Letter reveals Einstein’s failed marriage shame
BRITAIN: He may have come close to cracking the codes of the universe, but as he neared death Albert Einstein was bemoaning his failure to figure out the secrets of a successful relationship.
A letter has come to light recording how the scientist, in his last days, felt shamed by his tangled love life and the end of his two marriages.
As he contemplated the death of Michele Besso, his closest friend, Einstein described how he had most admired his ability to find ‘‘lasting consonance with a wife’’. He added that in contrast, this was ‘‘an undertaking at which I twice rather shamefully failed’’.
The letter, written by Einstein in 1955 to Besso’s family shortly after his death, is part of a tranche of more than 50 recording the pair’s 50-year friendship. They are being sold by Christie’s in London next month.
After meeting as students in Zurich in the late 1890s, the pair worked together in the patent office in Bern, where Einstein formulated the theories that would change mankind’s understanding of physics forever.
Besso, an engineer who was Einstein’s only acknowledged collaborator, later became a trusted intermediary between the scientist and his first wife, Mileva, as their marriage broke down amid her suspicion that he was having affairs. He was, including with his maternal first cousin, Elsa, who later became his second wife.
The full details of Einstein’s tangled love life have yet to appear, with troves of his letters held in various archives around the world. A project to digitise his written legacy has yet to complete the last three decades of his life. What has emerged is a clear picture of an unhappy first marriage.
The correspondence between Einstein and Besso also sheds light on the subsequent estrangement from his children, and on his second marriage.
Thomas Venning, head of books and manuscripts at Christie’s, said one letter showed how Einstein was seeking refuge in his work.
‘‘His second wife was mortally ill, and it is pretty clear that the reason he was so preoccupied [with work] is that when he was not sitting in his study, he was walking around the house completely lost and crying.
‘‘He was not a good husband, but he was devoted to her. Mathematics was a refuge from the difficulties and concerns.’’
Another relationship that has come to light is with a suspected Soviet spy, Margarita Konenkova, who is thought to have been tasked with finding out about America’s atomic bomb project. It is now known if it began before or after the death of Elsa in 1936.
Venning said that as he read the final letter, written in 1955, just days after Besso’s death and a month before the 76-year-old Einstein’s, he burst into tears.
It begins with Einstein thanking Besso’s sister and son for the detailed account of his friend’s death, before he writes: ‘‘What I most admired in him as a man was the circumstance that he managed to live for many years not only in peace but in lasting consonance with a wife - an undertaking at which I twice rather shamefully failed.’’
It ends with Einstein writing that the fact Besso had ‘‘preceded me a little in parting from this strange world’’ had no importance, because in physics ‘‘the separation between past, present and future has only the importance of an admittedly tenacious illusion’’.
– The Times