in Berlin where each of the professors would anguish over the topic “why are we Germans hated in the world” and then would “carefully steer clear of the truth.” Daringly, maybe even recklessly, Einstein openly said that he thought Germany could not be reformed and therefore hoped the allies would win, “which would smash the power of Prussia and the dynasty.”49
The following month, Einstein got into a bitter exchange with Paul Hertz, a noted mathematician in Gottingen who was, or had been, a friend. Hertz was an associate member of the New Fatherland League with Einstein, but he had shied away from becoming a full member when it became controversial. “This type of cautiousness, not standing up for one’s rights, is the cause of the entire wretched political situation,” Einstein berated. “You have that type of valiant mentality the ruling powers love so much in Germans.”
“Had you devoted as much care to understanding people as to understanding science, you would not have written me an insulting letter,” Hertz replied. It was a telling point, and true. Einstein was better at fathoming physical equations than personal ones, as his family knew, and he admitted so in his apology. “You
In November, Einstein published a three-page essay titled “My Opinion of the War” that skirted the border of what was permissible, even for a great scientist, to say in Germany. He speculated that there existed “a biologically determined feature of the male character” that was one of the causes of wars. When the article was published by the Goethe League that month, a few passages were deleted for safety’s sake, including an attack on patriotism as potentially containing “the moral requisites of bestial hatred and mass murder.”51
The idea that war had a biological basis in male aggression was a topic Einstein also explored in a letter to his friend in Zurich, Heinrich Zangger. “What drives people to kill and maim each other so savagely?” Einstein asked. “I think it is the sexual character of the male that leads to such wild explosions.”
The only method of containing such aggression, he argued, was a world organization that had the power to police member nations.52 It was a theme he would pick up again eighteen years later, in the final throes of his pure pacifism, when he engaged in a public exchange of letters with Sigmund Freud on both male psychology and the need for world government.
The early months of the war in 1915 made Einstein’s separation from Hans Albert and Eduard more difficult, both emotionally and logistically. They wanted him to come visit them in Zurich for Easter that year, and Hans Albert, who was just turning 11, wrote him two letters designed to pull at his heart: “I just think: At Easter you’re going to be here and we’ll have a Papa again.”
In his next postcard, he said that his younger brother told him about having a dream “that Papa was here.” He also described how well he was doing in math. “Mama assigns me problems; we have a little booklet; I could do the same with you as well.”53
The war made it impossible for him to come at Easter, but he responded to the postcards by promising Hans Albert that he would come in July for a hiking vacation in the Swiss Alps. “In the summer I will take a trip with just you alone for a fortnight or three weeks,” he wrote. “This will happen every year, and Tete [Eduard] may also come along when he is old enough for it.”
Einstein also expressed his delight that his son had taken a liking to geometry. It had been his “favorite pastime” when he was about the same age, he said, “but I had no one to demonstrate anything to me, so I had to learn it from books.” He wanted to be with his son to help teach him math and “tell you many fine and interesting things about science and much else.” But that would not always be possible. Perhaps they could do it by mail? “If you write me each time what you already know, I’ll give you a nice little problem to solve.” He sent along a toy for each of his sons, along with an admonition to brush their teeth well. “I do the same and am very happy now to have kept enough healthy teeth.”54
But the tension in the family worsened. Einstein and Mari exchanged letters arguing about both money and vacation timing, and at the end of June a curt postcard came from Hans Albert. “If you’re so unfriendly to her,” he said of his mother, “I don’t want to go with you.” So Einstein canceled his planned trip to Zurich and instead went with Elsa and her two daughters to the Baltic sea resort of Sellin.
Einstein was convinced that Mari was turning the children against him. He suspected, probably correctly, that her hand was behind the postcards Hans Albert was sending, both the plaintive ones making him feel guilty for not being in Zurich and the sharper ones rejecting vacation hikes. “My fine boy had been alienated from me for a few years already by my wife, who has a vengeful disposition,” he complained to Zangger. “The postcard I received from little Albert had been inspired, if not downright dictated, by her.”
He asked Zangger, who was a professor of medicine, to check on young Eduard, who had been suffering ear infections and other ailments. “Please write me what is wrong with my little boy,” he pleaded. “I’m particularly fondly attached to him; he was still so sweet to me and innocent.”55
It was not until the beginning of September that he finally made it to Switzerland. Mari felt it would be proper for him to stay with her and the boys, despite the strain. They were, after all, still married. She had hopes of reconciling. But Einstein showed no interest in being with her. Instead, he stayed in a hotel and spent a lot of time with his friends Michele Besso and Heinrich Zangger.
As it turned out, he got a chance to see his sons only twice during the entire three weeks he was in Switzerland. In a letter to Elsa, he blamed his estranged wife: “The cause was mother’s fear of the little ones becoming too dependent on me.” Hans Albert let his father know that the whole visit made him feel uncomfortable.56
After Einstein returned to Berlin, Hans Albert paid a call on Zangger. The kindly medical professor, friends of all sides in the dispute, tried to work out an accord so that Einstein could visit his sons. Besso also played intermediary. Einstein could see his sons, Besso advised in a formal letter he wrote after consulting with Mari, but not in Berlin nor in the presence of Elsa’s family. It would be best to do it at “a good Swiss inn,” initially just with Hans Albert, where they could spend some time on their own free of all distractions. Over Christmas, Hans Albert was planning to visit Besso’s family, and he suggested that perhaps Einstein could come then.57
