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Albert Einstein

Currency:USD Category:Memorabilia / Autographs - Science Start Price:NA Estimated At:16,000.00 - 18,000.00 USD
Albert Einstein

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Auction Date:2017 Oct 11 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
ALS in German, signed “Papa,” one page both sides, 8.5 x 11, April 10, 1936. Letter to his son Eduard Einstein, nicknamed "Tetel," in full (translated): "Once again, a lot of time has passed since I had last written to you. In the meantime, I had the joy of receiving a very laudatory report about a paper Albert had written. What a fine, solid fellow he is. I am sitting here in my study, wrapped in a blanket and still freezing cold, just because they are thinking it is spring and therefore the furnace must be turned off. I like it here quite well though, as one can lead a secluded sort of life. I can only be bothered here by letters I receive. I keep on working with the same young man on problems so difficult that keep amazing me over my very own courage. When I am losing steam, I just need to look from my giant window, down on meadows with flowers and trees, in the distance I see the tall tower atop one of the University buildings, in the style of University buildings seen in England. It seems to me, only things English are held in high esteem here. If you are saying you are coming from Switzerland, they consider that as being comical, for they are thinking, they only have cheese and chocolates there.

A few days ago I received the death announcement of my good old friend Professor Stern. He was a fine, upright human being, there are not many like he was. I had the impression of him that he did not quite understand human nature. His focus rather was on humanity as such, which was just as well, for betrayal by the latter is at least not perceived on an individual basis.

I quite often read the newspapers from Basel, sometimes the ones from Zurich, which Miss Dukas’s brother is sending to her. I hardly get around reading books. Scientific work practically is eating you up, especially once the elasticity of youth is gone. Eventually, your very own brain is leading you around by the nose, making you all the more independent from your fellow human beings.

From Germany, I am hardly hearing anything directly any longer, for anything and everybody there I had trusted in, is either dead or scattered all over the world. With me here from Zurich is Prof. Pauli, a very clever young physicist, who probably sees me as some sort of fossil. He had the same position at the Poly Technical Institute I had 23 years ago, just when you came into this best of all worlds of ours.

Freud will be turning 80 soon. I finally have come to the conclusion that he actually has been correct in his main theses. From a very reliable source, I have heard accounts about ordinary case studies of his that defy any other explanation. I must admit, that in this regard, you certainly saw the light a lot sooner than I did. The reason probably was the fact that my personal life had been so thoroughly and for so long practically erased from my head (not only pushed aside, but also forgotten) thus leaving no living matter for me to go by." In fine condition, with light toning over the bottom half of the signed side.

Einstein had emigrated to the United States in 1933, taking a professorship at Princeton and leaving behind the heightening tension in Europe. His troubled son, Eduard ‘Tetel’ Einstein, remained in Zurich with his mother, Einstein’s ex-wife, Mileva Maric; although Einstein would never see him again, they corresponded somewhat often. Eduard was an admirer of Freud and had once hoped to enter the fledgling field of psychiatry, but was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1930 at age twenty, rendering him a patient rather than a practitioner. Here, Einstein generously admits that Eduard recognized the merits of Freud’s work long before he did himself. Meanwhile, he references the 36-year-old physicist Wolfgang Pauli, a pioneer of quantum physics who Einstein would successfully nominate for the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1945. Interestingly, Pauli was also a subject and student of psychoanalyst Carl Jung, one of Freud’s early disciples. A significant Einstein family letter offering a number of connections to fellow titans of the intellectual world.