20. March 2012 by Nancy Pinard.

I will be teaching a workshop on writing the endings of short stories and novels at the Mad Anthony Writers’ Workshop April 13-15 in Hamilton, Ohio.  In the process of preparing, I was made conscious of subjects that generally remain unconscious as I’m first-drafting a novel; specifically, my point-of-view character’s inner conflict.  The inner conflict is that struggle by which a character prevents himself from getting what he desperately wants.  Sound counter-intuitive?  It is.  And yet we all sabotage ourselves for perfectly good reasons.  So do our characters.

Charles Darwin, the subject of my currently circulating novel, SANDWALK, provides a case in point.  Here was a man who desperately wanted to be a gentleman, as defined by 19th century Britain.  He was afraid to upset the status quo, and yet, his life work was to develop a theory that would challenge the very existence of God.  How did he deal with this?  He dawdled.  He spent twenty years on his research, writing directions to his wife to publish the material after his death.  What compelled him?  The death of his daughter, whose suffering led him to deny the possibility of a loving God.  It happened, when he received an essay from Alfred Russel Wallace describing a theory too like his, that he was faced with the necessity to publish immediately, or lose credit for his twenty years of work.  Ambition, specifically the need to prove himself to a father who predicted Darwin would never amount to anything, drove him to establish himself as co-author of a theory that would make him the target of 150 years of debate.  Some argue that this internal conflict was the cause of the sickness that made him an invalid for the productive years of his life.

And what of Albert Einstein?  A story was aired on “All Things Considered” last evening announcing the web publication of Einstein’s letters.  The letter read aloud on the air was one he wrote to his mother, Pauline, when she was terminally ill with stomach cancer in which Albert describes his sadness at the extremity of her suffering.  The fragment of the letter, considered by itself, would suggest Albert was a dutiful son who dearly loved his mother.  Not so!  In fact, she was the source of his greatest inner conflict, her demand that he conform to the bourgeois standards of middle class German Jewry in conflict with his desire to live a Bohemian lifestyle and marry Mileva Maric, the Serbian Orthodox Christian his mother despised.  The drama of his life played out in opposition to his mother, while, at the same time, he was unable ultimately to disobey her, finally leaving Mileva and marrying his cousin, Elsa, as was the common practice among the Jews of Germany.

How are inner conflicts resolved in fiction?  There are two choices:  The character realizes he is sabotaging himself and changes, or he fails to realize it.  The meaning of the ending is affected by this choice.

The techniques for delivering the choice will be covered in my workshop.

Posted in Generating Fiction from History and/or Fact, Charles Darwin, inner conflict, historical fiction, Pauline Einstein, Einstein, Mileva Maric, reading, writing | No Comments »

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 »

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 »

15. February 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

Additional research–my thanks to Marion Kaplan for her book The Making of the Jewish Middle Class–reveals that as laws in Germany allowed Jews freedom to join the professions and become upwardly mobile, the German ideals of cleanliness entered the Jewish household.  They accepted the need for the clutterless household, regularly picked up and polished, as a way to bring security into an insecure existence.  Jewish housewives, it happens, came to be trend setters in terms of furnishings, as, thanks to having more relatives living in cities, they brought city styles and furniture arrangements to the outlying areas.

But here is a most revealing fact in terms of why Pauline Einstein, sight unseen, opposed Albert’s marriage to a Serb:

“Both Gentiles and Jews believed that dirt could lead to decadence, but for Jews it could also lead to the dreaded identification with their proletarian, Eastern, nonacculturated brothers and sisters living in the ghettos of Berlin and other major cities.  German Jews focused on eliminating dirt and smell—class symbols—from their lives.” (Kaplan, 33)

Anyone Eastern European threatened to bring down the standards of the household, those countries being associated with dirt and odor.  German households had a horror of garlic, that being the odor associated with Eastern European, nonacculturated Jews.   Imagine Albert’s mother, having a son who couldn’t be bothered to wash, comb his hair, or tie his shoes, now wanting to bring a Serb into the family!  (Land of gypsies and brigands, Serbia.  And Mileva’s father was proud of it.)  For a persecuted people group like the Jews, entering the middle class, acculturating with German Gentiles, was a way to avoid anti-Semitism.  

 And, I’m learning about my own family–that German grandmother, whose bedsheets were passed down to me, each with a little red thread in the exact center, so that when making the bed, one could center the sheets perfectly.  She was my mother’s mother, and so now I understand my mother’s horror of clutter–the need for bare kitchen counters, all appliances put away–and her dislike of garlic or any foods containing it.  Needless to say, she never made pasta–which we then called spaghetti.  (My dad loved it, but he had to eat it in a restaurant.)  I understand why cooking was no fun to mother–so much work, if one had to get out all the appliances, do the cooking, then expunge the evidence of the labor as soon as it was accomplished.  My mother was a bright, funny woman who couldn’t tolerate a mess.  I always felt this intolerance extinguished her creativity, not just in the kitchen, but in other aspects of her life, too.  Creativity is messy.  I can’t imagine being able to write a novel if I couldn’t stand the mess of structurelessness that  precedes a meaningful assemblage of pieces.

Posted in Pauline Einstein, Marion Kaplan, Serbia, reading, Mileva Maric, Research methods, 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 »