Einstein (24 page)

As far as we know, Einstein never went to Serbia to seek a job or to see his baby. A few months into their marriage, in August 1903, the secret cloud hovering over their lives suddenly cast a new pall. Mari
received word that Lieserl, then 19 months old, had come down with scarlet fever. She boarded a train for Novi Sad. When it stopped in Salzburg, she bought a postcard of a local castle and jotted a note, which she mailed from the stop in Budapest: “It is going quickly, but it is hard. I don’t feel at all well. What are you doing, little Jonzile, write me soon, will you? Your poor Dollie.”
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Apparently, the child was given up for adoption. The only clue we have is a cryptic letter Einstein wrote Mari
in September, after she had been in Novi Sad for a month: “I am very sorry about what happened with Lieserl. Scarlet fever often leaves some lasting trace behind. If only everything passes well. How is Lieserl registered? We must take great care, lest difficulties arise for the child in the future.”
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Whatever the motivation Einstein may have had for asking the question, neither Lieserl’s registration documents nor any other paper trace of her existence is known to have survived. Various researchers, Serbian and American, including Robert Schulmann of the Einstein Papers Project and Michele Zackheim, who wrote a book about searching for Lieserl, have fruitlessly scoured churches, registries, synagogues, and cemeteries.

All evidence about Einstein’s daughter was carefully erased. Almost every one of the letters between Einstein and Mari
in the summer and
fall of 1902, many of which presumably dealt with Lieserl, were destroyed. Those between Mari
and her friend Helene Savi
during that period were intentionally burned by Savi
’s family. For the rest of their lives, even after they divorced, Einstein and his wife did all they could, with surprising success, to cover up not only the fate of their first child but her very existence.

One of the few facts that have escaped this black hole of history is that Lieserl was still alive in September 1903. Einstein’s expression of worry, in his letter to Mari
that month, about potential difficulties “for the child in the future,” makes this clear. The letter also indicates that she had been given up for adoption by then, because in it Einstein spoke of the desirability of having a “replacement” child.

There are two plausible explanations about the fate of Lieserl. The first is that she survived her bout of scarlet fever and was raised by an adoptive family. On a couple of occasions later in his life, when women came forward claiming (falsely, it turned out) to be illegitimate children of his, Einstein did not dismiss the possibility out of hand, although given the number of affairs he had, this is no indication that he thought they might be Lieserl.

One possibility, favored by Schulmann, is that Mari
’s friend Helene Savi
adopted Lieserl. She did in fact raise a daughter Zorka, who was blind from early childhood (perhaps a result of scarlet fever), was never married, and was shielded by her nephew from people who sought to interview her. Zorka died in the 1990s.

The nephew who protected Zorka, Milan Popovi
, rejects this possibility. In a book he wrote on the friendship and correspondence between Mari
and his grandmother Helene Savi
,
In Albert’s Shadow,
Popovi
asserted, “A theory has been advanced that my grandmother adopted Lieserl, but an examination of my family’s history renders this groundless.” He did not, however, produce any documentary evidence, such as his aunt’s birth certificate, to back up this contention. His mother burned most of Helene Savi
’s letters, including any that had dealt with Lieserl. Popovi
’s own theory, based partly on the family stories recalled by a Serbian writer named Mira Ale
kovi
, is that Lieserl died of scarlet fever in September 1903, after Einstein’s letter of that
month. Michele Zackheim, in her book describing her hunt for Lieserl, comes to a similar conclusion.
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