WIFE TO GENIUS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 2, 4 January 1937, Page 15

WIFE TO GENIUS

TWIXT HUSBAND AND WORLD

Like many people who are doing Important work in the world, the wife oi the greatest physicist and mathematical genius of our time, Mrs. Elsa Einstein, whose death was reported by a cable message on Wednesday, hated publicity, and was the first person to dispute the contention that her life- | work could be of interest to anybody outside her family circle (states the "Queen"). There is a story that some years ago, when an American interviewer asked her for "copy," she replied, "I have nothing to tell—l am only Einstein's wife," but a little skilful questioning brought out some delightful sidelights on the great man's character and showed incidentally that to the role of wife and mother, Elsa Einstein has to add yet a third—protector of her husband. "Like all great-minded men. he is as simple as a child," says a friend of his, "and in a commercial age there are unfortunately so many hangers-on who would batten on him, exploiting his world-wide fame for their own purposes; but his-wife stands between him and the world, protecting him from the inroads .on his privacy which would otherwise be his fate." Reading between the lines of the various interviews and commentaries on Einstein which have appeared in the world's press during the last fifteen years, one can detect very frequently an almost plaintive note, the plea of the man whose theory of time-space and its implications will not perhaps be fully understood for two hundred years— "Leave me alone!—all I want is quiet to work." PRIVACY AND DOMESTIC PEACE. In outward circumstances his life has .not been peaceful, especially during the last four or five years, and the world owes more than it will ever probably realise to his wife, who did her utmost to ensure to her genius-hus-t ..nd the maximum amount of privacy and domestic peace. She was helped in her task by a life-long knowledge of him. For she was his cousin, and as children they were attached to each other, playing together in his parents' home in Munich. He was not a brilliant boy, and it was not until 1905, at the age of twenty-six, that he startled the world with his first papers on Relativity, It is an interesting speculation as to how far his development was helped by his first marriage to a Serbian, fellow-student Mileva "Marie. The marriage was dissolved not long before the war, and it was some time before Albert Einstein married again the woman who' bore the same surname. She had the happy experience of linking her life with his when he was at the height of his creative energy, when she herself was a mature woman who could appreciate the high dignity of his work. That she had fine executive ability was shown when in 1928 he was presented with the site of a house at Caputh, near Potsdam. In planning her new home, Frau Einstein—as she then was (it was before the tragic events which caused him to renounce his nationality and become a naturalised American) — showed herself an expert, the house being planned to give the greatest possible amount of comfort combined with beauty. "What must it be like to be married to a genius?" many women may won? der, knowing the disharmony which so-called "temperament" can produce in home life, and imagining that a genius must perforce be endowed with more of this particular form of egoism than the average human being. Beyond the fact that he is perhaps a little more absent-minded than the ordinary man—a trait which causes such harmless peccadilloes as constantly forgetting to lock the bathroom door when he is in his bath—Einstein would appear to be a very gentle, tractable human in his home. No doubt his poise has been developed by his wisdom in cultivating music as a hobby. It is more than that; after his scientific work, it is one of his deepest interests. His wife and he shared their fi.jt artistic experiences at Munich at the opera, and the violin, of which he is an expert performer—and more than that, a player of feeling and soul—was a constant joy to them both. Their home was a centre of quiet good fellowship, nor was it a narrow circle. Not only did outstanding and distinguished people gravitate to it for the intellectual stimulus and companionship they found in it, but all through their married life the Einsteins had been ready to help, in charming unobtrusive ways, people in distress. Their kindliness had plenty of scope, unhappily, during the last few years, and many a Jewish refugee from the Nazis testified to their generosity and sympathy. He is an ardent and courageous Pacifist and Zionist, and while he rightly refuses to sell his liberty and time for working to commercial interests —in 1931 he refused an offer of £40,000 from Hollywood for a five weeks' film contract- —he is always ready to help every recognised institution or society that is working for the betterment of the peopje of his own race. KEEPING CALLERS AT BAY. In all these activities he was helped by his wife, not least in that she acted as a buffer between him and people who would exploit his simple-hearted generosity. She always answered any telephone calls for him, and had to be entirely satisfied that callers of every kind had a genuine purpose in wishing to see him. .That this required not only great patience but also great physical courage on her part was shown as long ago as 1925, before the Nazi persecution, when one evening she kept at bay a half-mad Russian woman who tried to break into their house and murder Einstein. One look at her portrait convinces one that Elsa Einstein had the strength and depth of character to fulfil her destiny as the wife of this gentle genius' whose mind ranges infinity It it a strong face, with regular features, deep-set kindly eyes with a gleam of humour in them. It is shrewd, and one is not surprised to learn that where her husband's interest were concerned, she was a hard bargainer. There 'is a story of how a certain editor, commissioning Einstein to write an article for his paper, offered remuneration which Mrs. Einstein considered inadequate. She protested and tried to raise the price, but her husband, with a complete lack of business acumen, undermined her business deal with: "But. my dear, I like Mr. 's paper!"

Einstein, when asked once how one could obtain success in life, replied humorously: "If A is success in life, then the formula is A-X plus Y plus Z: X being work, Y play, and Z— keeping your mouth shut!" One imagines (hat Elsa Einstein added another element—the capacity of the ordinary person to realise that even a genius must live, and that, far more than ordinary people, does he require peace and quietude. For 'she was at one with her famous husband in her realisation that not only docs great creative effort offer life's richest rewards to the individual, but she stared his creed: "I must exej-t myself to give the same measure of creative energy to the world, as I have received and am receiving—my great fear is that I should take more than .t can give."