Albert stood near us as the train prepared to admit passengers. After hugging Tete, he tried to embrace Hans Albert several times, but my eldest son wriggled free from his grasp. Hans Albert was not nearly as unaware—or as forgiving—as his brother.
The train doors opened, and both boys clasped onto my hands. Albert kneeled down to say one last good-bye to them, and tears glinted in the corners of his eyes. It was the first sign of remorse or sadness I’d seen since we arrived in Berlin.
“Why so sad, Papa?” Tete asked, leaning forward to touch Albert’s eyes with his free hand.
The gentle caress unleashed something dammed up in Albert. He sobbed to the boys, “I will miss you both.”
I had only seen Albert cry once before, on the death of his father.
Was Albert finally regretting his actions? Perhaps time apart would make him appreciate us, although I doubted Albert was truly capable of change. Stop, I told myself. I couldn’t afford to think this way; it opened the door to weakness. And I could no longer accept his tyranny. This was farewell to our marriage.
Tete released my hand and hugged his father. “Don’t worry, Papa. We will see you soon.”
Hans Albert was unmoved by Albert’s rare display of anguish. Instead, he tightened his grip on me. He made no move toward Albert.
“All aboard for Zürich!” The engineer called out from the train window.
“Come, Tete,” I said to him. “We must go.”
I took him by the hand and, without looking back at Albert, led both boys onto the train. We secured an empty car, and as I settled the boys into their seats with snacks to eat and books to read and the attendant loaded our luggage onto the racks, I saw Albert still standing on the platform. Tears were streaming down his face.
Where had those tears been all this time? I’d spent years without empathy or compassion for myself or the boys or Lieserl. Even in our separation these past weeks, I’d seen no evidence of melancholy over our failed marriage or his parting from his sons. Poor Fritz Haber, a chemistry professor acquaintance of ours, had been enlisted to memorialize the terms of separation we had painfully agreed upon. Custody with me. A yearly sum for the boys’ care. Vacations with Albert, but never in Elsa’s company. Household furnishing sent to me in Zürich. Proceeds of any future Nobel Prize to me, an honor that seemed likely, given that he’d been nominated four of the past five years. Negotiating this last term had given rise to the only real show of emotion in our separation, but it was anger, not sadness. Albert had initially resisted the notion of parting with the Nobel Prize monetary proceeds—which he expected from any one of our four 1905 papers—but I insisted. Since he’d unilaterally removed my name from those papers, thereby putting the actual award out of my reach, the least I deserved was the money.
No tears flowed down my cheeks. I was numb.
I smiled over at my anxious boys, trying to assuage their fears. The train car, although brimming with our belongings and ornately decorated in red velvet, felt strangely empty. Was something missing? Our trunks and luggage were stored safely in the racks over our heads, and our handbags and backpacks sat nearby on the benches. It couldn’t be the absence of Albert; the boys and I had grown accustomed to traveling without him, to living without him, really. What was the source of this sensation then? Could the missing something be Lieserl? No, she was here with me, the guiding shadow in my life, absent yet somehow always present. Perhaps the something unaccounted for was the old self I was leaving behind. For the first time in a very long time, I felt like Mitza again.
The train’s whistle blew, and I peered out the window. There Albert stood. Clacking and roaring, the train began to pick up speed as it exited the station. It sped away faster and faster, making Albert grow smaller and smaller. Like a quanta. Or an atom. Until he disappeared entirely into the ether.
Epilogue
August 4, 1948
62 Huttenstrasse
Zürich, Switzerland
Every body continues at rest or in motion in a straight line unless compelled to change by forces impressed upon it. I find this first law of motion, beautiful and profound, an elegant statement of one of God’s truths uncovered by man. In my youth, I perceived the tenet as applying solely to objects; only later did I realize that people operate according to this principle too. My childhood path—mathematician, scientist, loner—continued on a straight line until it was acted upon by a force. Albert was the force that impressed upon my straight path.
Albert’s force acted on me in accordance with the second law of motion. I became swept up in his direction and velocity, and his force became my own. As I took on the roles of his lover, the mother of his children, his wife, and his secret scientific partner, I allowed him to trim away all the parts that didn’t fit his mold. I expanded others to further his dreams for himself. I suffered silently when my desires did not match his. Like the sacrifice of my professional ambitions for his stellar rise. Like the surrender of my ability to keep Lieserl by my side.
Until I could stand Albert’s force no more. The third law of motion triggered, and I exerted a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction to his. I took back the space that belonged to me. I left him.
Since then, I have stayed still, defying all the laws of motion. I have watched war come to Europe once, then twice, and during those times, I have taken the helping hand of my dear, prescient Helene when I needed it. Even when I had the Nobel Prize money Albert had promised me in our divorce to assist in the raising of my beautiful sons—my brilliant Hans Albert, who went on to become an engineer, and my poor Tete, who succumbed to mental illness—I have reclaimed my intellect and my scientific passion by tutoring promising young female scientists. The sort of girls that Lieserl might have been had she lived. The sort of girl I once was. Perhaps these girls will find the rest of God’s patterns in science and, one day, tell my story.
I have witnessed the rise of Albert as a secular saint. But never once have I desired to return to the role of his wife. I have only ever wanted to return to the role of Lieserl’s mother.
Which acts should I change to undo the death of Lieserl? Do I begin by altering the path of the innocent young university student? Do I need only return to the days at the Spire with my infant Lieserl when Albert summoned me? To the station where I missed my train? How can I find my way back to her?
Finally, though it is dark, I see. I see the clock. The train. And I understand.
I need not change any act. For I am the train. I am traveling faster than the speed of light, and the hands of the clock are rolling backward. I see my Lieserl.
Mitza
Author’s Note
I confess to beginning this book with only the most commonplace understanding of Albert Einstein and hardly any knowledge of his first wife, Mileva Marić. In fact, I had never even heard of Mileva Marić until I helped my son Jack with a report on the wonderful Scholastic children’s book Who Was Albert Einstein? and it mentioned briefly that Albert Einstein’s first wife was also a physicist.
I became intrigued. Who was this unknown woman, a physicist at a time when very few women had university educations? And what role might she have played in the great scientist’s discoveries?
When I first began researching Mileva, I learned that rather than being unknown as I had thought, she was the focal point of much debate in the physics community. The part she might have played in the formation of Albert’s groundbreaking theories in 1905 was hotly contested, particularly once a cache of letters between the couple from the years 1897 to 1903—when Mileva and Albert were university students together and first married—was discovered in the 1980s. In those letters, Albert and Mileva discussed projects they undertook together, and the letters caused ripples throughout the physics world. Was Mileva simply a sounding board for his brainstorms, as some scientists insisted? Did she only assist him with the complicated mathematical calculations, as othe
rs claimed? Or did she play a much more critical role, as a few physicists believed?
As I dug into Mileva’s history, I discovered that she was fascinating in her own right, not just as a footnote in Albert Einstein’s story. Her rise from the relative backwater of misogynistic Serbia to the all-male university physics and mathematics classrooms of Switzerland was nothing short of meteoric. To my mind, the question of what role she truly played in Albert’s “miracle year” of 1905 became an examination of how Mileva—after pregnancy, exam failure, and marriage—was forced to subsume her academic ambitions and intellect to Albert’s ascent. Her story was, in many ways, the story of many intelligent, educated women whose own aspirations were marginalized in favor of their spouses. I believed it was time that stories such as these were told.
Given the fresh light this story sheds on the famous Albert, readers of The Other Einstein may be curious as to precisely how much of the book is truth and how much is speculation. Whenever possible, in the overarching arc of the story—the dates, the places, the people—I attempted to stay as close to the facts as possible, taking necessary liberties for fictional purposes. As one example of these liberties, Mileva did not begin her residential stint in Zürich at the Engelbrecht Pension but found her way there through her friendships after staying at another pension, and thus, the scene with Mileva and her father meeting the Engelbrechts is entirely fictional, as are many of the early scenes between Mileva and her pension friends, although they could have well happened a bit later in her life. And, of course, there are other instances in which I imagined the details of events about which I knew the barest of facts. In order to make their own assessment about the actual lives of the people depicted in The Other Einstein, I invite readers to peruse the collection of papers and letters by and about Albert Einstein and Mileva Marić that are posted online at the marvelous website http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu.
Certainly, speculation exists in The Other Einstein—the book is, first and foremost, fiction. For example, the exact fate of Lieserl is mysterious, although not for dint of effort; Michele Zackheim wrote a wonderful book called Einstein’s Daughter: The Search for Lieserl about her protracted hunt for Lieserl, one that yielded no solution. Was Lieserl given up for adoption? It seems to me quite probable that Lieserl died from the scarlet fever that prompted Mileva to race from Zürich to Serbia.
Similarly, the precise nature of Mileva’s contribution to the 1905 theories attributed to Albert is unknown, although no one disputes that, at a minimum, she played the significant part of emotional and intellectual supporter during this critical time. But given how Mileva saw the world and how desperately she must have loved her daughter, isn’t it possible that the loss of Lieserl could have inspired Mileva to create the theory of special relativity? Answering through fiction the seemingly unanswerable questions in Mileva’s life—exploring the “what ifs”—is what makes writing The Other Einstein so interesting to me.
Many books and articles—of the vast library of written material on Albert Einstein, including http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu—assisted me immensely in my research for this book. Of them, I found the following of particular help and inspiration: Albert Einstein/Mileva Marić: The Love Letters, edited by Jürgen Renn and Robert Schulmann; Einstein in Love: A Scientific Romance by Dennis Overbye; In Albert’s Shadow: The Life and Letters of Mileva Marić, Einstein’s First Wife by Milan Popovic; Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson; and Einstein’s Wife: Work and Marriage in the Lives of Five Great Twentieth-Century Women by Andrea Gabor. These are but a few.
The purpose of The Other Einstein is not to diminish Albert Einstein’s contribution to humanity and science but to share the humanity behind his scientific contributions. The Other Einstein aims to tell the story of a brilliant woman whose light has been lost in Albert’s enormous shadow—that of Mileva Marić.
Reading Group Guide
1. Discuss the various ways that gender affects the characters in this novel. Do you think gender would influence Mileva’s life in the same way if she lived today?
2. How do the characters in the book—Mileva, Albert, their friends, their parents—experience religion, and does that change over the course of the story? How do Mileva’s and Albert’s different understandings of religiosity impact their relationship to each other?
3. This novel can be seen as a quest for understanding, a search for the divine in the natural order of the world. How does the study of math and physics become this quest for Albert and Mileva? Are they, either separately or together, successful in their crusade? Does unpuzzling life’s mysteries have disparate meanings for them?
4. Betrayal is a recurrent motif in the book and an unfortunate reality in Mileva’s life. What forms of betrayal does she experience? How does her reaction to those betrayals propel the story forward, for better or worse? Has Mileva engaged in betrayal herself?
5. Discuss the setting of the book, a world on the brink of astounding scientific discoveries, political upheaval, and ultimately horrible World War I atrocities. Does this historical setting affect the characters? What role, if any, does it play in shaping their lives?
6. Over the course of the novel, we learn a great deal about Mileva’s childhood and early adult years. What life events led her to math and science? What hurdles did she have to surmount to even get her footing on that path?
7. From a very young age, Mileva assumes that she will never marry due to her physical disability. How is this disability both a blessing and a curse? How does her limp impact her differently at different life stages?
8. Mileva and Albert are drawn to each other from the beginning of their years together at the Polytechnic. What qualities compel them toward one another? Is their relationship “inevitable,” as Mileva believes?
9. Mileva and Albert share the language of science, and it knits them together. Are they equal scientific partners from the start of their relationship? Do they become the “bohemians” they so frequently discuss?
10. Leaving Lieserl behind with her mother while she awaits Albert in Zürich and Bern is a huge, pivotal moment for Mileva. Do you think she made the right choice? Should she have stayed with Lieserl and disobeyed Albert’s request?
11. The loss of Lieserl impacts Mileva tremendously, yet she doesn’t fully share her feelings with Albert. Why does she keep her devastation from him? Do you think she should have been more open with him?
12. On several occasions throughout the novel, the characters undergo metamorphoses. What are Mileva’s changes, and what instigates them? Do some of them frustrate you or take too long? Does Albert change during the course of the novel? If so, how would you describe his evolution?
13. While Mileva does not form friendships until rather late in her life, the ties she forms are deep. How do her friendships and her acquaintances with other women factor in her ultimate life choices?
14. Albert Einstein is arguably one of the most famous figures of the twentieth century, but The Other Einstein shares a story about him that you might not have otherwise heard. Did this novel change your perception of him? About the stories we are told regarding other women in history?
A Conversation with the Author
Albert Einstein is such a well-known historical figure. Were you intimidated or afraid to humanize him? What struggles did you have turning him into a round character, not just an “idea” of a person most people have?
I almost didn’t write The Other Einstein because I found the notion of fictionalizing the iconic Albert Einstein incredibly daunting! Because Albert factors so prominently in Mileva’s life, I had to muster my courage to share a side of Albert’s personality that wasn’t always flattering and that very likely contradicted the more widely held understanding of him, even though my depiction is fictional. Still, I had to remind myself periodically that I was telling an important story about Mileva’s life, not Albert’s, to reaffirm my comm
itment to the task.
The Other Einstein relies on a great deal of research. What was that process like?
Researching The Other Einstein was both exhilarating and frustrating, especially since I’m an exhaustive researcher who prefers to use original source material. Of course, there is a vast amount of information—both original and secondary—about Albert Einstein, but the research material available about Mileva is more scant, making the process a bit more challenging. I was fortunate, however, that some letters between Albert and Mileva still exist, as well as some letters between Mileva and Helene. They were invaluable in conjuring up Mileva’s voice.
Mitza is a young woman in a man’s world, both confident and uncomfortable at the same time. Did you draw on any personal experiences to write those scenes?
I definitely channeled my early years as a very young lawyer at an enormous law firm in New York City when I wrote about Mitza’s time at the Polytechnic. When I first started practicing as a commercial litigator in the 1990s, women lawyers were not as prevalent as they are today, and very often, I found myself as the only woman—and the youngest person—in a conference room or courtroom full of men. I remember well summoning my courage to speak or present in those situations, even when I knew that I was the only one with the correct answer. I drew upon those memories and experiences when I wrote about Mitza’s own struggles to share her knowledge and insights in similar contexts.
What drew you to the character of Mitza? Why not write the book from Albert’s point of view?
I have always been fascinated by the untold tales of history, and Mileva’s story had long been hidden from view. Initially, I was drawn to her story because I was interested in viewing this critical period of Albert’s life—when most of his revolutionary theories were formed—from a different perspective, one never before explored. But once I learned about Mileva’s astounding rise from the relative hinterland of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the forward-thinking physics classrooms of fin de siècle Switzerland, I felt honor-bound to write about her own compelling life. As for point of view, the idea of drafting the story from Albert’s perspective never really occurred to me; my interest is in unearthing the unknown, and Albert’s past has been examined exhaustively. I felt like it was time for a new voice.
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