59 pages • 1 hour read
The Other Einstein: A novel
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Part 2, Chapters 26-35Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapter 26 Summary
Mileva arrives in Switzerland, where Albert once again fails to understand her feelings. She decides to forge ahead with him for the sake of her new baby. Mileva “chose life. For a successful life with Albert, that meant choosing science. It was the language in which we first communicated and the only one Albert comprehended perfectly” (216). She tells him about her epiphany on the train. Albert is astounded by her discovery and eager to write the paper. Despite her grief over Lieserl, Mileva can’t help but be titillated by her discovery.
Part 2, Chapter 27 Summary
The narrative flashes forward to 1905. Albert and Mileva have worked hard collaborating on their papers. The relativity paper is mostly hers, but they’ve also partnered on papers about Brownian motion and atomic theory. They work fastidiously on them at night, after Albert is home from work and when their son, Hans Albert, is asleep. Mileva’s paper on relativity is almost ready to submit, but she includes Albert’s name as an author because she doesn’t have a degree or a doctorate.
Part 2, Chapter 28 Summary
Mileva meets with her old friend Helene and their children in Serbia. Helene and Mileva reminisce about their old pact not to get married. The women agree that they’re too thankful for their children to regret breaking the pact, but Helene admits to having problems with Milivoje. Mileva runs into some neighbors who heard about her successful life in Switzerland. No one knows about Lieserl besides Helene and Mileva’s family. Mileva is proud to boast of her husband and grateful that their love of science brought Albert and her back together.
Part 2, Chapter 29 Summary
When Mileva returns to Switzerland with her family, she misses Helene and their confidences. Time spent with Helene reminded her of the time in her life before she married Albert and had children. Mileva is relieved when she receives the edition of an academic journal she expected her paper to be published in. Her paper is in the journal, but her name is omitted. Only Albert’s name is listed as an author. Albert arrives home late and is unsurprised by Mileva’s news that her name was not included in their publication. Albert admits that he asked the journal to omit her name. Mileva is furious because the paper is her intellectual property and, as she developed the theory during her grieving period, it was also a symbolic memorial to her daughter.
Part 2, Chapter 30 Summary
The narrative flashes forward to 1907. Albert discusses an idea with their salon of friends, a group they’ve called the Olympia Academy, for an invention that would measure small amounts of energy. Mileva helps explain the reason for the machine. This new project is important to her because
This Maschinchen project, conceived by us both over the past year, with wide berth given for my leadership, was the only form of amends I would accept. In this way, Albert’s words of remorse were finally accepted. And, in theory, I forgave him (238).
The narrative flashes forward to 1908. Albert and their friends Paul and Conrad Habicht have been developing the machine for months. They invite Mileva in to watch the first test of the device. The machine turns on but starts smoking quickly. The engineers assure her that they’ll be able to fix it. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Mileva, Albert is working on the papers to file the machine’s patent. Paul notices that Mileva isn’t identified on the forms as the designer. Mileva is furious but keeps calm to spare herself humiliation in front of their friends; she describes the pair as Ein Stein, “one stone.”
Part 2, Chapter 31 Summary
The narrative flashes forward to 1909. Letters from physicists around the world start arriving regarding Albert’s four papers published in 1905. Because no one knows that Mileva was integral to the development of these new theories, she receives no letters and stands aside while Albert receives invitations to edit and comment on other physicists’ papers. The Olympia Academy dissipated when many of their friends moved to other countries; without that group of friends, Mileva is left out of conversations about physics and theories. She spends her days taking care of the house, which now includes student boarders. Though Albert is quite famous in the world of physics, the Einsteins worry about money, and Mileva and Albert are disconnected. Finally, his reputation spreads enough to yield an important job offer: professor at the University of Zürich. The job comes as a surprise because the hiring committee didn’t want to hire a Jewish physicist.
Mileva is organizing Albert’s mess of papers when she comes across postcards from a former girlfriend, a woman named Anna Meyer-Schmid. Anna read about Albert’s appointment to the university and wrote to congratulate him. A second postcard reveals that he had not only responded to her but also invited her to meet him in his offices at the university. Enraged at this clear beginning of an affair, Mileva writes a letter to Anna’s husband, Georg. Albert enters the room as she’s penning the letter. He denies that his correspondence with Anna is anything other than innocent, but Mileva can tell that he is lying. Albert accuses her of only ever thinking of herself.
Part 2, Chapter 32 Summary
Albert takes the family on a holiday, but the contrast between the beautiful landscape of the Swiss countryside and the troubled state of her marriage only intensifies Mileva’s unhappiness. She confronts Albert about his accusation that she acted selfishly during her pregnancy with Lieserl. In what she perceives as a turning point in their marriage, Mileva “sensed that he didn’t truly understand the impact the pregnancy had on my life, that he just wanted peace from me and would say whatever he thought I wanted to get it” (252). He begs Mileva to let their move to Zürich be a new start. She agrees, on the condition that he includes her again in his scientific work.
Part 2, Chapter 33 Summary
The narrative flashes forward to 1910. The move to Zürich makes Mileva happy because it reminds her of her time at the Polytechnic, even though Albert didn’t fulfill his promise to include her in his work. Mileva and Albert make friends with an enigmatic couple, Friedrich Adler and Katya Germanischkaya, and Mileva becomes pregnant with their third child. Everything is going well until Albert is offered an elite job at the German University of Prague, a position that includes Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics. Mileva wants to stay in Zürich, even though she knows the job in Prague is lucrative and prestigious. She gives birth to their second son, Eduard, nicknamed Tete, in July 1910. Albert agrees to reject the job offer but resents Mileva for it.
Mileva opens a letter for Albert informing him of his nomination for the Nobel Prize for his 1905 paper on relativity. Though Mileva is disappointed that her own contributions to the paper are ignored, she is happy to see that her private memorial for Lieserl yielded such results. Albert is satisfied to be recognized for his work but seems to ignore his wife’s work on the paper completely. Mileva realizes that the relationship she worked hard to nurture with Albert is over, but she can’t leave him, for the sake of the children. She proposes that they move to Prague.
The Einsteins move to Prague during a politically tumultuous time. Mileva struggles in the more industrial city; the air and fruit are dirtier, and Tete often falls ill. During one of Tete’s worst illnesses, Albert is away at a prestigious conference. She asks Albert if they can move away from Prague to protect the children’s health. Albert again accuses Mileva of thinking only of herself.
Part 2, Chapter 34 Summary
The narrative flashes forward to 1912. Albert receives a better job offer at the Polytechnic, so, to Mileva’s relief, they move back to Zürich. They receive a visit from their old classmate Marcel Grossman. Mileva implies that she helped Albert with the 1905 papers, which delights Marcel and confirms his suspicions. Albert dismisses the conversation with a glare and asks Marcel to work with him on an expansion of the theory of relativity that would connect it with theories of gravity. That Albert doesn’t include Mileva in this new project is his ultimate betrayal.
Part 2, Chapter 35 Summary
Albert and Marcel struggle to extend the theory of relativity, but Mileva has secretly thought and read on the subject for years. She knows how to help but doesn’t volunteer her theories: “If Albert wasn’t going to invite me, I wasn’t going to dance for him. I let him struggle. It was my only actual rebellion against his ever-mounting annoyance with me” (271). She organizes Albert’s office and stumbles across a note from his cousin Elsa that recalls Albert’s words of love to her and acknowledges that she can’t have him because he's married. When Mileva confronts Albert about his affair, he tells her she drove him to it. Mileva and Albert get into a fight, and he hits her across the face.
Part 2, Chapters 26-35 Analysis
Part 2 of The Other Einstein articulates the deterioration of Albert and Mileva’s relationship and provides the reason for the title of the novel. As soon as they marry, he begins a years-long othering of Mileva. The Einstein name becomes so renowned and synonymous with Albert that Mileva will always be relegated to the role of the “other,” even in a novel dedicated to her story. Einstein successfully crafts his identity so that history will center him and forget the “other Einstein.”
In Chapter 26, Mileva notes that her husband is “a genius at everything but the human heart” (215). Here, she identifies one of Albert’s major flaws—his lack of empathy. His true love is his work. Any passion and respect he once had for Mileva is transferred to science. She once shared in this love for their field of study, but years of being silenced diminish her engagement in it.
The silencing begins when Albert arranges for Mileva’s name to be left off their paper on the theory of relativity, a theory that was mostly hers. This betrayal cuts deep. Not only does he rob Mileva of her intellectual property again but he also degrades her symbolic memorial to Lieserl. Because Mileva constructed her theory while grieving her daughter, the publication of the paper was her way of paying homage to her daughter who inspired her. Albert takes away more than Mileva’s intellectual integrity—he also robs her of her opportunity to honor their daughter. The excuse given for this betrayal is that he shouldn’t associate his professional work with someone who doesn’t have academic credentials, and Mileva didn’t receive her degree or her doctorate—because of him. This excuse is thin; academic publications would honor her contributions if the extent of her work were known. This is the first of many betrayals, a dark foreshadowing of conflicts to come.
The second betrayal is another silencing. Benedict introduces Paul and Conrad Habicht, historical figures who were friends with Albert in real life. They worked closely with Albert and were successful engineers. He purposefully keeps Mileva’s name off the patents for the machine that she designed. Not only does he rob her again of her intellectual work, but, to add insult to injury, it is Paul who notices the absence of her name. Paul’s acknowledgement implies that Einstein's unprofessional attitude toward Mileva is as surprising to men as it is to her. It cannot then be used as a defense that Albert leaves Mileva off her work because having a woman’s name would hurt their chances at success. Instead, his second betrayal signifies a genuine lack of care for Mileva’s hard work and a concerted effort to steal her ideas. The name Einstein means “one stone,” a play on words the couple uses to symbolize their relationship, but one that in this case erases and devalues Mileva. When she married Albert, Mileva didn’t become “Einstein,” nor did she morph into his support system. She still exists as an individual and an intelligent woman. He no longer appreciates this about her, foreshadowing a disastrous end to their relationship.
Mileva is a liability to Albert. He steadily gains fame in the physics community, and the idea that his wife helped develop his famous theories in any way would take attention away from him. By gaslighting Mileva and keeping her name off his publications, he ensured that only he would be eligible for such prestigious prizes as the Nobel, although his professional success occurred because of her. The dynamics of their relationship become more difficult as the years go on. Einstein pigeonholes Mileva into the role of a housewife, knowing that she has no real exit. It was uncommon and dishonorable to get a divorce in the early 20th century, and Mileva doesn’t have income of her own. Therefore, she must navigate her tumultuous relationship for the sake of her survival and that of her children. Though there was a time in their early dating years when Albert assured Mileva that he respected her intellect and wanted her to be an equal partner, the moment she gained attention, his attitude toward their relationship changed.
Benedict includes other important historical allusions in these final chapters of Part 2. She references Anna Meyer-Schmid and Albert’s cousin Elsa. Though Anna Meyer-Schmid was a real person who had a flirtatious correspondence with him, their affair doesn’t seem to have been fulfilled. Elsa, on the other hand, did have an affair with Albert while he was married to Mileva, even though she was his first cousin. A reader of Benedict’s novel familiar with his biography would recognize Elsa as Albert’s second wife. They had a notoriously toxic marriage in which he repeatedly cheated on her. His correspondence was published well after his death, and these letters revealed a cruel streak toward both of his wives. He was often demanding, rejected affection, and was unable to deal with their emotions. As with Mileva, Einstein kept Elsa waiting to marry him for a long time.
In these chapters, the Mr. Grossman of Part 1 is revealed to be Marcel Grossman, a real-life figure who was a mathematician and close friend and co-worker of Einstein’s.
Another important historical reference in these chapters is the conflict brewing in Prague in the 1910s. Political strife among European countries led to World War I, which officially started in 1914 after Austria declared war on Serbia in response to the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. As a Serbian woman in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Mileva faces difficulty during this era. Furthermore, antisemitism is rapidly rising during this section of the novel, and Albert nearly loses out on a university job because he is Jewish. At the time, many institutions had rules in place that kept Jewish people from employment, particularly in prestigious positions. These issues foreshadow World War I and World War II, two conflicts that define the 20th-century West.
Lastly, Benedict includes many references to Mileva’s second son’s illnesses. Tete was often ill as a child. As an adult, he would be institutionalized for three decades and struggle with schizophrenia. His issues begin to reveal themselves in his childhood.
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