1. December 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

In keeping with my resolve not to change the historical record where it exists, I still wrestle with how to handle the gaps.   The writing of fictional biography gives me some license, of course, but I mostly interpret that to mean that I am imagining the scenes that are suggested by the historical record and making up the dialogue.  I’m also inventing characteristics and histories for minor characters who are documented in the record, but about whom little is written.  Mrs. Grut is an example, in my Darwin book.  She was the children’s  governess at a critical time in the Darwin household and appears in the Darwin letters but in no other place.  I knew she tried to make a proper Victorian household out of Emma Darwin’s fun house full of children–to the chagrin and detriment of all.  I had to create a character who was motivated to put things in order and provoke consternation.  Okay.  I’m fine with that.

What I find more troubling  is a matter like Mileva Maric’s sister Zorka, who was known to have developed something like schizophrenia.  What I don’t know is when it developed.  I can read statistics on when young women typically develop symptoms and I can read letters, but it seems that as soon as I write her into a scene with symptoms at an age of onset consistent with statistics, I read that Milos Maric (Mileva’s father) sent all his children abroad to school.  Now, how likely is it that an 18-year-old would thrive abroad at school with symptoms of schizophrenia?  I’m certain that Zorka was suffering symptoms by age 24, but then, after that, she went to help Mileva with the children during periods of Mileva’s debilitation after Einstein left the family. It doesn’t make sense to me that someone with unmedicated schizophrenia would be able to run a household with young children.

Perhaps the diagnosis is wrong.  Zorka was in Serbia and would have been hidden in the attic like Mrs. Rochester in Jane Eyre to avoid sending her to some brutal asylum where, at that time, she would have been chained to a wall or confined in some torture device and possibly put on public display like at Bedlam Hospital in England.  Zorka would not have been seen by a professional until later, when she went to Zurich and was treated at the Burgholzli Psychiatric Hospital, where the Einstein’s son Eduard, also schizophrenic, was interred at times.   So, there was a serious dysfunction of a psychological nature, which eventually Zorka self-medicated with alcohol, but it seemed to relapse at times.  One relative/neighbor interviewed by Michele Zackheim for her book Einstein’s Daughter said that before Mileva came home to visit her in later life, Zorka stopped drinking and put the house in order.   There’s volition, devotion, and shame in that behavior.  She knew she didn’t want Mileva to see how she was living.  Is that kind of self-awareness typical of schizophrenia?

There are two other bits of data that make me put age of onset sooner rather than later.  One is that when Mileva, already pregnant with Lieserl and still unmarried, traveled from Serbia to Switzerland to visit Albert in secret, he sent her a book on hypnotism by Auguste Forel who was then the director of the Burgholzli.  Why that book?  While it is true that Mileva took a psychology course at some point in her education, they were not known to have read and discussed anything but physics together, so it seems out of context unless Mileva had requested he send her anything he could find to help her help Zorka.  He was in Schaffhausen, tutoring a young Englishman, and living in a household with a family.  Perhaps it was the only remotely relevant book he could find in a Schaffhausen library.

Conjecture.

The other data bit that makes me wonder about early onset for Zorka is that after Mileva’s baby was born, Albert and Mileva considered putting her up for adoption.  Why would they not have asked the Maric family to keep the baby?  She had already caused them shame by the fact of her unwed pregnancy.  They were wealthy and had servants, though Marija Maric (Mileva’s mother) continued to help with all house and farm work.  That means she was healthy.  The little girl lived there for 18 months, which seems a long time if she was going to be given up.  Perhaps Mileva’s parents couldn’t handle another dependent in addition to Zorka?

It’s all puzzling.  Then there is the fate of Lieserl–another unknown–except that Mileva clearly knows what happened to her and she’s a point-of-view character, so how do I get around that one?  I’m leaning heavily on Michele Zackheim’s interviews with family members and friends in Einstein’s Daughter, though I’m not certain how to explain a few things there, either.  For example, if Lieserl was born with Downs Syndrome–as Albert seems to have reported to a colleague later in his life–why would Albert have at the time written “I’m very sorry about what has befallen Lieserl.  It’s so easy to suffer lasting effects from scarlet fever.”  To me, this sounds as though scarlet fever caused a disability she didn’t have before.  If Lieserl had died of the scarlet fever (lasting effect, indeed!), he would not have written the sentences that follow:  “As what is the child registered?  We must take precautions that problems don’t arise for her later.”

What is the likelihood that Lieserl was a Downs baby?  95% of Downs children are born to older mothers with no hereditary component.  Mileva was 25 at the time of conception.  The percentage of Downs children born due to other factors is 2-3% and then, only 1 in 3 due to a hereditary defect in one parent.  The fact that their third child was schizophrenic then, hardly seems to be related.

And, if Lieserl had been born a Downs baby, would Albert have been pleased when Mileva got pregnant a second time, after they were married? Even without a hereditary factor–likely not known at that time–wouldn’t the feelings be more complex at the thought of a second go-round?  But that same letter begins “I’m not the least bit angry that poor Dollie [his nickname for Mileva] is hatching a new chick.  In fact, I’m happy about it and had already given some thought to whether I shouldn’t see to it that you get a new Lieserl. . . .  Brood on it very carefully so that something good will come of it.”

So what can I conclude that will satisfy the parameters in this letter?  This is the primary source.

Posted in Michele Zackheim, Eduard Einstein, Zurich, Einstein's Daughter, Marija Maric, schizophrenia, Bulgholzli Psychiatric Hospital, Zorka Maric, Milos Maric, Auguste Forel, Serbia, reading, Mileva Maric, Fictional biography, historical fiction, Generating Fiction from History and/or Fact, point of view, writing | 2 Comments »

26. September 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

Bern is a medieval city that has changed little structurally since 1410 when a law was passed, after a fire that burned all the wooden buildings, that decreed all buildings be made of stone.   Of course the old city now has contemporary shops and is connected by buses and trams to the new city, yet still, it retains its original character.  The four main thoroughfares of the old city are covered in cobblestones and because the available stone, limestone, is porous, the eaves extend out farther than usual.  Awnings that originally covered the carts of vendors have been assimilated into the architecture so that the walkways are now covered, forming arcades on either side of the streets.

As you can see, the city remains much as it was, including a series of eleven fountains, each centered around a painted statue, where women in 1901 without running water assembled to do washing.

Bern is where Albert wrote the five papers that established his reputation in the year 1905, his anus mirabilus, while he was working full-time at the Bern Patent Office, newly married (1903) to Mileva, and soon-to-be the father of Hans Albert.  In his memoir, he records that these were the happy years.  (Interesting that happiness is reported BEFORE the success for which he is famous.  Hemingway also claimed the years before his acknowledgment, when married to Hadley Richardson, were his happiest.)

The apartment where Albert and Mileva lived when they were first married has been preserved as a tiny museum in two floors, those being what we would call the second and third floors.

You first enter two rooms of their apartment, one with a tiny fireplace and Albert’s desk from the Patent Office added, the other with table, chairs, grandfather clock, and photographs.  All are wood and quite beautiful.  The desk is the kind with cubbies, each filled with Albert’s belongings.

Between the two rooms in a little foyer is a closet with what appears to be Mileva’s wedding clothes and Hans Albert’s bassinet.  While it might be possible to look at period furniture dispassionately, the fabric of the clothing and the bassinet connected me to the real family.

Up the original staircase is a room full of information about Einstein, all of which was familiar to me from reading biographies.  It was my husband’s first initiation into the various particulars, so worthwhile for his participation and interest.  (No, I don’t discuss my day’s work with him beyond whether it went well or haltingly.  Though peculiarities in the research might come out, he doesn’t get the full gestalt until a trip such as this one or when reading the published book.)

The real treasure trove of content is in the Historical Museum here in Bern, housed in a castle and devoting an entire floor to Einstein.  With video demonstrations, newsreel, photographs and artifacts, the museum recreates the context of his work, his life, his legacy.

The Theory of Special Relativity is explained in animations, step-by-step, on four screens, the viewer able to rewatch each one as many times as necessary to understand the concepts.  This is the theory that presents the speed of light as the constant, and not space or time, as was previously thought.  As a writer, I’m struck with how much of grasping the concept is the same as understanding point of view.

The artifacts that were of greatest interest to me were those that demonstrated the particulars of daily life.  Seeing the heavy iron Mileva would have used, the telephone on which Albert might have called his mother, the stove that heated the rooms and old films of the trolley cars made the reality of their lives more palpable.

There were several rooms set up–a bedroom like where each lived in Zurich while in school, a store where Mileva might have shopped in Bern.  Such exhibits prevent me from imagining/writing their lives in a 21st century, revisionist way.

Three facts I didn’t know emerged:  Einstein’s father’s company was commissioned to light Oktoberfest with electricity–suggesting that Albert might have attended, especially the year it was first completed.  I can imagine the  moment of flipping that switch and seeing the grounds lit for the first time would be quite a sight.

I also learned that despite being aware that he was not a good marriage partner, Albert fell in love again in old age, after Elsa’s death, after his platonic relationship with his secretary Helen Dukas.  His inamorata was a Princeton librarian, Johanna Fantova, aka Hannie, also a European refugee.  He wrote her love poems like those he wrote to Mileva and liked to take her sailing–a lifelong passion akin to playing his violin.  Fortunately for Hannie, they didn’t marry.  He bemoaned in his memoir that he failed miserably at marriage.  Twice.

Finally, I saw the will above.  Mileva and Elsa were both dead before he died, so he provided $20,000 for his secretary, Helen Dukas, $20,000 for his step-daughter Margot (Elsa’s daughter), $15,000 for his son Eduard who was hospitalized in a psychiatric institution in Zurich, and $10,000 for his son Hans Albert, a hydro-geologist in California.  Any remainder, including all proceeds from his literary estate, was left to Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

I will leave those numbers alone.  They speak for themselves.

Posted in Margot Einstein, Elsa Einstein, Helen Dukas, Johanna Fantova, Ernest Hemingway, History Museum, Hadley Richardson, Eduard Einstein, Hans Albert Einstein, Special Theory of Relativity, Switzerland, Mileva Maric, Generating Fiction from History and/or Fact, Oktoberfest, Anus Mirabilus, Bern, Einstein | No Comments »