24. September 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

Einstein spent his childhood from age one to fifteen in Munich, though the Munich of today is a reconstruction of the city, thanks to Munich being the Nazi headquarters and therefore the target of Allied bombs in WWII. When it became apparent to Hitler that Munich would fall, he didn’t move the art work out of the cathedrals because he felt it would demoralize the population. Instead, he had everything photographed. From these Nazi photographs the old city was reconstructed so that in the Alstadt, much appears as it did before.

The two gates that remain from the medieval city are the Isator and the Sendlinger Tor. Both Einstein households—his parents moved farther out of town as the business prospered—were near the Sendlinger Tor, so I was particularly interested in what a child could actually see from there. In the opening scene of my novel, Einstein is a three-year-old, left by his mother in the city to find his way home—a practice she was committed to in building his independence. This is fact, but how he learned to find his way home is a matter of fiction. Originally, I imagined that he oriented himself by the towers of the Fraumunster Kirche, but standing at the Sendlinger Tor, I realized that these towers, high as they are, are not visible. As if to oblige me, there stood a child, a little girl of about three, and through her eyes it was apparent that I needed to revise the scene so that three-year-old Albert would orient himself by the Tor itself.

I also sought out the Luitpold Gymnasium, the high school that Einstein attended, hated, and from which he arranged to be dismissed at age fifteen when his parents moved to Milan and left him behind to finish school. (He had a dual purpose. Not only did he hate the militaristic German educational methods, but if he did not revoke his German citizenship before age seventeen, he would be obliged by law to serve in the German army.) The school itself looked too new to be over one hundred years old, which leads me to believe that it was rebuilt after the war, the school he attended possibly having been destroyed. This is a subject for further research.

It happens that Munich is celebrating Oktoberfest during our stay, though, unlike four million people annually, it was not the purpose of our coming. Oktoberfest is the annual celebration of the wedding feast of the long-dead King Ludwig I and has continued since 1810.  That means Albert might have attended as a child.  My husband and I took a stroll through the celebration, an immense fairgrounds full of the most hair-raising rides I’ve ever seen, plus booths selling wurst, very fishy-smelling fish on a stick, pretzels, and decorated, heart-shaped cookies worn on a string around the neck by both men and women, all dressed in traditional Bavarian costumes. The main attraction, however, seems to be the ubiquitous beer halls where hundreds pack in to get drunk, sway, and sing both American and German songs, loudly, to the music of an oompah band.

After a several mile circle of the grounds at 6:00 PM, having sampled nothing, we were driven home in a bicycle-powered, two-seat carriage—the vehicle of choice in the car-and-taxi clogged roadways. The driver told us that to get a seat in a beer hall, one had to go at 10:00 AM. Since Albert Einstein was an introverted child who preferred building houses of cards, watching chickens, and proving the Pythagorean theorem, I suspect he might have been as anxious to leave as I was. Furthermore, he didn’t drink—he claimed it made one stupid—and while not a teetotaler myself, after seeing Oktoberfest, I’ve no doubt he was right.

Posted in Sendlinger Tor, Luitpold Gymnasium, Oktoberfest, Nazi headquarters, Munich, Einstein, Research methods, writing | No Comments »

15. September 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

My husband and I arrived in Milan yesterday after the (for me) sleepless overnight flight that is penance for the luxury of European travel, meaning no taxi fare seemed too high if it meant we might settle in at our hotel sooner. And Tremezzo, the small village on the west shore of Lake Como, midlake, where I had booked our room, couldn’t have made it more worth it. What overwhelmed me more than the lake itself, is the geography of the basin it’s in. Carved out by a glacier, the foothills surround the lake are covered in lush foliage with darker vertical veins, which in the haze of humidity appear velvetine, like the iris petals in the flower paintings of Georgia O’Keefe.

On the lake shore, the Hotel Villa Marie, complete with its own cupola (on left, below), is the most picturesque in a row of tile-roofed and pastel-painted Italian villas.

This is not where Albert and Mileva stayed, though it’s one km from the Villa Carlotta where they disembarked from their ferry to tour the house and gardens. The ferry boats are still the most efficient means of transportation to various villages on the lake, so today Beloved and I boarded the “slow boat,” (Centro Lago in Italian), and took a gestalt tour of the mid-lake villages, including Bellagio, home to luxury shops, and Varenna, a charmingly-preserved fishing village with an 11^th century stone chapel and unrestored 14^th century frescoes. Tomorrow we will tour the Villa Carlotta. Today it was focused on what it feels like to be here. This morning, in addition to the lapping of water against the stone walls that separate the land from the lake, I heard the church bells ring two strokes with a non-melodious “clong.” I heard the rigging of the sailboats clinking against aluminun masts in the tiny harbor in front of the hotel, but masts were wood in 1901, so perhaps chattering would be a better word. Regrettably, the traffic noise is loud now on the road that wends around the lake. Albert, unlike Beloved, would not have needed to jerk Mileva from the path of drivers speeding around blind curves.

At our sidewalk cafe dinner last night we sat at a small table among many other couples at small tables, all speaking in whispers, until, as invariable happens with my friendly husband, we all began talking to one another. Beside us was a couple of honeymooners, obvious and perfect for imagining Albert and Mileva, though they were not yet married on their May, 1901 trip, but their heads likely inclined toward one another in the same way, though Albert didn’t drink so they wouldn’t have shared the same bottle of expensive wine, (red, of course.) Still, they might have lingered long, ordering each course and eating it before deciding on the next, sharing each as if unable yet to acknowledge different preferences, she serving out his helping first while he sat by helpless and helplessly in love.

Around these two sat three couples of oldlyweds, none of us jaded, I hope, but clearly in a different place as we lounged back in the wicker chairs, drinking from different liters of wine—his red, hers white, ordering not multiple courses—who can eat like that after 35?–but trying not to lick the plate of our measley one course apiece. One man called the rising, almost-full moon, the sun and told the groom to enjoy the next six months as if life would never be like that again. Perhaps not, but I didn’t sense regret from any table. The most senior were a couple from Wales and England, clearly enjoying their holiday together, though they were supposed to come six months earlier for a wedding and had to postpone for his illness. I was thinking how Mileva would have envied us all—the young lovers and the mature ones with our children grown and ably fending for themselves–she who was abandoned and left to care for a schizophrenic son.

Now my patient Beloved waits, out on the balcony of our room, overlooking the lake. The rocky tops of the Alps to the north—in fact in Switzerland—turn pink at sunset. His wife writes on, but it is dinner time and he is getting hungry. I suspect we will return to our same cafe, The Helvetia, because our Welsh and British friends—last night the end of their holiday here–confirm it has the freshest food in Tremezzo.  The veal in mushrooms and wine the newlyweds were eating looked stupendous.

Posted in Generating Fiction from History and/or Fact, historical fiction, Tremezzo, Bellagio, Varenna, Italy, Lake Como, Einstein, Mileva Maric, Research methods, reading, writing | 1 Comment »

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 »

16. June 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

It’s not a rocky peak in Switzerland, Italy, or France, or so I learn from a 1908 volume called Peep at Many Lands:  Switzerland by John Finnemore (London:  Adam and Charles Black).   It’s one of those lovely old books, embossed red cloth cover with no picture, kept in the storage at Dayton Metro Library.  The book that is, not the alp.

No, an alp, in 1908 at least, is a meadow on the way up to those rocky peaks.  The peak is above the treeline, the alp below.  The livestock of Switzerland graze on the lush grass that springs up along with a kaleidoscope of wild flowers after snow melt.  In times past–the time of the book’s writing–there was great celebration in the villages on the day the livestock, cattle, sheep, and goats, would leave the lowland barns behind, flowers woven into their horns, to begin the two-day climb to the alp for their summer’s stay.  The owners and their sons stayed in rude chalets on the mountains all summer long to tend the flocks.  Where cattle were grazing, the men set up cheese-making dairies.  Alpine Swiss cheese is not a standardized product, but one that takes on the flavor of the particular herd in a particular alp’s dairy.

What about storms?  The shepherds gather the flock into circles where they stand with heads down to weather what comes, including thunder, lightning and hail.

Does this still happen?  I’ll be there in September, to find out.  Meanwhile, there’s the internet.  Why is it relevant?  Because Einstein and his mother and aunts and cousins vacationed for a month each summer in the Swiss Alps.  It’s best I  know what I’m talking about–in the parlance of the day.

Posted in Switzerland, Italy, reading, Research methods | 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 »

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 »

10. December 2010 by Nancy Pinard.

In my continued quest for a sense of the character of the people of Serbia, I found this description on the internet.  It is a bit that was written by  US. Congresswoman Helen Dilich Bentley in 1948 for American-Serb Life:

For instance, Serbianism can be synonymous with fighting for the right, or what we believe is right, with every possible breath.

Then it can mean giving whole-heartedly of whatever you have to help one who needs it.

Or it may be simply sharing whatever you have with everyone; or sticking with him, come hell or high water; Or the guslar spirit, where your cards are stacked for you.

The Do or Die Spirit
It might be a determination to fight doggedly on, as the Serbs did when the Turks tried to master them, and as they probably will again before this century is out.

Or a fiery spirit and flaming temperament.

Perhaps it is none of these.  Or perhaps it is all of them rolled into one.

Serbianism is too big a thing to be able to toss aside lightly with a definition of one or two words.

I’ve watched this Serbianism in action from the West Coast to the East Coast.
Whatever it is, it’s the same everywhere.

You come to the door of a Serbian home.
You’re welcomed with open arms, even though they have never seen you before.

Real Hospitality
The table is spread with strudel, sarma, kuspa y meso, and other favorite dishes.
Rakija and wino are brought forth in abundance.  You are to make yourself at home.

It can be no other way.  If it is, your host feels he has slipped up somewhere.
It’s both a disgrace and dishonor for a guest to be dissatisfied in the home of a Serb.

____________________

How like the description of Deda Bora in Their Backs to the World!

Thanks to the response of Serb Karl Haudbourg to my post, I now am connected to his blog where you simply must see the videos of Serbia:   http://www.ambassador-serbia.com/videos-serbia/

Posted in Serbia, reading, Research methods | 1 Comment »

24. November 2010 by Nancy Pinard.

In my ongoing collection of evidence that Mileva either did or did not contribute to Einstein’s theories, I come upon two passages in Highfield and Carter’s The Private Lives of Albert Einstein which would indicate that she did not.

Mileva is in Heidelberg, writing to Albert about a lecture by Phillipp Lenard, professor of experimental physics.  Highfield and Carter say this, (complete with British spellings):

“The professor had been describing the kinetic theory of gases, which explains their properties by the behaviour of their constituent molecules.  This was just the kind of problem that would be central to much of Einstein’s work in 1905, but Mileva’s account suggests a certain scientific naivity [sic].  She wrote, . . . ‘It seems that oxygen molecules travel at a speed of over 400 metres per second, and after calculating and calculating, the good professor set up equations, differentiated, integrated, substituted and finally showed that the molecules in question actually do move at such a velocity, but that they only travel the distance of 1/100 of a hair’s breadth.’  This irreverent tone is appealing, but it seems that Mileva had missed the key points of what Lenard was saying.  The mathematics that apparently dazzled her would not have been directed at determining the velocity of molecules–since this can be obtained quite simply–and the tiny distance they travelled [sic] between collisions should hardly have come as a surprise to her.  It depends on how many collisions each molecule experiences with others within a given time interval.  Although this was only a light-hearted anecdote, it suggests that Mileva lacked Einstein’s intuitive grasp of physics.”  (Highfield, 41-42)

While I am dependent on Mr. Allen Esterson to confirm that Highfield and Carter are correct in their analysis of the math, this kind of evidence–the documentation that she does not have Einstein’s understanding–is much more compelling to me than a statistical analysis of the reliability of witnesses a number of years after the fact.

The second point I find compelling in Highfield and Carter is that when the two were separated–Albert in Milan applying for jobs and Mileva in Zurich studying to resit the exams she had failed, Albert is immensely productive.  Again, from Highfield and Carter:

“A great spate of ideas continued to flow out of him in her absence.  There was a flash of insight about heat and energy that struck him during the train journey to Italy; fundamental doubts about radiation that arose as he read an article by Max Planck; a ‘wonderful idea’ he had arrived at for applying ‘our theory of molecular forces’ to gases.  His mind was in flux as he announced a series of revisions and extensions to his previous views.  This creative flow hardly suggested that Mileva’s presence was necessary to his inspiration. ” (Highfield, 70)

Einstein, in one letter goes on to ask her to look up data in the library and suggests some experiments they can conduct together to develop his new notion.   (Highfield, 70)

This then seems to be convincing documentation of her contribution.  She clearly could understand what he was saying and was able to participate on that level–as someone like his previous love interest, Marie Winteler would not have–but the idea that she did the work seems revisionist.

Posted in reading, Research methods, Mileva Maric, Einstein | 6 Comments »