If he (Einstein) was around, I’d love to buy him a beer… but I don’t know if I’d introduce him to my sister. (Dennis Overbye, author of Einstein in Love)

Einstein was a great scientist, in fact the greatest after Newton. But his love life was as mundane and lackluster as that of any ordinary, immature, wayward, and irresponsible person. He wanted love and was able to reciprocate for a time but wouldn’t like the responsibility of any lasting relationship. He would romanticize his feelings of love from a distance, in his love letters, for example, but failed to keep them steady and stable for any length of time. Probably highly creative persons need all their time and minds for their creative work and marriage and steady relationships are only a bothersome appendage; that probably was the reason that Newton remained unmarried all his life.

Einstein was fired with transient passions for women; he would fall out of a relationship as easily as he would fall into it. In the course of his passionate love for his wife, Mileva Maric, whom he divorced after sixteen years, he wrecked her life. Writing a review of Dennis Overbye’s book, “Einstein in Love: A Scientific Romance,” Nicci Gerrard captioned her review article “A genius – but you wouldn’t want to marry him.”

Einstein’s biographers mostly exclude his personal life to such an extent that the readers do not learn much about his behaviour toward the women he came across in his life. They are mostly preoccupied with the great intellectual work that he was able to produce and are not interested in his personal life and affairs. The readers of course read about his first wife because she herself was an outstanding physicist and might have helped Einstein in his early creative work. Overbye’s book is different in this respect because he devoted a substantial portion of his book for describing Einstein’s married life and his extra-marital engagements. He obtained his information from Einstein’s love letters that have been recently released, among his other sources. Einstein’s personal life is checkered, all too human, if not ugly.


Einstein’s First Love – Marie Wintler

When Einstein was fifteen years old, his parents moved to Italy leaving him back in Munich where he was at school. He had some kind of nervous breakdown and went to Italy to his parents. There he told them that he wanted to go to Zurich and study engineering at the Polytechnic. His father had a business company, dealing in electrical equipment so he agreed readily. Einstein took the entrance examination at the Polytechnic and failed. His grades in mathematics were good but he was rejected mainly because he was under-age. The entrants were required to be at least eighteen years of age and he was only sixteen. So, he was advised to go back to school and try next year (it appears that the age limit was relaxed by one year for him).

He then went to Aragau Canton School, which was not far from Zurich. Gustav Maier, a family friend who was looking after Einstein, arranged him to stay with the family of Jost Wintler in Aarau where the school was. Wintler taught history and philology at the same school. Wintlers were a large family and Einstein fell in love with one of the Wintler daughters, Marie Wintler. She was a couple of years older than Einstein. Their love affair blossomed to the satisfaction of both the families and Einstein’s mother wanted him to marry Marie although she hadn’t seen her yet.

“Marie was quite beautiful (the prettiest of the daughters)” and she responded to Einstein’s love. They wrote love letters and exchanged their feelings of love in so many different styles and ways. For example, Einstein wrote in one of his letters, “you mean more to my soul than the whole world did before, the insignificant little sweetheart that knows nothing and understands nothing.” Marie did his laundry and other little things as token of her love for him.

Einstein applied for admission at the Polytechnic (EDH) after a year, and was accepted. In his physics class, there were four other students including a Serbian girl, Maleva Maric. She was four years older than Einstein and she walked with a slight limp. It was extremely difficult for women to enter universities for instruction in mathematics and science due to a long-lasting historical prejudice in Europe. The very fact that Maleva was in the physics and mathematics classes at the EDH was a sign of her outstanding competence and ability. Einstein was very much impressed by her and he talked about her to Marie also. Marie became somewhat wary of Maleva because she knew that she was nowhere near Einstein intellectually. Her fears were proven right because Einstein fell in love with Maleva and dumped her. He took his women for granted because even after dumping Marie, he continued sending his laundry to her, which she did willingly.

Marie who loved Einstein dearly was affected by his rejection to such an extent that “she lapsed into depression after the affair … had ended and was consigned for a while in Waldau, a mental hospital affiliated with the University of Bern. A synopsis of her case appears in the official history of the hospital. According to a statement, ‘a student named Albert Einstein had turned her head.’” Later, Marie married Albert Muller in 1911 and raised two children. She died in Switzerland in 1957, two years after Einstein died.

Although he had dumped Marie of his own will, Einstein kept “talking about her his whole life, about how he would be consumed in flames if he even saw her again.” He even told about his feelings toward Marie to Maleva whom he would marry in 1903.

Einstein’s First Wife, Maleva Maric

He adored her (Maleva) for a bit, wooed her fervently, loved her more passionately when they were separated, and, it seems, married her at last out of duty, when the love was already waning. (Nicci Gerrard)

By his wanton love and selfish attachment to Maleva, Einstein wrecked her life. Maleva gave him three children, all that he had in his life. The oldest was a girl who was born out of wedlock and was probably given up for adoption. Very little is known of her fate. The other two were boys; the older, Hans Albert Einstein, became a distinguished professor of civil engineering at Caltech. He published fundamental and original papers on sediment transport in rivers. The other son was schizophrenic who died in a sanatorium.

Maleva was born in 1875 in Titel in Vojovodina in Serbia. By virtue of her proficiency in mathematics, she became an acquaintance of Nikola Tesla. In 1896, she came to Polytechnic (EDH) in Zurich. She was quite self confident of her skills in mathematics and physics and could stand her ground against others including Einstein. Einstein fell in love with her but she was not quite certain if she wanted such a digression. So, after only a year, she formally withdrew from the polytechnic and went over to Heidelberg University to continue her work.

During 1897-98, they wrote love letters to each other and she returned to the polytechnic in 1898. Due to discontinuity of her work at the polytechnic, she failed the examination; Einstein passed his. Before she could complete her graduation, she became pregnant with Einstein’s baby. She was however accepted by Professor Weber to work as research assistant. The trauma of the pregnancy, delivery of her daughter in Einstein’s absence, giving up her first born for adoption, and postpartum depression ruined her plans. She married Einstein against the wishes of both the families in 1903 and gave birth to their first son in 1904. During her first pregnancy (with Liserel), Einstein was unemployed and led a very uncertain life. Eventually he got the job as a patent clerk in Bern and was able to support Maleva.

Einstein was all praise and admiration for Maleva for the first few years of his marriage. That was also the most productive time of his life. He published five papers in 1905 (called his annus mirabilis), any of which could have fetched him a Nobel Prize. It has become quite controversial as to how much help he received in his papers from Maleva, even though she was not acknowledged in any of them. He had himself stated that Maleva used to check his mathematics. This was typical of Einstein not to acknowledge the earlier work or work of those who helped him. In his Special Relativity paper, he acknowledged only one person, Michele Besso, his best friend. The paper did not include any reference to earlier work.

His 1905 papers opened up new opportunities for him. He received an offer of appointment as a professor at Berlin University through Max Planck, which he accepted. His duties did not include any formal lecture work.

His move to Berlin disrupted his married life. In Berlin, he grew friendly with his cousin Elsa with whom he slept while he was still married to Maleva. Their marriage was on the rocks and they formally divorced in 1919. Maleva kept the custody of the two sons.

During his heydays with her, he had professed that he was lucky to find Maleva, “a creature who is my equal and who is strong and independent as I am.” Maleva had a miserable life after the divorce and she died in 1948. Einstein had given her the prize (Nobel Prize) money as he had promised before divorce. He had also promised that he wouldn’t marry any body including Elsa although he didn’t lose much time before marrying Elsa.

Elsa and Ilse

Elsa was Einstein’s cousin and Ilse was her daughter. Elsa who was born in 1876 and thus three years older to Einstein (Einstein was seemingly fascinated with the older women), was his first cousin through his mother and a second cousin through his father. She had two sisters, Paula and Hermine. According to Overbye, “Albert (Einstein) might have had something going with Elsa’s sister, Paula, when they were kids; there’s some reference in his letters to Elsa about Paula: ‘whoever she has not lied to has not known bliss. You can’t blame me; we were young and she was willing.’”

Elsa’s first husband was a textile trader from Berlin, Max Lowenthal (1864- 1914). She had two daughters, Ilse (1897-1934) and Margot (1899-1986), with him and they lived in Hechingen. They had a son also in 1903 who died shortly. Elsa was divorced in 1908 and she moved to Berlin. Einstein moved to Berlin in 1914. He got close to Elsa whom he married in 1919 after divorcing Maleva.

Before marrying Elsa, he had considered marrying her daughter, Ilse, instead. According to Overbye, “She (Ilse, who was 18 years younger than Einstein) was not attracted to Albert, she loved him as a father, and she had the good sense not to get involved. But it was Albert’s Woody Allen moment.” He married Elsa and the marriage lasted until 1936 when Elsa died.

In spite of his marriage to Elsa, Einstein sought sexual favors from other women also. In the early 1920s, he fell in love with a friend’s niece. To keep her in Berlin, he hired her as a secretary. Elsa permitted Albert to see his mistress twice a week in exchange for keeping a low profile. He grew bored with her within a year and looked elsewhere for sex. Overbye wrote about Einstein’s flings saying, “During the 1920s Albert had lots of affairs in Berlin – he was carrying on with a number of different women. Elsa was not happy with this, but she more or less decided she had her deal.”

In 1933, Einstein together with Elsa moved to Princeton where he spent his remaining life. After Elsa’s death, Helen Dukakis worked more or less as a secretary and also kept her house.