Obscure Einstein lover emerges as Hebrew U. unseals correspondence
By The Associated Press
An obscure lover of Albert Einstein's has emerged in letters unsealed by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Monday, shedding new light on the personal life of the 20th century's greatest intellect.
Ethel Michanowski, a Berlin socialite, was involved with Einstein in the late 1920s and early 30s - going so far as to chase him to England, said Barbara Wolff, an archivist at the university's Einstein Archives. She was a friend of
Einstein's stepdaughters, and was about 30 - 15 years younger than Einstein - at the time of their affair, Wolff said.
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The more than 3,500 pages of correspondence were written between 1912 and 1955, the year Einstein died. Among the revelations: Einstein lost much of his Nobel Prize money in the Great Depression, was a more devoted father than previously thought and made no bones about discussing his romantic liaisons with his second wife.
Einstein is known to have had 10 lovers, in addition to the two women he married after affairs with them, Wolff said. Michanowski and the others - including a Margarete, an Estella, two Tonis and a Betty - sailed, read books, attended concerts and more with him, archivists told a news conference.
Most striking about the more than 1,300 letters released on Monday was the way Einstein openly discussed his extramarital affairs with his second wife and cousin, Elsa, and his stepdaughter and confidante, Margot, they said.
Michanowski is mentioned in three of the newly unsealed letters.
One letter to Margot in 1931 complained that "Mrs. M." - Michanowski - "followed me [to England], and her chasing me is getting out of control."
Einstein was one of the founders of the Hebrew University and he bequeathed it his literary estate and personal papers. The university also has licensing rights to the scientist's image, voice and quotes. Professor Hanoch Gutfreund, a former Hebrew University president and physicist, said those rights have been worth an estimated $1 million a year to the school over the past 15 years.
The letters - most of them to Elsa, and from his first wife and their two sons - have been in the Einstein Archives for years. But under the terms of Margot Einstein's will, they could not be made public until 20 years after her death, on July 8, 1986, the university said.
This apparently will be the last time the public will receive such a big body of work on Einstein, Gutfreund said.
The material released Monday shed no light on Einstein's science or how he reached his tremendous achievements, Gutfreund said. But it illuminated a private side of Einstein the public hadn't known about until now, he said.
Einstein's dalliances and abrupt, even cruel treatment of his first wife, Mileva, have been well documented in biographies. He has also been portrayed as an indifferent father unwilling to take on the obligations of parenthood.
Gutfreund said the latest collection show Einstein to have been more involved and warmer to his first family than previously thought. Letter from the boys showed "they understood he loved them," he said.
By filling in some previous gaps in correspondence, the documents presented a more comprehensive picture of the man, Wolff said. "It added colors to the image we had of Einstein before," she said. "Now we have a high-resolution picture."
The letters also provide the full story of Einstein's prize money for the 1921 Nobel prize in physics. Under the terms of his divorce from Mileva, the entire sum was have been deposited in a Swiss bank account, and Mileva was to draw on the interest for her and the couple's two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard.
It's been known for some time that there was a problem with Einstein's discharge of the agreement, but the details weren't clear. The new correspondence shows he invested most of it in the U.S., where much of it was lost in the Great Depression. This caused great friction with Mileva, who felt betrayed because he didn't deposit the entire sum as agreed, and repeatedly had to ask him for money, Wolff said.
Ultimately, however, he paid her more money than he received with the prize, she added.
The man who became best known for his E=mc2 equation apparently did not want to be bound up with it eternally. In a 1921 letter to Elsa, Einstein confided, "Soon I'll be fed up with the relativity. Even such a thing fades away when one is too involved with it."
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