Features
The Dark Side of Albert: Einstein and Mileva Marić, his First Wife
By DAVID TOPPER Albert Einstein was the most photographed scientist of the 20th century. The scope of emotions depicted range from the serious to the silly: from looking like a secular saint with hands folded and deep in contemplation of supposedly solemn thoughts, to the image hanging in front of me on the bulletin board over my computer table, showing him sticking out his tongue at the cameraman. Living during the heyday of the development of the film camera, he and the press surely took advantage of it. The positive persona of the genius was formed out of these visual images. This visual disposition was supplemented with endless quotations on not only science and the universe, but also with homilies on life and how to live it, with much of that which you will find quoted, being things he never said. Overall, the general image of him and his personality has him coming out seemingly squeaky-clean.
Nonetheless, those of us who have looked into the man in more detail are aware of episodes of less than saintly behavior by Albert – the famous scientific idol. If, for example, you read any of the half-dozen or so lengthy biographies about him, you will find scattered therein stories of him speaking inappropriately or behaving, one might say, as a jerk. Having read all those books, and others – and even written three books on him myself – I knew this. So when I started reading a recent long biography of his first wife, Mileva Marić, I had no reason to think I’d be shocked, since I had already read a lot about her, including a book of letters to and from her best friend, which also contained a brief biography. But to my surprise, I was staggered in reading over 400 pages of his nasty behavior concentrated around this one woman – a woman whom he fell in love with as a university student, and who was the only mother of his children.
Here is the sad – and probably surprising to most readers – story of Mileva and Albert.
Mileva Marić was born on December 19, 1875, into a Christian Orthodox Serbian family. With a dislocated left hip, she walked with a limp throughout her life. (Her sister, Zorka, had the same congenital condition.) Forced to wear an orthopedic shoe, she was teased and mocked in school. Nonetheless, this very bright girl filled her lonely childhood with her studies (she was especially good at math) and piano lessons. Encouraged by a very loving father, she excelled in school, and was the first girl to attend high school physics courses in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After graduating in 1896, she applied to the prestigious Zurich Polytechnic, since in Switzerland women were admitted to all classes. She passed the entrance exam and majored in mathematics. It was a small freshman class of about two-dozen students, she being the only woman. That’s where she met, in the even smaller physics course, fellow student, Albert Einstein.
One of the earliest pictures we have of Mileva is dated 1897. In this portrait, I see a very serious, confident, determined woman with large penetrating eyes, a full crop of dark wavy hair and full lips. I would call her plain but attractive. I say this, because I was shocked at several instances when someone, upon first meeting Mileva, is quoted as describing her as “ugly.”
As a fellow student, Albert Einstein was attracted to her, and they quickly became a couple. He probably was the first male to take a romantic interest in her, overlooking her “handicap.” I suspect he was attracted to her gutsy attitude and her smartness. Plus, being Serbian, Mileva exuded an exotic “otherness” to the “German” in Albert. They spent most of their free time together, studying and falling in love. She did well in her courses, initially passing all of them, as Albert did too (of course). That is, until she was pregnant – a fact she tried to hide until she could not. And so she went home to her parents to inform them of this, and eventfully to have the baby.
Her parents were very supportive, which was unusual for the times. A girl was born early in 1902; they named her Lieserl (probably a Yiddish diminutive of Liese, a shortened Elizabeth). Albert stayed in Zurich and never saw his daughter; she was raised by Mileva’s parents, as Mileva returned to Zurich to continue her studies. No one knows what ultimately happened to Lieserl; she has seemingly vanished from all records. She may have died from Scarlet Fever as a child; or, she may have been adopted and grew up. One thing I do know: Mileva never forgot her. I believe that the loss of Lieserl is the major reason for Mileva’s depression and lingering melancholia throughout her life – as will be seen. As a result, she didn’t take care of her grooming and was a bit overweight – as seen in photos of her later in life. This, I suspect, may be a source of her “ugliness.”
Back to Zurich in the late 1890s and her studies: she passed all her courses over the first three years, and in her fourth year she started her thesis, hoping for a diploma and further work toward a PhD. But in 1900 she failed her final exams, while the other male students all passed. In July 1901 she repeated her final exams and flunked them again. I find it hard to believe that this sudden change in her performance was due to the tests being too tough for this woman, in light of all we know of her up to this time. Look at the last date above: she was pregnant with her child. I’m convinced that she just couldn’t concentrate on her studies. Albert passed, graduated, and started looking for a job – as well as working toward his PhD.
On January 6, 1903, they were married in a small civil ceremony. Mileva became a housewife; no more thinking of going any further in her studies. She then became the mother of two boys: Hans Albert (born in 1904) and Eduard (nicknamed Tete; in 1910).
All that promise came to nothing, not even a university degree. If she had not met Albert, who knows what she would have achieved? But that was not the path taken, and since she married what became the most famous scientist of the 20th century – if not the most famous person, as Time Magazine said at the end of the millennium – that’s why there is a plethora of documentation about her life, terribly sad as it was.
Now briefly fast forward a century or so, to around 1987, and the publication of the early love letters between Albert and Mileva, which had only been known by a few, and purposely suppressed. For example, Hans Albert, who had the letters much earlier, had wanted to publish them. But he was thwarted by Helen Dukas and Otto Nathan, who threatened litigation. Dukas was Albert’s lifelong secretary and Nathan was an economist and close friend, who eventually was the executor of Einstein’s will. And so, the letters never surfaced until Dukas and Nathan were both dead.
Even today, writing about these letters is an ideological minefield. Here’s why. The letters date from 1899 to 1903, when a new theory of physics was brewing in Albert’s mind. The result, in the so-called miracle year of 1905, was the publication of five papers that changed physics forever: two on what became his Theory of Relativity; one on a particle theory (much later called a photon) of light, as part of the emerging Quantum Theory; and two supporting the reality of atoms, which were still only hypothetical entities at this time. Knowing this, how much can we read into the love letters when Albert, in talking about his scientific ideas, uses “we” and “our work”? Well, it seems, a lot; for the initial response from primarily feminist quarters was that Mileva should at least be seen as a co-author of the famous papers, since it seemed that they conceived of the theory together. Given, as we will see, Albert’s shabby treatment of her later in life, then all the more sympathy was directed toward Mileva and her plight by history. Indeed, some went so far (you will still find websites saying this) that Albert stole the theory of relativity from Mileva. Nonetheless, after that initial flurry of debate, the consensus has moved away from this viewpoint, so that today the select scholars looking over the Einstein Papers Project in Pasadena, California assert unabashedly that Mileva made no input to Albert’s theory.
Nonetheless, I am one of the few “Einstein scholars” (if I may call myself such), who gives Mileva some credit in the 1905 marvel. She was good at mathematics, she had patience in her life and work, and she was a thorough researcher – all qualities severely lacking in Albert. Let me put it this way: over his life as a physicist, Einstein hired a series of companions (whom he called “calculators”) to do the tedious and complicated mathematics required for his theory, especially as it developed over the later years with the use of tensor calculus in his General Theory of Relativity. All were men; except, famously, his last calculator was the Israeli-American woman, Buria Kaufmann – about whom you will read in the literature as his “first female calculator.” (Incidentally, there is a website giving her credit for Einstein’s later theory, which is complete fiction.) I, however, would assert that Buria was the second woman; for Mileva was Albert’s first “calculator.” She was also his researcher and proofreader. Since she knew the physics, as we know from the letters, she also was his sounding-board – Albert bouncing ideas off of Mileva, as they say.
So, what about Albert speaking of “we” and “our work”? Let me put this into context by quoting from some of the letters in chronological order. In a letter Mileva wrote to Helene Savić (née Kaufler), her closest and longest friend throughout her life (they roomed together in a boarding house in Zurich when they were students), she speaks of a paper “written” by Albert that will be published soon that is “very significant.” She then says that “we” sent it to an important physicist – revealing how much she was involved with Albert’s work. Later in a letter from Albert to Mileva, let me quote from the opening lines to give you a trace of their intimacy: “Thank you very much for your little letter and all the true love that’s in it. I kiss and hug you for it from all my heart, exactly the way you would want it & are entitled to, love.” He then goes into a discussion of other people, followed by his going back to how much they love each other, and ending with this key sentence. “How happy and proud I will be when the two of us together will have brought our work on the relative motion to a victorious conclusion.” I put in italics the famous (or is it infamous?) phrase: our work. But there’s nothing more on this, although a bit later in the letter he goes on to talk about another physics problem he is working on: specific heats. He discusses the physics problem in detail, with equations and his proposed solution, and he ends the topic with this: “Don’t forget to look up to what extent glass obeys the law of Dulong and Petit.” My guess is that it was this sort of task that was part of their work together. The letter ends where it began. “Tender greetings and kisses, my dear little dumpling, from your … Albert.”
I’ll leave the topic there, nonetheless aware of the possibility that Mileva did help Albert in even more significant ways, and that hence she’s been slighted by history.
Back to Zurich in 1903. Initially, their life together was harmonious, a reflection of the camaraderie in the love letters, as she kept house and raised her boys. But by around 1909, when Albert was being seen as an important physicist, there clearly was a severe strain on the marriage. For example, in a letter that year to Helene, she says that Albert “lives only for his work” and the family is “unimportant to him.” By 1914, when they moved to Berlin for Albert’s prestigious position at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics, their marriage entered a new phase. In fact, Albert had been having relations with a divorced cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, who lived in Berlin. Moreover, Albert made it clear to Mileva that their previous relationship was over. He went so far as to give her a list of demands: that she do the laundry, prepare him three meals a day, and keep his office clean – all without any personal relations. No intimacy in the house, and no being together in public. It was degradingly cruel: Mileva’s role was reduced to being a maid and cook. She tried to accept it, but quickly found that she couldn’t endure the humiliation; and so she took her two boys back to Zurich, where she remained for the rest of her life.
They officially divorced in 1919, and Albert immediately married Elsa – all in the same year that he became the world-famous scientist, because of the solar eclipse experiment that proved that light from a star is bent around the sun, as predicted by his theory. He got the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 and transferred the money to a bank in Zurich for the support of their boys, where Mileva had access to the interest in the account.
What happened after all that infatuation seen in the love letters and in their early life together? In retrospect, Mileva surely realized that she had ignored or overlooked what we might call the dark side of Albert. As a student he was overly sarcastic, often mocking and even degrading people whom he saw as inadequate or not too smart. He even teased her in ways that revealed an underlying hostility. When she pointed this out, he would laugh it off – and she’d forgive him. In a letter to Helena in 1900 she writes of Albert’s “wicked words with deeds! What an insolent boy he is, and yet I love him so much!” Telling words. Even after the acrimonious divorce, she still, as will be seen, was under Albert’s spell. I believe that she never got over that initial infatuation when they were students. It became a pattern: she was always trying to get on his good side.
Overall, Albert was very much a 19th century male chauvinist in his attitude and communications with women. Here are some of his words about women that reveal his overt misogyny: they are “passive, insecure, needy, and wanting to be dominated.” I knew that he liked to flirt with women throughout his life. But seeing him do so with other wives, with Mileva present, made it less frivolous and more malicious. In short, he was a cad and a rake, rolled into one.
The turnaround in their relationship seemed to bring out the worst in him. He was petty and vindictive, and especially very cruel towards her. There is no direct evidence of any real physical abuse. However, there was an incident in the spring of 1913 when a friend reported seeing Mileva with a badly swollen face, which was attributed to a “toothache” – and hence she and Albert missed some social events. Possibly the swollen face was a sign of something more malevolent, but we will never know the truth. Nonetheless, pondering this, I wish to quote something Albert wrote in a letter in 1925: “Not only children need a bit of thrashing, but also grownups and especially women.” And I’ll leave it there.
After the divorce, he accused her of poisoning his relationship with the boys – a common trope between divorcing couples. But it got more vicious as her financial situation became grave, and she asked for more money. She made some extra money tutoring students in math and giving piano lessons. But it wasn’t enough. Albert’s letters to her contain nasty personal attacks: saying she is “abnormal,” a “nonentity,” and that her pleading is “rubbish.” I can only imagine how Mileva felt being called this. At the time, she was in severe physical pain with chronic back problems, often forcing her into bed for long periods, even stays in hospital, when she was trying to raise two boys alone. Moreover, all this was exacerbated by problems in her Serbian family. Her sister Zorka was diagnosed as schizophrenic and was in and out of asylums; her only living brother disappeared into Russia after World War I; and her parents had serious financial problems.
Could it get any worse? It could. And it did. Tete became a handful. He was very bright and creative; he had musical talent on the piano, and he wrote promising poems and stories. But he was also prone to falling into depressive episodes, for apparently no reason – anger fits, throwing things, being out of control. I suppose Mileva saw this coming: Tete, like her sister, eventually was diagnosed as schizophrenic.
Albert, of course, knew all this, but being in Berlin, he didn’t have to deal with it. He did make occasional visits and took summer trips with the boys (giving Mileva short breaks), all while he was still living in Europe. But when he moved to Princeton, N.J., in 1933, with Hitler in power in Germany and Einstein’s name being high on a hit list, their meetings were over; until 1938, when Hans Albert (now with a wife and two children) moved to the USA. The last meeting between Albert and Tete is recorded in a 1933 photograph that bears a close look. Both are seated in a room, with Tete looking over a large, open portfolio – perhaps reading it. Albert is facing in a different direction (about 90-degrees away), holding a violin and bow, and staring off into space. It may be that Tete is reading to him, but more likely they are inhabiting two different worlds.
In the years during World War II, living in Zurich, Switzerland (a country surrounded by a Nazi-occupied Europe), Mileva was terrified that the Nazis would swoop up this last free space. Moreover, she knew that they were rounding up Jews by the trainloads and moving them to Concentration Camps. She was somewhat safe as an Orthodox Christian, but Tete was “Jewish,” being a child of Einstein. She wrote pleading letters to Albert, asking him to take Tete to the USA. She even contacted the Red Cross, and they agreed that the best bet was to get Albert to sponsor him. “Bring us to safety,” she wrote. But being Mileva – ever still the dutiful wife, even though they had been divorced for two decades – she added (and I assert that she was not being sarcastic in saying this), “[I am] not intending to disturb your peace and freedom.” Petrified that “Tete is in danger because he is your son,” she concluded: “you can’t just leave him in the lurch.”
In fact, Einstein, Dukas, and Nathan were diligently rescuing Jews from Europe by using Einstein’s name to get emigration papers and such. Albert once spoke of this, saying that they were running a little refugee office over his cluttered “lawyer’s desk.” And they did save lives. Relevant here is a 1939 letter from Albert to Helena on this very topic. Helena’s father was Jewish, and she had numerous relatives whose lives were in peril, and so apparently, she was asking Albert for help. He wrote in response. “How gladly would I help! But I am desperately trying to at least get younger people out. Relocation of old people must under present horrible conditions be set aside.” In the end, we know of two aunts of Helena who died in gas chambers. Interestingly, in this same letter, Albert mentions that Hans is now in America, but that Tete is with Mileva in Zurich, saying that Tete is “incurably mentally ill.”
So, what about Tete? And Mileva’s pleading letters? As far as we know, these pleading requests were never answered. Albert, it seems, did leave his son “in the lurch.” My guess is that he just couldn’t fathom the chaos in his life of dealing with someone with such a severe mental illness. Listen to what he later wrote to Hans about Tete after learning of Mileva’s death. “If I had been fully informed [apparently referring here to what he saw as a genetic mental illness in Mileva’s family], he [Tete] would never have come into the world.” I can only imagine how Hans must have felt after reading these appalling words from his father about his beloved brother. Sometimes Albert’s behavior is plainly pathetic. Fortunately, the Nazis never invaded Switzerland.
Much of Mileva’s adult life was centred on Tete, as she watched him descend into the depths of mental illness. Overweight and chain-smoking, he was in and out of mental institutions. For Mileva, he was a full-time job. She, being the caring mother, was obsessed with making sure he would be safe after she died. And she succeeded; for seven years after his mother died, he lived in the renowned Burghölzli psychiatric clinic in Zurich. He was 55 when he died.
I believe Mileva never got over two things: the loss of Lieserl and her infatuation with Albert. We don’t know what happened to Lieserl; but Mileva surely did, and it haunted her all of her life; as seen, she flunked her final chance for a university degree because of it. Lieserl was a source of her constant despondent behaviour and possibly her so-called “ugliness.” In a letter to Helena in 1925 she wrote of “my unfulfilled desire for a daughter”– another telling phrase, since she had a daughter, but was forced to abandon her.
Regarding Albert, no matter how abusive he was, Mileva still was open to forgiveness. She once asked herself this question: “When has a man ever listened to reason, when a woman is involved?” She should have listened to her own words.
Mileva Marić died on August 4, 1948, at the age of 72.
This story of Albert falling in and out of love with Mileva was not the first such episode in his life. It was previewed by and even overlapped with his first sweetheart: Marie Winteler.
In 1895 he spent a year enrolled in the cantonal school in the town of Aarau, near Zurich. He had taken the rigorous entrance exams for the Polytechnic (which Mileva later passed) and had flunked the non-science and non-math parts. But since he did so well on the science and math parts, it was recommended that he do a year of make-up in Aarau; plus, he was applying at age 16, a year early. He boarded with the family of Jost Winteler, a teacher at the school. Jost and Pauline had three daughters, the prettiest being Marie, two years older than Albert. Albert quickly fell for her, and she for him. She was an accomplished pianist, and so their love interests were supplemented with piano and violin duets. After that year, and after passing the entrance requirement at the Polytechnic, Albert moved to Zurich – where he met Mileva, and then broke off with Marie. In short, he jilted her, as he would later do with Mileva.
Marie, however, thought the relationship was to be forever, and wrote pleading letters when he stopped writing to her. After all, he was still mailing her his dirty laundry to wash and send back. (I am not making this up.) Being deeply hurt, she fell into a depression that (may have) plagued her throughout her life. She became a schoolteacher (whose records show that she missed a lot of classes due to sickness); in 1911 she married a man whose first name was Albert. They had two boys, but divorced in 1927. We also know that she tried to reach the first Albert in the 1940s about emigrating to the USA, but there is no record of his having received her letters. (Albert’s secretary was known to censor his mail.) She died in a mental institution in 1957, two years after Einstein died.
I mention this for two reasons. One, the obvious – this being a preview to the story of Albert’s shabby treatment of Mileva and the parallel terrible consequences. The other reason is the dirty laundry. This, also obviously, needs to be explained.
In 2019 I published an historical novel on Einstein’s life, called A Solitary Smile. In it, Marie is one of the characters, especially near the end and in a dream sequence that has Einstein recalling their time together, where he realizes how he hurt her. In recalling this part of my book, while writing this story of Mileva, and now Marie again – I suddenly realized that I didn’t include the dirty laundry bit. Why? I knew it then, as I do now. So why not mention it? Ruminating on this, I can only surmise that I was subconsciously protecting Albert from more scorn. Why dig up all the dirt (seemingly, literally in this case). How interesting this is. Me, being part of the problem. Protecting Albert’s image.
Well, I caught myself. And here I acknowledge my error – to supplement my saga on the dark side of Albert Einstein.
* * *
Readings: Mileva Marić Einstein: Life with Albert Einstein, by Radmila Milentijević (United World Press, 2010). In Albert’s Shadow: The Life and Letters of Mileva Marić: Einstein’s First Wife, edited by Milan Popović (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). A Solitary Smile: A Novel on Einstein, by David R. Topper (Bee Line Press, 2019).
Features
Winnipeg’s Jewish Community and the Question of Online Casino Bonuses: What Manitoba Players Should Know
A reader wrote in last month asking a simple question: is it legal to play online casino games in Manitoba, and if so, what’s actually a fair deal? It’s the kind of practical, money-conscious question this paper’s readers tend to ask before spending anything, the same instinct that shapes how the community shops, budgets for the High Holidays, or decides which shul renovation appeal to support. Manitoba’s online gambling landscape has changed enough in the last few years that the old assumptions no longer hold, and it’s worth walking through what’s actually there now.
Manitoba’s Online Casino Landscape in 2026
Manitoba doesn’t have an open, competitive online casino market the way Ontario does. Since April 2022, Ontario has allowed private operators to apply for licences and compete for players directly. Manitoba still runs a single-operator model: Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries (MLL), the Crown corporation that also runs the province’s Liquor Marts and lottery products, operates the one legal online casino for Manitoba residents, PlayNow.com. That’s the whole regulated market in this province. Outside that single option, Manitobans who search for online casinos will find dozens of sites willing to take their money and their information, a pattern this paper’s own Local/Canadian News coverage has tracked as provinces across the country adjust their approach to regulated gambling. Some are licensed elsewhere, Malta, Curaçao, the UK, and operate in a legal grey zone for Canadian players; enforcement against them has been inconsistent for years. None of them answers to Manitoba’s regulator, and none of them contributes a dollar back to this province.
How Casino Welcome Bonuses Are Structured and Regulated
A welcome bonus is usually presented as free money: deposit $50, get $50 in bonus funds, sometimes with free spins attached. What matters is the fine print attached to it. Wagering requirements determine how many times you must play through the bonus amount before you can withdraw any winnings; a 30x requirement on a $50 bonus means $1,500 in total wagering before that money is really yours. Game weighting matters too: slots typically count 100% toward that requirement, table games often count 10% or less, which punishes anyone who prefers blackjack over slot spins. Time limits, usually 7 to 30 days, and maximum bet sizes while a bonus is active, round out the list of terms most players skip past. On PlayNow.com, these terms are published in plain language and reviewed by a provincial Crown corporation with community accountability baked into its mandate, the same mandate that funds Manitoba’s healthcare and education budgets. That’s a meaningfully different relationship than the one an offshore site has with a Manitoba customer.
The Difference Between Licensed Canadian Operators and Offshore Alternatives
This is where the practical stakes are highest. A licensed Canadian platform is subject to specific consumer protections: verified game fairness, dispute resolution through a regulator you can actually reach, and deposit-limit tools that work. An offshore operator answers to a foreign licensing body, if it answers to anyone at all. Winnipeggers who’ve had a withdrawal disputed by an offshore casino know how limited the recourse actually is; there’s no Manitoba office to call and no local regulator with jurisdiction. Across the country, players comparing regulated options increasingly start by checking a best casino bonus Canada comparison rather than relying on whichever ad appears first. It’s a reasonable way to sort a legitimate Canadian-licensed platform from an offshore look-alike before depositing anything.
Responsible Gambling Resources Available in Manitoba
This part matters more than the bonus terms. MLL runs Informed Gambling, its dedicated responsible-gambling program, which includes deposit and time-limit tools, self-exclusion options, and educational material aimed at helping players recognize when a habit has become a problem before it becomes a crisis. Manitobans concerned about their own gambling, or a family member’s, can call the Manitoba Addictions Helpline, toll-free at 1-855-662-6605, for confidential support. Shared Health, formerly the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba, also provides professional counselling free of charge to anyone who needs it, regardless of ability to pay. For a community that has always taken care of its own, through the Chesed Shel Emes, through synagogue-run support networks, through the kind of quiet checking-in that happens after a funeral or a hard year, these resources are worth knowing before they’re needed, not after. Chasing a Canadian online casino bonus isn’t worth it if the wagering requirements are already causing strain. That’s a conversation worth having, honestly, inside families and inside the community, before it becomes a private one.
Where to Compare Current Casino Bonus Offers Across Licensed Platforms
None of this is an argument against playing. It’s an argument for playing somewhere accountable, with terms you understand, and for a modest amount you’ve already decided you can afford to lose. Manitoba’s single-operator model makes that comparison simpler than Ontario’s crowded market, but it also means doing the homework on wagering requirements and licensing status matters just as much, if not more, when there’s only one legal option and a long list of unregulated ones competing for the same click. Ask the question before depositing, not after; that’s the same advice this community gives about most things worth being careful with.
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Embracing your femininity in Tishrei
By ELENA KNIGHT Rosh Chodesh Sameach! This month, Tishrei, is a time of beginnings; we observe Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah, we celebrate humanity’s creation, and we celebrate the seventh month since the Exodus from Egypt with shofar and festivities.
Though all Jewish people celebrate the head of the month, traditionally, women are rewarded for not participating in the sin of the Golden Calf, and many women take the day to honour the Shechinah, the feminine mystical aspect of the divine. Literally meaning “dwelling,” the Shechinah relates to G-d’s close and relational presence amongst people, such as in the Temple. In Kabbalah, since the word is grammatically feminine, the Shechinah is seen as the feminine aspect of G-d, representing a nurturing, compassionate presence, an almost motherly form of the divine. But how can we honour the Shechinah specific to Tishrei?
Rosh Hashanah provides a straightforward answer: New Year’s resolutions. A tradition observed across the globe, by people of all traditions and faiths, we can apply the idea to our New Year, and think of ways to improve in the year 5787. Make a resolution to join a women’s group at your synagogue or JCC, support woman-owned businesses (the SHE-Canada directory can help you find them!), read up on feminist theory or history, or mentor a young girl in your community. And, like traditional resolutions, don’t kick yourself if you slip up!
While we listen to the shofar, recall that its sound awakens the soul, mystically preparing us all for the Shechinah’s manifest presence on Yom Kippur, when it comes to earth to bring realignment and forgiveness.
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, also offers a way to embrace your feminine side. On this day, we are prohibited from all work, and physical pleasures; though it may sound counter-intuitive, this is the perfect day to be aware of your womanhood in its most natural state. No adornments, no makeup, no perfume, no fancy shoes, no gold jewelry. This is a day when we can see who we are without the extras, as G-d made us, and be aware of the beauty in our creation as is. Also, for any women who are pregnant, nursing, or otherwise exempt from the holiday restrictions, isn’t it amazing to know that our Creator values our health over all?
Sukkot offers a time to appreciate the bounty that G-d has provided over the past year, but what I want to call attention to is the Four Kinds. The etrog has both taste and aroma, the lulav’s fruit, the date, has taste but no aroma, the hadas has aroma but no taste, and the aravah has no taste nor aroma; at some point in our life, and likely at some point in the month, we are all like one of the Four Kinds. The Midrash drew a comparison between taste and Torah learning and between aroma and good deeds. Sometimes, we have etrog moments, when we have a perfect balance between learning and doing, we are in harmony. Sometimes, we have lulav moments, when we prioritize learning over worldly involvement. Sometimes, we have hadas moments, when we prioritize action over enlightenment. And sometimes, we have aravah moments, when we have no energy for learning nor doing. All of these are necessary for living, and during the month of Tishrei, we can appreciate each of these moments. As we sit in our Sukkah, we are wrapped in the wings of the Shechinah, and experiencing its divine protection as we celebrate the Festival of Ingathering.
Shemini Atzeret begins our prayers for rain, and here’s where I get a little extra mystical. Rain is connected to femininity through its association with the womb of creation, fertility, and gentle power which renews life. In Genesis, G-d creates the world from a formless void, using language which conveys ideas of a cosmic womb, a life-generating space which G-d filled with his purpose to design our world. As humanity was created in G-d’s image, the womb metaphor is solidified. As rain comes, it revives the earth, making it fertile, restoring the feminine principles of creativity, emotional depth, and spiritual renewal in the very land we walk on. Rain comes most often as a gentle power, one which arrives calmly, sustaining all life.
Simchat Torah is the time when we celebrate finishing the annual cycle of reading the entire Torah and beginning again. Here, we are brought back to Rosh Hashanah and its new beginnings, with an added layer of holiness and celebration. On this day, it is tradition to dance and revel in the joy of our peoplehood, our identity, our Jewishness, and, let’s add, our femininity. G-d has given us a remarkable gift by making us women. While we revel in the holiness of Torah, let us also revel in the holiness of womanhood.
Features
The tragedy of Clara Haber
By DAVID TOPPER This story of the sad and short life of a remarkable woman, Clara Haber, should be better known. I hope this essay is a step in that direction. Her legacy deserves it.
She was born Clara Helene Immerwahr on June 21, 1870 to two Jewish parents. Interestingly, the German surname breaks down into: immer (always, forever, still) and wahr (true, real, right). Take your pick. I like: Still real.
Being smart and hardworking, she was the first woman to obtain a doctorate in Chemistry from the University of Breslau, part of Germany at the time (today it’s in Poland). This was in 1900. Several years before that, she had converted to Christianity. A year later, 1901, she married Fritz Haber, who also had a doctorate in Chemistry. (He was from Breslau too; they met at a dance.) He was two years older than her, and he also had converted to Christianity, in the early 1890s.
This act of conversion – starting in the early 19th century, when, on the heels of the French Revolution, Jews came out of their ghettos – was more common among European Jews than you might think. There were about 2000 conversions per year throughout the century. Some famous ones are: the poet Heine, the mathematician Kronecker, and the composers Mendelssohn and Mahler. In most cases it was the only road to prestigious appointments, otherwise restricted to Christians.
On June 1, 1902 Clara gave birth to what would be their only child, Hermann. The job of raising Hermann was given to her, Fritz being too busy with his important work in his Chemistry Lab – thus ignoring her work in Chemistry. He put in 18-hour workdays, barely leaving time for dinner (if he ate at home) and some sleep. Plus, Hermann was a sickly child, and hence Clara spent all her time raising him – without Fritz. In letters she spoke of her unhappiness in the marriage: especially “Fritz’s oppressive way of putting himself first in our home and marriage, so that a less ruthlessly self-assertive personality was simply destroyed.” These are harsh and powerful words, expressing her extreme disillusionment and frustration with her married life. Yet it was true; her potentially successful career in Chemistry was dead. She never accomplished anything after her degree. The family and household took all her time and energy.
What, therefore, was this important work that kept Fritz busy and out of the home? He was the Director of the Institute for Chemistry in Berlin. His first major discovery was synthesizing ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas, which revolutionized the production of fertilizer. The result was higher yields in agriculture throughout Europe and eventually the world. (Even today, it’s been estimated that food produced from this process supports almost half of the world’s population.) For this Haber was seen as a hero, alleviating otherwise mass starvation. In 1918 he got the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work.
But there was a flipside to all this: the fertilizer could also be used to make explosives. This too Fritz explored, especially with the start of the First World War in August 1914. Out of this work came poison gases, and thus the creation of chemical warfare.
Fritz was a staunch German patriot and nationalist, supporting the War from the beginning. For example, he signed the “Manifesto of the Ninety-Three,” with other German intellectuals in support of the War. (Incidentally, Albert Einstein, who was living in Berlin at this time – they were good friends – refused to sign the document.)
Fritz not only worked in the lab producing the chemical, he was also involved in supervising their deployment on the war front. Thus, he was in Ypres (near Flanders), Belgium on April 22, 1915. As one historian has drolly put it: “The small Belgium city of Ypres is to chemistry what Hiroshima is to physics.” Indeed, this was the first use of chemical weapons in military history. They released around 170 tons of poison gas across a 4-mile front. There were an estimated 800- 1400 immediate deaths among the French and Algerian troops. Fritz left before the battle was over. During the entire so-called Second Battle of Ypres, from April 22 to May 25 – there were over 67,000 casualties among the French, Canadian, and British troops.
(As an aside: this battle was commemorated by John McCrae, who wrote “In Flanders Fields,” a poem recited every Remembrance Day here in Canada.)
Leaving Belgium, and after a brief stay at home, Haber immediately went to the Eastern Front to oversee gas released against the Russian Army. For all this work, he was given the rank of Captain by the Kaiser.
Meanwhile, Clara, usually alone, was raising Hermann, and taking care of the household, not having time to explore all the chemistry she would like to do. In letters she says that her husband’s work with poison gases is a “perversion of the ideals of science” and “a sign of barbarity, corrupting the very discipline which ought to bring new insights into life.” She also witnessed the accidental death of a former classmate, who was in Fritz’s lab working with these chemicals. To make matters worse, she was hearing rumours of Fritz’s involvement with other women. (Humm, it seems he found time for that!)
When Fritz returned home from Belgium (I don’t know the exact date), and before he left for Russia on May 3rd, there was a celebration at their home on the success of the gas attack. There are reports of arguments between Fritz and Clara, but we don’t know the details. What we do know, as a fact, is this. On the following morning, May 2, 1915, Clara took Fritz’s military pistol and walked into their garden. She shot into the air (presumably to test the gun) and then, pointing it into her chest – she pulled the trigger. Hermann heard the shots, ran into the garden – and his mother died in his arms. The following morning, Fritz left for Russia, to supervise the gas attack on the Eastern Front.
At this point in my story, Clara is gone. But there’s more to tell, and – if she knew the rest – I’m sure she would want the reader to know it too. Especially this.
During the final weeks of the First World War, on the Western Front, the Allies now launched a series of gas attacks in the district of Ypres on the Germans. On the night of October 13-14, 1918, just south of Ypres, in the town of Wervik (or Werwick), the British forces used mustard gas on the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment. One German corporal serving as a messenger in the army was caught in the attack, and was partially blinded. He was able to stagger to safety and eventually was taken to a military hospital in Germany to recover. We know about this because he wrote about it in his 1925 book, Mein Kampf. Adolph Hitler recalled: “I stumbled and tottered back with burning eyes…. [M]y eyes were turned into glowing coals; it had grown dark around me.” He was still in hospital at the end of the War on November 11, 1918, at the signing of the Armistice with Germany’s surrender. While lying blinded, he says he had a vision to enter politics to “save” Germany. How much this is true and how much perhaps psychosomatic, due to the shock of the mustard gas – or just plain hyperbole – we will never know. But it led to his myth of Germany’s “stab in the back” – and all that followed with the rise of the Nazi Party.
In 1933, when the Party took over the country, Fritz was still alive. During the 1920s he had a staff at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute developing more gases, such as the cyanide gas formulation, Zyklon A, which was used as an insecticide to spray on plants. In the spring of 1933, with the passing of Hitler’s law of removing all Jews in professional jobs throughout the country, Fritz was stunned. But it was worse. Fritz not only lost his job: but all his awarded metals, his many accolades, the staunch patriotism and nationalism, his service to the country, even the conversion to Christianity – it all came to naught, since he was a Jew by birth. Thus: his legacy was completely erased from all records, in all German history – as if he never had even existed.
And so, in August, he left the country. He first went to Paris, then to Spain, England, and finally Switzerland. He even took a brief trip to Palestine, where he bequeathed his private Library to the nascent Weizmann Institute, and was offered a position there. He accepted it, but never fulfilled it. He died of severe coronary sclerosis in Basel, on January 29, 1934 at the age of 65.
A major outcome of the Nazification of Germany, as we know, was World War Two. And with that – the Holocaust. Both Clara and Fritz died before all that; but not members of their families.
Most of Clara’s families were assimilated Jewish professionals and intellectuals, which was no buffer to the Nazi plague. Most of the Immerwahrs died in Auschwitz or Theresienstadt. Only a few had fled to France and then the USA. None was in Germany in post-1945.
As for Fritz’s family, he had a younger half-sister, Frieda. She fled to Jerusalem and survived the war. But her children and grandchildren all died in Auschwitz.
Also, after Clara died, Fritz later married Charlotte Nathan. They had two children: Eva and Ludwig. Just before he died, Fritz sent them to Switzerland; from there all three went to England, surviving the Holocaust.
Then there is Hermann, the only child of Clara and Fritz. After the Nazi party took over Germany, Hermann immigrated to the USA. There he married and had a child, Claire, who became a chemist. Not surprisingly, he had episodes of depression over his adult life, eventually committing suicide in 1946. Sometime later, Claire did the same.
As a final point in this part of my story, I note the following fact. The pesticide gas, Zyklon A from Faber’s lab contained an odorant – to warn users. When the Nazis took over Faber’s lab in the Institute, they removed the odorant, producing Zyklon B, the gas used in the mass murders in the gas chambers during the Holocaust.
As a coda to this story, I wish to compare Clara’s story with Mileva Marić, Einstein’s first wife. The reason for this will be seen below.
In brief, here’s Mileva’s story. Born in 1875 to a Christian Orthodox Serbian family, she had a dislocated hip that resulted in her walking with a limp all her life. Although this isolated her as a child growing up, she had a very loving and doting father who encouraged his very bright daughter in her school work (she was especially good at math) and was proficient at the piano. Moreover, she was the first girl to attend high school physics courses in the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire.
After graduation, she applied to the prestigious Zurich Polytechnic, since (as we saw) Switzerland admitted women to all classes. She passed the entrance exam and majored in Mathematics. With all this potential, it seemed that the future was hers to make, even as a woman. Then, in a small Physics course, she met Einstein. They quickly became a couple. Except for the time they spent together, Mileva still did her school work and passed all her courses over the first three years.
In her fourth year she started on a thesis, hoping to get a PhD. But she failed her final exams. She repeated them, but still didn’t pass. What happened? I find it hard to believe that this sudden change in her performance was due to the tests being too tough for her – after all that she achieved up to this time. The thing that was different – and which I believe was the source of her predicament – is this: she was pregnant with a child fathered by Albert. With the baby in her belly, she just couldn’t concentrate on the tests.
She went home to her parents and the child was born (a girl, they named Lieserl). Being illegitimate, Lieserl was left with her parents (who were very supportive) and Mileva went back to live with Albert. They married in January 1903, in a small civil ceremony. Neither set of parents was there. And so, Mileva became a housewife – and eventually the mother of two boys. Like Clara, all the earlier promises came to naught. Mileva didn’t even get a university degree – let alone her aspiration of a PhD.
By around 1909 Albert was being noticed by the physics community for his publications on relativity (a subject he essentially created) and quantum physics. Mileva wrote to her closest friend that Albert “lives only for his work” and that the family “is unimportant to him.” This strain on the marriage came to a peak in the spring of 1914 when they moved to Berlin, where he had accepted a prestigious position in the Physics section of Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.
For this we need to come back to Fritz and his friendship with Einstein. In many ways their friendship was unexpected, since (except for being born Jewish) they had little in common – opposite on the topics of nationalism, patriotism, war (Albert was a pacifist). Even in dress: Fritz was meticulous in his three-piece suits, and Albert sloppy in dress with his hair all over the place. Yet, when they first met in September 1911 at a scientific society meeting in Karlsruhe, they quickly became close friends. In particular, Fritz was so impressed that he became the chief orchestrator to draw Einstein to the position in physics at the Berlin Institute.
Thus, late in 1913, Einstein was offered a position, and he accepted it. But Mileva was reluctant to leave Switzerland. One main reason: Albert had a divorced cousin in Berlin, Elsa, who Mileva knew Albert was visiting when attending meetings in the city. She even suspected (correctly) that it was an intimate relationship.
Nonetheless, around Christmas 1913, Mileva traveled to Berlin to look for a place to live. She stayed with Fritz and Clara, and – not surprisingly, from all we know about them – the two women quickly and deeply bonded. They certainly had lots to talk about: given their similar situations regarding their stifled careers and abusive husbands. Mileva found an apartment, and in April 1914 she, Albert, and their two boys moved to Berlin.
They were not there for even a month, and the marriage entered a new phase. Albert demanded a series of rules for their relationship. Mileva was to do the laundry, prepare him three meals a day, and keep his office clean – all without any personal relations, no intimacy, and never being seen in public together. It was degrading and cruel; she was reduced to being a maid and a cook.
Mileva tried to accept all this, but quickly found that she couldn’t endure the humiliation. Fritz and Clara knew about all this. Clara consoled Mileva. Fritz acted as a mediator, as the marriage completely broke down. Fritz was a witness, signing the separation agreement. In July 1914 Mileva packed up her things, and she and the two boys went back to Switzerland, where she lived for the rest of her life. The following month was the start of the War – and, ultimately, in May 1915, Clara’s suicide.
There it is: Clara’s sad story, and how it overlapped with Mileva Einstein’s story – with ultimately their short, but profound, friendship.
I hope all this helps bring to light the legacy of this potentially brilliant, surely fascinating, and ultimately tragic woman.
Clara Helene Immerwahr Haber is long gone. Yet, for me, she is: Still real.
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Readings:
For Albert’s abusive treatment of Mileva, see: David Topper, “The Dark Side of Albert: Einstein and Mileva Marić, his First Wife,” published in The Academy of the Heart and Mind, February 7, 2025.
For the quotation comparing Ypres and Hiroshima, see: Jörgen Neffe, Einstein: A Biography (2005), p. 252.
