Einstein (21 page)

Einstein did not tell his mother, sister, or any of his friends about the birth of Lieserl. In fact, there is no indication that he
ever
told them about her. Never once did he publicly speak of her or acknowledge that she even existed. No mention of her survives in any correspondence, except for a few letters between Einstein and Mari
, and these were suppressed and hidden until 1986, when scholars and the editors of his papers were completely surprised to learn of Lieserl’s existence.
*

But in his letter to Mari
right after Lieserl’s birth, the baby brought out Einstein’s wry side. “She’s certainly able to cry already, but won’t know how to laugh until much later,” he said. “Therein lies a profound truth.”

Fatherhood also focused him on the need to make some money while he waited to get the patent-office job. So the next day an ad appeared in the newspaper: “Private lessons in Mathematics and Physics . . . given most thoroughly by Albert Einstein, holder of the federal Polytechnic teacher’s diploma ... Trial lessons free.”

Lieserl’s birth even caused Einstein to display a domestic, nesting instinct not previously apparent. He found a large room in Bern and drew for Mari
a sketch of it, complete with diagrams showing the bed, six chairs, three cabinets, himself (“Johnnie”), and a couch marked “look at that!”
⁶³
However, Mari
was not going to be moving into it with him. They were not married, and an aspiring Swiss civil servant could not be seen cohabitating in such a way. Instead, after a few months, Mari
moved back to Zurich to wait for him to get a job and, as promised, marry her. She did not bring Lieserl with her.

Einstein and his daughter apparently never laid eyes on each other. She would merit, as we shall see, just one brief mention in their surviving correspondence less than two years later, in September 1903, and then not be referred to again. In the meantime, she was left back in Novi Sad with her mother’s relatives or friends so that Einstein could maintain both his unencumbered lifestyle and the bourgeois respectability he needed to become a Swiss official.

There is a cryptic hint that the person who took custody of Lieserl may have been Mari
’s close friend, Helene Kaufler Savi
, whom she
had met in 1899 when they lived in the same rooming house in Zurich. Savi
was from a Viennese Jewish family and had married an engineer from Serbia in 1900. During her pregnancy, Mari
had written her a letter pouring out all of her woes, but she tore it up before mailing it. She was glad she had done so, she explained to Einstein two months before Lieserl’s birth, because “I don’t think we should say anything about Lieserl yet.” Mari
added that Einstein should write Savi
a few words now and then. “We must now treat her very nicely. She’ll have to help us in something important, after all.”
⁶⁴