Einstein (44 page)

Personal relationships involve nature’s most mysterious forces. Outside judgments are easy to make and hard to verify. Einstein repeatedly and plaintively stressed to all of their mutual friends—especially the Bessos, Habers, and Zanggers—that they should try to see the breakup of his marriage from his perspective, despite his own apparent culpability.

It is probably true that he was not solely to blame. The decline of the marriage was a downward spiral. He had become emotionally withdrawn, Mari
had become more depressed and dark, and each action reinforced the other. Einstein tended to avoid painful personal emotions by immersing himself in his work. Mari
, for her part,
was bitter about the collapse of her own dreams and increasingly resentful of her husband’s success. Her jealousy made her hostile toward anyone else who was close to Einstein, including his mother (the feeling was reciprocal) and his friends. Her mistrustful nature was, understandably, to some extent an effect of Einstein’s detachment, but it was also a cause.

By the time they moved to Berlin, Mari
had developed at least one personal involvement of her own, with a mathematics professor in Zagreb named Vladimir Vari
ak, who had challenged Einstein’s interpretations of how special relativity applied to a rotating disk. Einstein was aware of the situation. “He had a kind of relationship with my wife, which can’t be held against either of them,” he wrote to Zangger in June. “It only made me feel my sense of isolation doubly painfully.”
⁷⁹

The end came in July. Amid the turmoil, Mari
moved with her two boys into the house of Fritz Haber, the chemist who’d recruited Einstein and who ran the institute where his office was located. Haber had his own experience with domestic discord. His wife, Clara, would end up committing suicide the following year after a fight over Haber’s participation in the war. But for the time being, she was Mileva Mari
’s only friend in Berlin, and Fritz Haber became the intermediary as the Einsteins’ battles broke into the open.

Through the Habers, Einstein delivered to Mari
in mid-July a brutal cease-fire ultimatum. It was in the form of a proposed contract, one in which Einstein’s cold scientific approach combined with his personal hostility and emotional alienation to produce an astonishing document. It read in full:

Conditions.

A. You will make sure

1. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;

2. that I will receive my three meals regularly
in my room
;

3. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for
my use only.

B. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, you will forego

1. my sitting at home with you;

2. my going out or traveling with you.

C. You will obey the following points in your relations with me:

1. you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;

2. you will stop talking to me if I request it;

3. you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.

D. You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior.
⁸⁰

Mari
accepted the terms. When Haber delivered her response, Einstein insisted on writing to her again “so that you are completely clear about the situation.” He was prepared to live together again “because I don’t want to lose the children and I don’t want them to lose me.” It was out of the question that he would have a “friendly” relationship with her, but he would aim for a “businesslike” one. “The personal aspects must be reduced to a tiny remnant,” he said. “In return, I assure you of proper comportment on my part, such as I would exercise to any woman as a stranger.”
⁸¹

Only then did Mari
realize that the relationship was not salvageable. They all met at Haber’s house on a Friday to work out a separation agreement. It took three hours. Einstein agreed to provide Mari
and his children 5,600 marks a year, just under half of his primary salary. Haber and Mari
went to a lawyer to have the contract drawn up; Einstein did not accompany them, but instead sent his friend Michele Besso, who had come from Trieste to represent him.
⁸²