23. June 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

Most of what I knew about Jewish dowries, prior to researching the Einstein novel, came from the stories of Shalom Aleichem, via Tevye the milkman and Fiddler on the Roof.  I extend my gratitude and acknowledgment to Marion Kaplan and her book The Making of the Jewish Middle Class for furthering my education.

Some of Pauline Einstein’s objections to Albert’s love for Mileva Maric can be understood in terms of the German Jewish system of dowries.  The Jews of Imperial Germany, including the Einsteins, were predominantly middle class, interested in concentrating capital and creating economic and social alliances through marriages.  Not until after WW I, with the entrance of women into the workforce and inflation decimating middle-class savings, was the Jewish system of arranged marriages and parental control seriously challenged by the notion of companionate marriage.  At the time Albert and Mileva wanted to marry, 1901,  parental control via the dowry was the norm, among both Jews and members of the German bourgeoisie.  Those parents who chose to bow to the more popular romantic notions arranged situations for their children to meet appropriate partners, then denied that these marriages had been arranged.  The appropriate partners had, of course, been researched and a private investigator sometimes hired if the intended was not already known to the family by fortune and reputation.

Where Jews had for many years been limited by law to commerce and business, it makes particular sense that they would concern themselves with amalgamating finances and also tend to financial security where there was little security to be found for them elsewhere.  They also tended to marry within their group, by choice, but also by necessity given anti-Semitism. 

The dowry, which might include cash, real estate, jewels, and stocks, transferred property to the bride from her family at the time of her marriage. Its size indicated both social class and status, excluding those from lower ranks of society.  It bought security for women who were not educated and not expected to contribute to the economic prosperity of the new household.  While the woman might choose to invest her dowry in the husband’s business—as Pauline Einstein did, losing it to her husband’s poor business acumen—this was not required.  

The bride remained passive, sometimes ignorant of ongoing arrangements until she was informed that a young suitor would be coming to visit. The groom, particularly if he was older, might participate.  If the parties found one another agreeable, an engagement might be enacted on the spot, the financial arrangements having already been negotiated.

If a young woman’s parents were deceased, her brothers took charge of arranging her marriage.  Discharging this responsibility was regarded as a necessary moral prerequiste to their own marriages.

Familial, friendship, business and professional networks might be used to find appropriate partners, sometimes crossing national borders. 

Matchmakers were hired in the event a family had no appropriate connections.  The matchmakers specialized in a particular financial class and geography and worked for a percentage of the dowry. 

Advertising in local Jewish newspapers was an option for those who chose not to consult matchmakers.  The size of the dowry indicated the type of person sought.  For example 75,000 marks would attract a lawyer, doctor, or independent businessman, the price being adjusted to the locality.  A Berlin professional might command more.  A well-off shopkeeper with an income of 10,000 marks annually, would command a dowry of 30,000 marks.  20,000 marks would buy a mid-level civil servant—as Einstein eventually became when he was hired at the Patent Office in Bern.  5,000 marks got a woman a craftsman, and 2,000 bought her an elderly, well-situated gentleman, aka an old man.

In addition to bringing the dowry, there were certain qualifications for the woman, the primary one being her age.  After twenty-three a woman was no longer considered desirable.  Pauline Einstein was married at eighteen to the twenty-nine-year-old Hermann.  Albert, their oldest, was born four years later.  (Jews were the foremost practitioners of birth control in that era, Zurich, Switzerland being the center of that industry, 250 km from Albert’s birthplace in Ulm, Germany.)  Hence, when Pauline Einstein complained that Mileva was too old at twenty-five, it wasn’t only because Albert was four years younger. 

If a woman’s dowry was too small, she might be forced to move from the city (desirable) to the country (undesirable) to find a partner.  She might be forced to marry an older man, a widower with children, or an Eastern European Jew, all undesirable.  The worst fate a woman could suffer was to be mated to an American. 

What a strange twist history imposes, when Jewish women without dowries and sent to America, escaped the death camps in post-Imperial Germany. 

Posted in matchmakers, dowry, arranged marriage, Shalom Aleichem, Fiddler on the Roof, Switzerland, Marion Kaplan, Mileva Maric, Research methods, reading, Pauline Einstein, Einstein | No Comments »

8. June 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

I’m working on a scene where it’s hard to understand Einstein’s behavior.  It’s mid-July, 1901, and Mileva is about to re-sit her exams at the Polytech, having failed them the summer before.  It’s her last chance to pass, and, oh-my-god, she’s pregnant now, with Einstein’s baby.  You might think he’d want to be there for her, to coach her through, to help her with geometry, a subject that eluded her, no thanks to a particularly obtuse professor in the subject.  Surely she would have appreciated his presence.  Whatever happens with the tests, she must head home to Serbia afterward, to tell her parents she’s going to have a baby. 

Did I mention the two aren’t married?

How do I make Einstein’s behavior something other than a dastardly abandonment, when instead of staying in Zurich, he’s off vacationing with his mother and sister in Mettmenstetten?  Yes, indeed.  He’s at a cushy hotel, the Pension-Paradies in the Alps!  

Fortunately, I have point-of-view on my side.  The important thing here is not to look at the big picture and see what he might have done, but to get inside his head and see how the prospect looked to him.  And I don’t mean the view from the hotel veranda.  Behind his eyes, I see that the greatest threat to Mileva’s well-being is not the exams or her father.  It’s his mother.  He’s off to do battle with the dragon.  I’m reminded of Grendal’s Dam and thinking I might need to re-read Beowulf.   s

Posted in Switzerland, Fictional biography, historical fiction, point of view, Mettmenstetten, Pauline Einstein, Einstein, family members, Mileva Maric, Serbia, writing | 3 Comments »

17. May 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

“Nothing new comes of thinking about a problem the same way we created it,” Einstein said.  It was a good rationale for his reluctance to repeat experiments and collect data that had already been collected by someone else or to follow the directions for an experimental protocol.  If he was going to repeat an experiment for which results were already on record, he’d invent his own method.   For insisting on doing the experiments his own way, Herr Professor Pernet flunked him in introductory physics lab.  Out of a possible 6, Einstein scored 1.  And given his upstart attitude, it is not surprising, then, that when he graduated, none of his professors would hire him on as an assistant–the usual career trajectory for a graduate of Zurich’s Polytech (the ETH).  

But wasn’t this ability, his inclination to reject existing methods and accepted modes of thought, what enabled him to re-envision various problems in physics, to question the constants that physicists had built upon?  And how difficult this is, accepted thought being so foundational that most of us don’t realize we’ve confused it with truth.

Time, for instance.  It took Einstein to suggest it’s not the universal constant.  (And in the past year, some physicists are theorizing that the speed of light is also not constant, a discovery which, if proven, might lead to the unified field theory Einstein sought.)

Posted in genius, Einstein | No Comments »

17. May 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

“Nothing new comes of thinking about a problem the same way we created it,” Einstein said.  It was a good rationale for his reluctance to repeat experiments and collect data that had already been collected by someone else or to follow the directions for an experimental protocol.  If he was going to repeat an experiment for which results were already on record, he’d invent his own method.   For insisting on doing the experiments his own way, Herr Professor Pernet flunked him in introductory physics lab.  Out of a possible 6, Einstein scored 1.  And given his upstart attitude, it is not surprising, then, that when he graduated, none of his professors would hire him on as an assistant–the usual career trajectory for a graduate of Zurich’s Polytech (the ETH).  

But wasn’t this ability, his inclination to reject existing methods and accepted modes of thought, what enabled him to re-envision various problems in physics, to question the constants that physicists had built upon?  And how difficult this is, accepted thought being so foundational that most of us don’t realize we’ve confused it with truth.

Time, for instance.  It took Einstein to suggest it’s not the universal constant.  (And in the past year, some physicists are theorizing that the speed of light is also not constant, a discovery which, if proven, might lead to the unified field theory Einstein sought.)

Posted in genius, Einstein | No Comments »

25. April 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

One of the ways writers make decisions is to read similar work by other authors.  I have recently begun to check out fictional biographies from Dayton’s three library systems, to see how other writers have handled some of the problems.  For example, how does the writer address the reader’s question, But how do I know what’s true here? 

Historical fiction and its subset, fictional biography, is a strange hybrid, and writers deal with it differently, usually by means of an author’s note, sometimes placed at the beginning, other times at the end.  I favor the beginning, but that’s likely my preference for being upfront about things in general.  In Max Phillips’ fictional biography of Alma Mahler, The Artist’s Wife, the note appears at the end.  In it, he confesses that he has strayed from the record at will, to his own ends.  The subject of the novel, and its point-of-view character–the profligate wife of Gustav Mahler whose particular passion was the conquest of geniuses–was merely the suggestion that set him off on a fictional journey?   I find myself unsettled by this confession, as if the only value in reading anything is to get at historical fact.

But I wouldn’t be a novelist if I believed that.  Truth, for me, is larger than fact, and fiction is particularly good at delivering the emotional truths that transcend facts.

That said, I’m not comfortable with borrowing an historical figure, then distorting known facts.  It’s a personal bias, I guess.  I’m delighted to discover that Jim Shepard–one of my mentors in the craft, though I’ve never met him–agrees.  In an essay called “Generating Fiction from History and/or Fact” contained in The Writer’s Notebook:  Craft Essays from Tin House, he says this:  “Literature that deals with history the most effectively, in my mind, . . . understands two things:  (A) that fiction about real events needs to respect the facts and (B), as our politicians have taught us, facts are malleable things.  The trick, it seems, is to do everything possible to honor A, as you understand it, while taking full advantage of B to shape your material into something aesthetically beautiful.” (p. 244)

What kind of distortion, then, might shaping the material bring?

Shaping might be best understood by looking at a painting such as Diego Rivera’s Flower Festival:  Feast of Santa Anita.   The central figure in this painting bears a heavy burden, a basket of calla lillies.  The shape of the figure, and particularly Rivera’s choice of white for his robe, makes it reminiscent of the cross of Christ.  The lilies themselves are shaped like hearts–and the stamen is exaggerated in a phallic way–a distortion introduced.  The children kneeling in the forefront, suggestive of worship, wear blouses with yokes that are also shaped like hearts.  Even the strands of hair in their braids are shaped like hearts, the braid image repeated in the binding on the basket.   The red flowers, poppies, look like mouths–or vaginas.  This painting, then, obstensibly about a figure at a flower festival, is really about love–both eros, and agape.

In literature, shape is delivered with a similar kind of repetition of an image.  In my novel about Darwin, the Sandwalk, a circular path on a bit of land rented from a neighbor, appears repeatedly in the novel as does the image of walking in circles, in general.  In the novel’s opening scene, Darwin’s daughter Henrietta is walking the fairy ring that has appeared in the lawn outside Darwin’s study window.  Now–here’s where the distortion comes in.  Yes, there really was a Sandwalk and Darwin walked it almost daily, assuming he was healthy enough. He called it his thinking path. But was there a fairy ring in the lawn outside his study window?  Who knows?  The fairy ring introduces an important concept in the novel–the relationship between what we can know (that a mushroom-like fungus causes the grass to darken in ring-like patterns) and the realm of the intangible–in this case, cavorting fairies who draw the unsuspecting into the ring to dance to their deaths.  It’s a metaphor for everything the book will tackle.  Is it a device?  Yes.  A useful one.  Is it fiction?  Yes.  Does it tamper with truth?  I don’t think so.

I don’t yet know what image will shape the Einstein novel, though it seems that a departing person–on a street or in a train station–keeps turning up in the text so far.   The working title of the novel is Quanta, because I’m writing in bursts/part(icles) that are not necessarily chronological.  Perhaps Departures would be a better title, suggesting all the personal abandonments that characterized his life and also his departure from current thought.

Time and many pages of writing must pass before I will know.

Posted in The Writer's Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House, Jim Shepard, Fictional biography, historical fiction, fictional truth, The Artist's Wife, Max Phillips, Darwin, Einstein, reading, Diego Rivera, Flower Festival: Feast of Santa Anita, writing | 2 Comments »

24. February 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

I’m working on a scene where Albert Einstein is playing a largo movement of a Handel sonata for violin and piano. (He was quite an accomplished violinist, and some biographers guess that through his violin he expressed the intimate emotions that he otherwise suppressed in favor of his work in physics.)  I chose the piece after hearing and being transported by it on NPR.  The choice, however, is arbitrary, though Einstein was known to play Handel.  He liked the baroque (Bach, Vivaldi) and classical composers (Mozart, Handel), finding the romantics (Beethoven, Wagner) too sentimental.

Einstein’s mother, Pauline, was an accomplished pianist and introduced Albert to the violin at age 5.  It was not until his pre-teen years, however, when he discovered Mozart, that practicing was anything but another necessary chore, like doing his schoolwork before he was allowed to go outside to play.  Mozart opened another world to him and Albert was grateful to his mother for insisting he learn. The violin opened many doors to him in Zurich, playing music in small groups being a popular evening entertainment among the student group.  Albert found in his violin an alternate absorption which gave him the time off his mind needed to make the intellectual leaps known as the “eureka” experience.

Posted in Violin, Pauline Einstein, genius, Einstein | No Comments »

24. February 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

I’m working on a scene where Albert Einstein is playing a largo movement of a Handel sonata for violin and piano. (He was quite an accomplished violinist, and some biographers guess that through his violin he expressed the intimate emotions that he otherwise suppressed in favor of his work in physics.)  I chose the piece after hearing and being transported by it on NPR.  The choice, however, is arbitrary, though Einstein was known to play Handel.  He liked the baroque (Bach, Vivaldi) and classical composers (Mozart, Handel), finding the romantics (Beethoven, Wagner) too sentimental.

Einstein’s mother, Pauline, was an accomplished pianist and introduced Albert to the violin at age 5.  It was not until his pre-teen years, however, when he discovered Mozart, that practicing was anything but another necessary chore, like doing his schoolwork before he was allowed to go outside to play.  Mozart opened another world to him and Albert was grateful to his mother for insisting he learn. The violin opened many doors to him in Zurich, playing music in small groups being a popular evening entertainment among the student group.  Albert found in his violin an alternate absorption which gave him the time off his mind needed to make the intellectual leaps known as the “eureka” experience.

Posted in Violin, Pauline Einstein, genius, Einstein | No Comments »

22. February 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

I’ve written before about what a handicap it is to write about a setting I’ve never visited.  I can read descriptions in books–and in the case of Albert Einstein, some of the biographers are fine writers who provide me with details–but there is just no substitute for knowing how the air smells in a given location.  That said, and a trip to Switzerland is planned for next September, in trying to draft a scene that takes place in Mettmenstetten, Switzerland, where Albert stayed with his mother, his sister, and the women of his extended family in August, 1901, I read that the family stayed at the Hotel Paradies.  I search the internet, but this pension/hotel is no longer listed.  This is not a surprise after 110 years, but it is a frustration.  I search the internet for nearby hotels that look old, hoping for pictures.  I’m trying to describe the drawing room of this place where the family joined together to play music in the evenings, Albert on his violin, accompanied by one of his many female cousins (one of whom, Elsa, became his second wife). But I have little idea what this room would look like.

I decide to look on Google Maps at Mettmenstetten–satellite view–to see what the terrain looks like.  As I zoom in, I switch on the names of the roads.  My goodness.  At the edge of town, there is a road named Paradiesli. I zoom in farther, and what do I see but the roof of a building that would be large enough to house an extended family.  I switch on photos.  Oh, my goodness.  It seems someone has photographed that very building!  I compare the roof lines in the satellite view and the photo, which is not difficult considering the distinctive gables and an arch in the middle.  Indeed it is the same!   My gratitude overflows from Florida where I sit in my writing chair in winter, to the photographer, griphus3, whoever and wherever you are.  This is likely the place–or one very like it–and I have made good faith effort.  Now, I still have to imagine the interior, but that’s suddenly easier.  Here it is.

Posted in Mettmenstetten, Switzerland, Google Maps, reading, Research methods, Einstein, family members, writing | No Comments »

12. February 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

In an effort to understand Pauline Einstein’s (Albert’s mother) outright rejection of  her son’s love for Mileva Maric, I did some research on Jewish family values in Germany from 1870 -1900. The obvious answer might be that Mileva was raised as an Eastern Orthodox Christian.   But despite Hermann Einstein (Albert’s father) listing himself as Israelitic on Albert’s birth certificate, the family was decidedly non-religious, a point of pride with his father, so Mileva’s not being Jewish would not explain his mother’s outrage.  In fact, the family had sent Albert to a Catholic school in Munich for his elementary education and his mother had no objection when he fell in love with Marie Winteler while he attended the Cantonal school in Aarau.  Marie was not Jewish, and still, Marie and Pauline carried on a fond correspondence.

It happens that between 1870 and 1900 Jews were enjoying a heyday in Germany and, far from isolating themselves in ghettos, were doing what they could to erase distinctions between themselves and their Gentile neighbors. The bourgeois culture to which Hermann and Pauline aspired, to distinguish themselves from the habits of the laboring classes, assigned status to households where women did not work outside the home.  Instead, the wife and mother was the mediator between the intimate space of the household and society at large.  It was her task to raise children that maintained both the family’s religious observances and adopted the mores of her middle class German neighbors.  She was to maintain Germanic standards of cleanliness and orderliness thought essential to cultivating hardworking, upright citizens.

I’m reminded of the values that governed my mother’s life in American culture of the 1950’s and 60’s.  My family was not Jewish, but my maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Gumprecht.  Despite having a BA in speech from Ohio Wesleyan University, my mother devoted herself to laundry, cleaning, and her one creative outlet–gardening.  What about cooking?  She was singularly uninspired as a cook.  The few recipes she made, such as the Betty Crocker red binder meatloaf, she followed to the letter, even measuring out breadcrumbs.  Anytime she made anything without specific measurements–such as sloppy joes the Girl Scout campfire way–she required myself or my father to taste and tell her what to add.  That said, we ate at home, around a dinner table, nearly every night–food she had prepared.  Not working enabled her to do all kinds of volunteer work.  She was my Girl Scout leader for years and drove myself and my brother to our piano and dance lessons.  She taught adult Sunday school at our church and volunteered as a docent at the Dayton Art Institute.  When I danced with the Dayton Ballet Company, she was the founding president of the support organization, The Friends of the Dayton Ballet.   All this said, and given the skills she brought to those extra-household contributions, she didn’t foresee women moving out of the household.  If I complained about a school assignment (I particularly hated any rote memory work) as in “Why do I have to memorize Portia’s “quality of mercy” speech?”–her answer was invariably, “So you have something to think about when you’re ironing.”

It’s thereby not hard for me to understand Pauline Einstein’s priorities.  Enter Albert, intent on living and thinking outside any box his mother might build.  He called her bourgeois values “philistine” and flaunted them at every opportunity, dropping Marie Winteler for being too much like his mother.  Instead, he loved a Serbian woman–a backward culture of gypsies, to his mother’s mind–one who aspired to work as a physics teacher.

So, without meeting Mileva, Pauline could object to Albert’s undermining all she had done to ensure the family was upwardly mobile.   Ideally, his spouse would be one of his cousins, and to that end, she invited relatives to visit them at Mettmenstetten each summer during their stay at the Hotel Paradies in the Alps.  Albert was happy enough to play his violin for the ladies assembled, even playing duets with the cousins she paraded past him, but he was determined to marry Mileva.  Was it love?  Or the need to upend his mother?

Posted in reading, Pauline Einstein, Research methods, Mileva Maric, family members, Einstein | 4 Comments »

12. February 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

In an effort to understand Pauline Einstein’s (Albert’s mother) outright rejection of  her son’s love for Mileva Maric, I did some research on Jewish family values in Germany from 1870 -1900. The obvious answer might be that Mileva was raised as an Eastern Orthodox Christian.   But despite Hermann Einstein (Albert’s father) listing himself as Israelitic on Albert’s birth certificate, the family was decidedly non-religious, a point of pride with his father, so Mileva’s not being Jewish would not explain his mother’s outrage.  In fact, the family had sent Albert to a Catholic school in Munich for his elementary education and his mother had no objection when he fell in love with Marie Winteler while he attended the Cantonal school in Aarau.  Marie was not Jewish, and still, Marie and Pauline carried on a fond correspondence.

It happens that between 1870 and 1900 Jews were enjoying a heyday in Germany and, far from isolating themselves in ghettos, were doing what they could to erase distinctions between themselves and their Gentile neighbors. The bourgeois culture to which Hermann and Pauline aspired, to distinguish themselves from the habits of the laboring classes, assigned status to households where women did not work outside the home.  Instead, the wife and mother was the mediator between the intimate space of the household and society at large.  It was her task to raise children that maintained both the family’s religious observances and adopted the mores of her middle class German neighbors.  She was to maintain Germanic standards of cleanliness and orderliness thought essential to cultivating hardworking, upright citizens.

I’m reminded of the values that governed my mother’s life in American culture of the 1950’s and 60’s.  My family was not Jewish, but my maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Gumprecht.  Despite having a BA in speech from Ohio Wesleyan University, my mother devoted herself to laundry, cleaning, and her one creative outlet–gardening.  What about cooking?  She was singularly uninspired as a cook.  The few recipes she made, such as the Betty Crocker red binder meatloaf, she followed to the letter, even measuring out breadcrumbs.  Anytime she made anything without specific measurements–such as sloppy joes the Girl Scout campfire way–she required myself or my father to taste and tell her what to add.  That said, we ate at home, around a dinner table, nearly every night–food she had prepared.  Not working enabled her to do all kinds of volunteer work.  She was my Girl Scout leader for years and drove myself and my brother to our piano and dance lessons.  She taught adult Sunday school at our church and volunteered as a docent at the Dayton Art Institute.  When I danced with the Dayton Ballet Company, she was the founding president of the support organization, The Friends of the Dayton Ballet.   All this said, and given the skills she brought to those extra-household contributions, she didn’t foresee women moving out of the household.  If I complained about a school assignment (I particularly hated any rote memory work) as in “Why do I have to memorize Portia’s “quality of mercy” speech?”–her answer was invariably, “So you have something to think about when you’re ironing.”

It’s thereby not hard for me to understand Pauline Einstein’s priorities.  Enter Albert, intent on living and thinking outside any box his mother might build.  He called her bourgeois values “philistine” and flaunted them at every opportunity, dropping Marie Winteler for being too much like his mother.  Instead, he loved a Serbian woman–a backward culture of gypsies, to his mother’s mind–one who aspired to work as a physics teacher.

So, without meeting Mileva, Pauline could object to Albert’s undermining all she had done to ensure the family was upwardly mobile.   Ideally, his spouse would be one of his cousins, and to that end, she invited relatives to visit them at Mettmenstetten each summer during their stay at the Hotel Paradies in the Alps.  Albert was happy enough to play his violin for the ladies assembled, even playing duets with the cousins she paraded past him, but he was determined to marry Mileva.  Was it love?  Or the need to upend his mother?

Posted in reading, Pauline Einstein, Research methods, Mileva Maric, family members, Einstein | No Comments »