For all his declarations of love, Einstein believed there was no way he could marry until he had a decent job. His parents’ own finances were in crisis, so they couldn’t have helped him even if they’d wanted to. The other students he’d graduated with in 1900 moved quickly into reputable academic positions, but he spent the next two years chasing slim hopes and struggling at marginal, low-paying jobs. He complained that a professor who should have been giving him recommendations was actually sabotaging all his chances—and this may well have been true, as Albert had made no secret of his contempt for the man’s scientific views.
Faced with worries over the pregnancy and Albert’s situation, Mileva retook her exams in July 1901. She failed a second time. Eventually she returned to her family’s home in Novi Sad, and gave birth to Lieserl in January 1902. Although Albert had hoped that the child would be a boy, he responded giddily to the news of the child’s arrival, writing to Mileva:
Is she healthy, and does she cry properly? What are her eyes like? Which one of us does she more resemble? Who is giving her milk? Is she hungry? She must be completely bald. I love her so much and don’t even know her yet! Couldn’t you have a photograph made of her when you’ve regained your health? Is she looking at things yet? . . . When you feel a little better you’ll have to draw a picture of her!
But when Mileva returned to Switzerland to be near Albert, she left the baby behind.
Albert finally found his job at the Swiss patent office in Bern with a friend’s help. It wasn’t the highly respected academic position that he’d longed for, but it would prove to be a better fit for his talents and interests at that point in his life. And, while still a low-level position, it paid enough that Albert believed he could finally support a wife. Then, right before his death in late 1902, Albert’s father gave Albert permission to marry Mileva. Neither family came to the wedding on January 6, 1903, but a few close friends celebrated with them.
It would appear that everything was falling into place for Albert and Mileva. But they still did not bring Lieserl to live with them. There is no evidence that Albert’s family or friends were ever told of the child’s existence. Despite his initial enthusiasm, Albert apparently never even met her.
What plans did Albert and Mileva have for Lieserl’s future? Did they intend to put her up for adoption? Was Mileva still holding on to hope (as I imagined in this book) that eventually they would be able to raise Lieserl in their own home?
Regardless of what they were planning, when they got word in August 1903 that Lieserl had scarlet fever, Mileva rushed to Novi Sad to be with her. The letters I quote from in this book are exactly what Mileva and Albert actually wrote to each other during this time, including his cryptic comments in September 1903:
I am very sorry about what happened with Lieserl. Scarlet fever often leaves some lasting traces behind. If only everything passes well. How is Lieserl registered? We must take great care, lest difficulties arise for the child in the future.
Einstein experts have analyzed those few lines in depth, trying to figure out exactly what did happen to Lieserl. Some speculate that she died in 1903, as scarlet fever was frequently fatal then. One official source says roughly a thousand children lived in the Novi Sad area before the 1903 epidemic, but about 40 percent of them were dead by the end of the year.
However, Lieserl was clearly still alive at the time of Albert’s letter. Other experts speculate that Lieserl was disabled somehow, blinded because of the scarlet fever or mentally challenged from birth. Still others look at Albert’s question about how Lieserl was “registered” as proof that the couple was trying to get the little girl’s paperwork in order so that she could be adopted.
Regardless, no birth or death certificates have been found for the girl. Except for the letters exchanged by Albert and Mileva, there’s no written proof of her existence.
And she might as well have vanished from the face of the earth in 1903, for all the evidence about her that exists after that.
Meanwhile, Albert’s and Mileva’s lives went on. Their second child, a son this time—Hans Albert—was born on May 14, 1904. Their other son, Eduard, who was nicknamed Tete, was born on July 28, 1910. Albert had one of the greatest years any scientist had ever had with his “miracle year” of 1905: In just a matter of months, he published four scientific papers, which held ideas that would revolutionize physics forever. The last of those papers included the now-famous E = mc2 formula, connecting the concepts of energy and mass.
The acclaim for Albert was not instantaneous, but within a few years he was fielding his choice of academic job offers and invitations to notable conferences and requests from famous scientists to meet and discuss his ideas.
Albert thrived on all the attention. Mileva faded further and further into the shadows, writing to one of her closest friends in December 1912:
Albert has become a famous physicist who is highly esteemed by the professionals enthusing about him. He is tirelessly working on his problems; one can say that he lives only for them. I must confess with a bit of shame that we are unimportant to him and take second place.
Mileva had numerous health problems, but descriptions of her behavior during this time period seem to indicate that she also struggled with severe bouts of depression. One scholar who met her during a particularly difficult point in her life—when Albert briefly moved the family to Prague—speculated that she might have suffered from schizophrenia as well.
Albert, caught up in his own ideas, was anything but a sympathetic husband. As his fame increased, his relationship with Mileva unraveled to the point that in 1914 he laid down a severe list of rules that he ordered her to follow if she intended to stay married to him. These included demands that she would “stop talking to me if I request it” and “leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it” and that she would forgo “all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons.”
Albert also ordered her not to “belittle” him in front of their children.
Amazingly, Mileva at first accepted even his most severe terms, before apparently realizing that the relationship was damaged beyond repair. The two agreed to separate. Albert got caught up in a high-profile life in Berlin (and a relationship with the woman who would become his second wife, his cousin Elsa Einstein). Mileva took the children back to Zurich, and would live there the rest of her life. The couple eventually divorced in 1919.
In spite of the relationship turmoil—or, perhaps to a certain extent, because of it—Albert had another burst of amazing scientific creativity around this time, unveiling his general theory of relativity in 1915. And photographs taken during a solar eclipse in 1919 confirmed Albert’s theories about light bending due to gravity. With these developments, Albert won the attention of not just the scientific world but the general public as well. The media loved him—he gave great quotes, and didn’t mind being photographed doing things like sticking out his tongue. He seemed to be a good sport about everything, even when reporters admitted that they didn’t understand his ideas at all. No matter, they still adored Albert, who became everyone’s idea of the lovable absentminded genius.
Everyone’s, that is, except the Nazis, who were gaining power in his native Germany in the early 1930s. They resented a Jewish man holding such an esteemed position in the German scientific world. Facing death threats and listed as a major target, Einstein fled, eventually moving to the United States to take a position at Princeton University.
Einstein worked on his scientific ideas the rest of his life, seeking a unified field theory that would bring together all the laws of physics and connect all the forces of the universe. As depicted in this book, he was still trying to figure out that theory the night he died. But he became known almost as much for his work outside science. During World War I, his was one of the rare, lonely voices among German scientists pointing out the insanity of war. Despite his near-lifelong pacifism, during World War II he came to bel
ieve that the evils of Nazism had to be countered, and he played an important role in warning the United States that Germany might be developing nuclear weapons. However, he lamented his part in laying the groundwork for the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war, his was an important voice calling on scientists to work together to prevent any further use of such devastating weapons. He also became a strong and outspoken supporter of the new nation of Israel.
By the time of his death in 1955, Einstein was viewed as something of a secular saint, a holy man of science. His oldest son, Hans Albert, an engineer who’d moved to California, had rushed to be by his side when he got the news that his father was dying. But at that point Einstein hadn’t seen his troubled younger son in more than twenty years, and hadn’t even sent him a letter since 1944.
After Einstein’s death, his papers were closely guarded and maintained by his longtime loyal secretary, Helen Dukas. Some of the information that paints him as something less than a completely saintly figure has been released only in more recent years, after Dukas died as well.
Some of the biggest revelations about his personal life came in 1986 when Hans Albert’s daughter, Evelyn, found a stash of letters that first Mileva and then Hans Albert’s wife had kept. These were letters that Albert and Mileva had exchanged beginning in 1897. A collection of these letters from the couple’s courtship and first several months of marriage has since been published by Princeton University Press under the title Albert Einstein, Mileva Maric: The Love Letters.
The letters set off a controversy in part because of Albert’s references to “our work” and “our theory” and “our paper” in his letters to Mileva. Their letters are full of physics discussions, back and forth. Did that mean that Mileva actually deserved joint credit for some of Albert’s brilliant work? Albert’s output in 1905 had always seemed incredible given that he was working six days a week at the patent office during that time. Was the explanation that he’d actually done only part of the work himself?
Those who argue that Mileva deserves more credit point to the fact that, in their divorce settlement, Albert promised to give her all the money he would earn from any future Nobel Prize. Was that his way of acknowledging her role? Or was it just the easiest way for him to arrange to provide for her and their sons?
Tellingly, there is no evidence that Mileva ever sought credit for any of Albert’s work, even at the most bitter moments of their relationship. But it’s a fascinating issue to read about. Many of the pro-Mileva arguments can be found in a 2003 PBS documentary and an accompanying website, www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife. The debate and arguments against giving Mileva more credit can be found in the PBS ombudsman’s letter linked from that site.
Given the evidence, I felt it was reasonable for me to depict Mileva as being very intelligent, very familiar with Albert’s work, very well versed in physics herself—and very good at double-checking his math.
The other bombshell that came with the release of the Albert-Mileva letters was the revelation of Lieserl’s existence. This set off a flurry of interest among researchers. A 1999 book, Einstein’s Daughter, details an extensive search by author Michele Zackheim between 1987 and the late 1990s, and it provides interesting background information, anecdotal evidence, and her own speculations. But Zackheim could never find any concrete proof of what actually happened to Lieserl.
It appears that some potential sources of information about Lieserl were intentionally destroyed, including other letters. Of course, Mileva easily could have destroyed every single one of the letters in her possession that mentioned the girl. But she didn’t. Did she perhaps hope that one day the whole world would know about her daughter? Was that her small way of rebelling against the secrecy that protected her famous ex-husband but threatened to erase all signs that their daughter had ever lived?
Even if Lieserl died as a toddler in 1903, it’s possible to argue that she had an important impact on history. Albert Einstein followed a pattern throughout his life of dealing with personal problems by throwing himself intently into his work. Could the challenges of dealing with Lieserl’s birth and illness—and perhaps grief over her death—have been one of the spurs for Albert’s incredible burst of creativity and productivity leading up to 1905?
And if Lieserl lived past 1903, who knows what other impact she secretly might have had on history?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARGARE TPETERSON HADDIX is the author of many critically and popularly acclaimed teen and middle-grade novels, including The Missing series, the Shadow Children series, Claim to Fame, Palace of Mirrors, and Uprising. A graduate of Miami University (of Ohio), she worked for several years as a reporter for the Indianapolis News. She also taught at Danville (Illinois) Area Community College. She lives with her family in Columbus, Ohio. Visit her at haddixbooks.com.
ALSO BY MARGARET PETERSON HADDIX
THE MISSING SERIES
Found
Sent
Sabotaged
Torn
THE SHADOW CHILDREN SERIES
Among the Hidden
Among the Impostors
Among the Betrayed
Among the Barons
Among the Brave
Among the Enemy
Among the Free
The Girl with 500 Middle Names
Because of Anya
Say What?
Dexter the Tough
Running Out of Time
The Always War
Claim to Fame
Palace of Mirrors
Uprising
Double Identity
The House on the Gulf
Escape from Memory
Takeoffs and Landings
Turnabout
Just Ella
Leaving Fishers
Don’t You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey
SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Margaret Peterson Haddix
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Haddix, Margaret Peterson.
Caught / Margaret Peterson Haddix.—1st ed.
p. cm.—(The missing)
Summary: When Jonah and Katherine travel to early 1900s Switzerland and Serbia to return Albert Einstein’s daughter, Lieserl, to history, her mother Mileva grasps entirely too much about time travel and has no intention of letting her daughter go.
ISBN 978-1-4169-8982-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4424-2288-9 (eBook)
[1. Space and time—Fiction. 2. Einstein-Maric, Mileva, 1875–1948—Fiction. 3. Einstein, Albert, 1879–1955—Family—Fiction. 4. Switzerland—History—20th century—Fiction. 5. Serbia—History—1804–1918—Fiction. 6. Science fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.H1164Cau 2012
[Fic]—dc23
2011018654
Margaret Peterson Haddix, Caught
(Series: # )
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