Features
The Winnipegger who changed the course of Calgary’s history

By IRENA KARSHENBAUM Calgary is not known for saving its heritage buildings — although some impressive exceptions exist — so when on March 15 a local real estate investment company, Strategic Group, that is not in the business of heritage restoration, announced they will be restoring the city’s most significant Art Moderne building, the news came as a welcome surprise.
Work has begun on the 1951 Barron Building, once the epitome of chic, that for the last dozen years had stood empty and its future uncertain.
In 1947, when oil was discovered in Leduc, which is closer to Edmonton than to Calgary, oil companies could have settled in the provincial capital instead they were lured to Calgary, thanks to the daring of J.B. Barron, a Winnipeg-native, who saw that the city desperately needed office space and built Calgary’s first post-WWII high-rise. Named the Mobil Oil Building initially, in honour of its biggest tenant and located at 610 8 Avenue S.W., John Barron, J.B. Barron’s oldest grandson who, at the age of five, broke ground in 1949 for the construction of the building, remembers that his grandfather was thought of as “crazy” at the time because, “the city was never going to move that far west.”
Calgary had been struggling through a depression over the previous 35 years since the economic collapse in 1913, so it was hard for the naysayers to imagine a different future.
Calgary’s rising fortunes had their beginnings in Winnipeg.
Born in 1863, Joseph Samuel Barron arrived in Winnipeg in 1880 from Kiev. In 1887, he married 18-year-old Kiev-native, Elizabeth Belapolsky, and the couple had two sons, J.B. (Jacob Bell), born in 1888 and, Abraham, who followed in 1889.
Not immune to the gold rush fever that had spread across North America, in 1898 J.S. Barron left behind his family in Winnipeg and headed to Dawson City enduring an arduous journey by climbing through the White Pass on foot, carrying his merchandise on his back.
A lucky few struck it rich during the Klondike Gold Rush, which lasted only from 1896 to 1899, but most did not – J.S. Barron among them. In 1899, when gold was found in Nome, Alaska, people abandoned Dawson City to seek their fortunes in Nome. J.S. Barron remained.
Elizabeth waited for her husband to return and finally, in 1902, set out on a difficult journey with her two young sons. They traveled from Winnipeg to Regina to Calgary to Seattle by train, where they boarded a liner that sailed north to Skagway on the coast of Alaska, then by railroad to Whitehorse, where they boarded the Casca sternwheeler, which sailed on the Yukon River, and finally arrived in Dawson City.
J.B. and Abe were the first graduates of Dawson City High School and, in 1905, while the father remained in the Yukon, headed with their mother to the University of Chicago, where they studied law. Elizabeth supported her sons by sewing dresses for Vaudeville and Yiddish Theatre actresses and cooking for them. Following graduation, in 1911, J.B. Barron came to Calgary at the urging of his uncle, Charlie Bell, who had recently built the King George Hotel (demolished in 1978). Elizabeth and Abe arrived in Calgary the following year.
Even though J.S.’s mercantile business burned down three times, he continued to stay in Dawson City. Elizabeth had to brave another journey to Dawson City to coax her husband to return to his family. The parents eventually joined their sons in Calgary in 1913, but Joseph passed away in 1917. Elizabeth survived him until 1941.
In 1914, J. B. Barron married fellow Winnipeg-native Amelia Helman, daughter of Odessa-born John Louis Helman and Esther Helman (née Finkelstein), from Shumsk, Ukraine. The couple had three sons: William, Robert and Richard. A teacher, Amelia served as president of the Calgary Chapter of Hadassah and was instrumental in bringing Goldie Myerson and Eleanor Roosevelt to the city.
In 1915, J.B. Barron became the first Jewish lawyer in Calgary to be admitted to the bar. Abe passed the bar in 1919 and the two brothers started the law firm, Barron & Barron. By acting as the solicitor for the Allen brothers, a Jewish family that had established a national movie theatre chain, in 1923, J.B. acquired the Allen’s Palace Theatre on 8th Avenue and discovered his calling, as theatre impresario.
In 1924, he brought the violinist, Jascha Heifitz, and pianist, Sergei Rachmaninoff, who played to thrilled audiences. In 1926, he hired newly-arrived Leon Asper to serve as the conductor of the Palace Concert Orchestra, along with his wife, Cecilia, who played the piano. He convinced Crimean-born, Grigori Garbovitsky, who had settled in Winnipeg, to move to Calgary, where the violinist and conductor founded the Calgary Symphony Orchestra. In 1928, however, J.B. Barron lost control of the Palace Theatre.
It took him another nine years before he would own another theatre, the Sherman Grand. Located in the 1912 Lougheed Building — built by Senator Sir James Lougheed, the grandfather of Premier Peter Lougheed — he bought the theatre from the Lougheed family, giving them much-needed cash. The Lougheeds, who once entertained European royalty in their mansion but, since the death of the senator, and being lenient about collecting rent from their tenants to help keep their businesses afloat during the Great Depression, were themselves on the brink of financial ruin.
Owning the Grand gave J.B. Barron not only the opportunity to return to being a theatre impresario — he brought pianist Artur Rubinstein to Calgary in 1942 and 1944 — but the Chicago Style Lougheed Building would serve as a model for his greatest project yet to come.
Located on the corner of 6th Avenue and 1st Street S.W., the 6-floor, mixed-use building contained the Sherman Grand Theatre, retail at street level, offices and a penthouse. When opened in 1912, it was Calgary’s most prestigious corporate address. (By the end of the 20th century the building was in severe decline and only thanks to a devastating fire in 2004 did it galvanize wide-spread civic support for its restoration.) J.B. Barron used this model to build his own mixed-use building with the Uptown Theatre, stores at street level, office space on the second to tenth floors and an eleventh floor containing office space for his business as well a penthouse for him, since he and Amelia were by then separated. The penthouse opened on to a rooftop garden for his dog, Butch.
Completed at a cost of $1.125 million, the Alberta Association of Architects (ASA) listed the Barron Building as Significant Alberta Architecture. The penthouse design was influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright. The rooftop garden won the Vincent Massey Award for excellence in urban planning for a rooftop garden.
The building housed Sun Oil, Shell Oil, Socony Mobil Oil Company and others. New office towers sprung up around it, inspiring the expression, “the oil patch.” (Built so far west, it also inadvertently saved from demolition early 20th century buildings along the eastern section of 8th Avenue that today make up the Stephen Avenue National Historic District.) Calgary’s position as the oil capital of Canada was sealed.
J.B. Barron passed away in 1965. His sons took over the management of the building until 1981, when they sold it to a Swiss family for what is believed to be $6 million. The real estate market soon collapsed and the building was eventually foreclosed. It stood on the market through the mid 1980s until 1992 when Blake O’Brien, a young banker, placed a joke bid of $250,000 at an auction and found himself the accidental owner of the Barron Building and Uptown Theatre.
Under O’Brien, the Uptown Theatre flourished as if a scene out of Cinema Paradiso, while the rest of the building languished empty like a Sicilian village. For years, O’Brien lived with his own dog in the penthouse, filled with 1950s furniture.
In 2005, while attending a Calgary Centre Hadassah meeting, I met Linda Barron (née Rosenthal), a Winnipeg native. When asked if she had a connection to the Barron Building, she explained that it had been built by the grandfather of her husband, John Barron. My relationship with the Barron family grew, along with my research about their extraordinary grandfather and his building.
In 2009, the building was bought by Strategic Group and its future came into question when the company discarded the contents of the penthouse, removed the theatre marquée ,and ripped out the Uptown Theatre.
Between 2007 and 2013, I advocated for the restoration of the Barron Building and Uptown Theatre by writing articles, giving public talks and, in 2012, witing a submission that included placing the building on that year’s National Trust of Canada Top Most Endangered Places List. This advocacy helped raise awareness of the significance of the building. Representatives of Strategic Group attended my talk for Historic Calgary Week in the summer of 2012 and, in the fall of that year, I was invited to meet with Riaz Mamdani, CEO of Strategic Group, who showed me his plans for the building. I asked Mamdani to restore the Barron Building to the highest heritage standards and make it the jewel in his Strategic crown. I left the meeting uncertain that things would end well. Later, a number of groups wrote to provincial and municipal governments and, in 2014, the Government of Alberta ordered a Historic Resources Impact Assessment.
After years of work, on March 15, Strategic Group announced they will be investing $100 million into the restoration and residential conversion of the Barron Building for which they will receive an $8.5 million incentive from the City of Calgary.
Strategic Group’s investment is likely the largest heritage restoration project in Calgary’s recent history and needs to be recognized and celebrated. The Barron Building’s continued life will serve to tell a wild story of fortunes lost and made across space and time.
With files from Daniel Barron and Donald B. Smith.
Irena Karshenbaum is a writer, historian and heritage advocate living in Calgary. www.irenakarshenbaum.com


Features
Many Religious “Nones” Around the World Hold Spiritual Beliefs

But at lower rates than people who identify with a religion
WASHINGTON, D.C. (Sept. 4, 2025) – Around the world, many people who do not identify with any religion – a population that has climbed rapidly in the recent past – nevertheless hold a variety of spiritual and religious beliefs, according to a Pew Research Center study of 22 countries with relatively large religiously unaffiliated populations. |
In general, religiously unaffiliated people – sometimes called “nones” – are less likely to hold spiritual beliefs, less likely to engage in religious practices and more likely to take a skeptical view of religion’s impact on society than are Christians, Muslims and people who identify with other religions. But sizable percentages of religiously unaffiliated adults do hold some religious or spiritual beliefs. Here are some of the key findings of the study:Who are religious “nones”? “Nones” are adults who describe themselves religiously as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” In nearly all of the 22 countries analyzed in the study, the largest subgroup of “nones” is people who say their religion is “nothing in particular,” rather than those who identify as atheist or agnostic. For more information about these three subgroups, refer to the report’s overview. |
Do “nones” hold religious beliefs or follow religious practices?In all 22 countries surveyed, about a fifth or more of “nones” believe in life after death. The shares who say there is definitely or probably an afterlife range from 19% of unaffiliated adults in Hungary to 65% in Peru. Large shares of “nones” in some countries believe that “there is something spiritual beyond the natural world, even if we cannot see it.” For instance, 61% of “nones” in Mexico and 65% in Brazil express this belief. Many religiously unaffiliated adults also express belief in God. This includes solid majorities of “nones” in South Africa (77%) and in several Latin American countries, such as Brazil (92%), Colombia (86%) and Chile (69%). By contrast, religiously unaffiliated adults in Europe and Australia are much less inclined to believe in God. Just 18% of “nones” in Australia, 10% in Sweden and 9% in Hungary are believers. Compared with the large percentages of “nones” who hold religious beliefs, smaller shares tend to engage in the religious practices asked about in the survey. |
How do “nones” view religion’s impact on society?Many “nones” express negative views about religion’s influence on society. In 12 of the 22 countries studied, religiously unaffiliated adults are more likely to say religion encourages intolerancethan to say it encourages tolerance. In every country included in the analysis, at least half of “nones” say religion encourages superstitious thinking. Across the countries surveyed, a median of 53% say religion mostly hurts society, while a median of 38% say it mostly helps. |
How important is religion to “nones”? Most religiously unaffiliated people feel that religion plays only a minor role in their lives. In half of the 22 countries analyzed, at least six-in-ten “nones” say religion is not at all important to them. In a few countries, however, about half or more of “nones” say religion is either somewhat or very important in their lives. This is the case in Brazil, Colombia, Peru and South Africa – possibly reflecting the prevalence in these countries of traditional African, Afro-Caribbean, or Indigenous and Indian religious beliefs and practices (even among people who don’t identify with any religion). |
These are among the key findings of a new Pew Research Center analysis of 2023-24 surveys conducted in 22 countries with samples of religious “nones” that are large enough to analyze and report separately. The Center interviewed more than 34,000 respondents in the 22 countries, including more than 10,000 who are religiously unaffiliated. This analysis was produced by Pew Research Center as part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which analyzes religious change and its impact on societies around the world. Funding for the Global Religious Futures project comes from The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation. |
To read the report, click here: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/09/04/many-religious-nones-around-the-world-hold-spiritual-beliefs/ |
Features
In Australia, as in Canada, Jews Are on Their Own

By HENRY SREBRNIK Australia and Canada share many similarities, and so do their Jewish communities. Most Jews live in two large cities, in Australia’s case, Melbourne and Sydney. And they have been well off and integrated into society. Yet in both countries, there has been an unprecedented rise in antisemitism.
I would submit that a majority of Australians and Canadians have now lost sympathy for Israel. It doesn’t matter if what they hear about Israel being engaged in genocide in Gaza is true or not, nor even if they don’t believe all or most of it. The bottom line is that they see Israel as engaging in war crimes. (As for Americans, a poll conducted by Quinnipiac University between Aug. 21 and 25 found that half of voters – and 77 per cent of the Democrats among them — believe that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide.)
On July 29, a national poll in Australia delivered a deeply unsettling message. The survey revealed that just 24 per cent of Australians hold a positive view of Jews, while 28 per cent express negative views, and the rest are indifferent or unsure. I’m guessing Canadian numbers wouldn’t be all that different.
And this comes after two years of unrelenting escalation, during which antisemitic incidents in Australia and Canada have surged by over 300 per cent. Synagogues have been vandalized, and Jewish businesses attacked. Marches have featured chants glorifying terror and calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state.
On August 3, tens of thousands of Australians marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge under the banner “March for Humanity — Save Gaza.” Among them were former foreign minister Bob Carr, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and Sydney’s Lord Mayor Clover Moore. Australians took to the streets again three weeks later to advocate for Palestinians. A man at the very front of that first procession held aloft a portrait of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Such symbolism has become even more disturbing in light of recent revelations. On August 26, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, along with Mike Burgess, Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), confirmed that Iran directed the arson attacks against Lewis’ Continental Kitchen, a Jewish-owned business in Sydney, last October, and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne two months later. Yet even this disclosure will change little.
In fact, Australia denied entry to Israeli parliamentarian Simcha Rothman ahead of a planned solidarity visit with the country’s Jewish community. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke justified the move by claiming Rothman was coming “to spread a message of hate and division.” Rothman, chair of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, had been scheduled to meet with victims of antisemitism, visit Jewish institutions and address Jewish schools and synagogues.
Readers know that Canada is no better. Within days of the October 7, 2023 pogrom, pro-Hamas protesters were emboldened by inaction on the part of authorities and police forces. What followed has been months of harassment, intimidation and open antisemitism, at levels not seen here in more than 80 years.
Liberal MP Anthony Housefather last month issued a call to action amid growing antisemitism across Canada, co-signed by 31 of his Liberal colleagues. Citing Statistic Canada data on police-reported hate crimes, he pointed out that while Jews make up only one per cent of Canada’s population, they are the victims of 70 per cent of reported religious-based acts of hate.
All but six of the signatories were MPs from Ontario or Quebec. But why did the other 137 members of the Liberal caucus not sign on? “Why is fighting antisemitism seemingly determined by constituency demographics,” University of Ottawa Law Professor Michael Geist asked in a comment posted on X.
As Geist also noted in “There is a Growing List of Unsafe Places for the Jewish Community in Canada,” an August 29 article in the Globe and Mail, the rise of antisemitism in this country “has too often been met with inaction and generic statements against all forms of hate, or assurances that this behaviour wasn’t reflective of Canadian values. As politicians remain silent and law enforcement stays on the sidelines, the language becomes more violent in nature amidst allegations of criminality directed at an entire community. The cumulative effect is the gradual erasure of a visible Jewish presence in Canada.”
For the past two years, we’ve watched the unthinkable become normalized, and still, the silence has persisted. We believed that behind the chaos of social media and the radicalism of campus protests, there was a steady, principled middle who would never let hate take hold. But we were wrong. Many condemnations were merely lip service. Institutional policies were rarely enforced. And while we heard reassurances from officials that “this is not who we are,” perhaps it’s exactly who “we” are.
So why did we believe? Because the alternative is that the “silent majority” doesn’t exist and that antisemitism is being tolerated. It means that when politicians like Albanese or Mark Carney announce they will recognize a Palestinian state that has no defined borders, a non-functioning and certainly non-democratic government, while Hamas still holds hostages and preaches genocide, they are not defying their supporters but catering to them. Albanese later told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that his decision was partly motivated by a phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu that made it clear that the Israeli prime minister was “in denial” about the situation in Gaza.
The pleas of Australia’s and Canada’s Jews to reconsider this absurd move fell on deaf ears. It means that we are not surrounded by quiet allies, but by people who don’t care. When attacks on Jewish gatherings or buildings take place, most non-Jews, even if they don’t approve, are unlikely to be very angry or upset about it. We “deserve” it, in their view, by supporting a nation committing crimes and mass murder.
This requires a complete change in our psychological mindset regarding our place in society. From the 1950s until recently, the “default mode” that we assumed to be true was that most people, save some antisemites here and there, were fine with us as members of the larger community, and deserving of respect and protection. They didn’t have to be our “friends” to feel that way.
No longer. We can’t continue to be “shocked” when the leaders of the world, even countries like ours and Australia, no longer have any particular interest in our welfare (as is demonstrated day after day in news stories). And it’s not just because our enemies have greater domestic electoral clout. It’s just easier for most people to distance themselves from us quietly – which is not that hard to do for those, including most politicians, who have never moved much in circles where they’d be close to Jews.
We are on our own, and this will require a psychological adjustment. It doesn’t mean most people are now antisemites or supporters of Hamas or Islamists. But they will not particularly care to support us. We are now associated with a country they see in a very negative light, one many consider even worse than China or – yes! – Putin’s Russia. Only those people with genuine historical or religious knowledge, clearly a minority, will understand our plight. We must get used to this new reality.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
The Dark Side of Albert: Einstein and Marie Winteler, his First Love

By DAVID R. TOPPER As I recall, in the TV series, Genius – which began with a series on Albert Einstein, this one by Ron Howard – the opening sequence showed a middle-aged Albert and his secretary having sex in his office.
I was disappointed, but not surprised. I knew that Albert liked sex and had several partners (in addition to his two wives) over his lifetime. But, for me, it portended the wrong obsession in his life. The true passion throughout Einstein’s life was another “s–word”: namely, science.
But this was TV for a general audience and … well, you can fill in the rest. Plus, what am I being petulant about? After all, here am I, doing the same thing!
We’ll come back to Howard’s portrayal of Einstein’s life at the end; for now I need to put all this in context. For this essay is the second (and last) part of my story of Einstein’s “dark side.”

As shown in the first part, on this website at: The Dark Side of Albert: Einstein and Mileva Marić, his First Wife, which was first published in The Academy of the Heart and Mind, February 7, 2025– Einstein’s loathsome treatment of his first wife often bordered on abuse, or at least very malicious behavior, that diminishes his image as a saintly man; even though many photos of him – especially late in life and with the halo of hair – herald that impression. The other reality, the focus of my first part, was how his maltreatment impacted Mileva and fostered the depression that haunted her all her life. In a sense, and as will be seen here, all this was foreshadowed by Albert’s previous relationship with Marie Winteler, which also had lasting consequences. (As an aside – while I’m in a disagreeable mood about TV portrayals – and since, in part one, I never commented on the TV series: I found Ron Howard’s treatment of Mileva downright offensive. He was obsessed with her orthopedic foot, ever focusing with close-ups of her gait, as she limped into a room. His camera was repeating the shameful behavior of Mileva’s childhood schoolyard chums, who taunted her.)
Now, back to Albert and Marie: we begin with how they met.
In 1895 Albert spent a year enrolled in the cantonal school in the town of Aarau, near Zurich. He had previously taken the rigorous entrance exams for the Polytechnic in Zurich (which Mileva later passed) and had flunked the non-science and non-math parts. But since he did so well with science and math, it was recommended that he do a year of make-up in Aarau; plus, he was applying at age 16, a year early. In Aarau he boarded with the family of Jost Winteler, a teacher at the school (although Albert never took a course from him). Jost and Pauline had three daughters and four sons; the youngest and prettiest daughter was Marie. The family had very progressive social and political views, which Albert admired. They were freethinking, liberal pacifists, and he quickly was comfortable and at ease in this household. Soon he called the parents Papa and Mama.
Marie was two years older than Albert, and was finishing courses toward becoming an elementary school teacher. She was an accomplished pianist, and so she played duets with him on his violin. Albert quickly fell for her, and she for him. We know about this relationship because there are letters exchanged between them when one or the other was out of town, such as Albert visiting his family during a holiday. The relationship eventually was taken seriously by both sets of parents, as seen in a surviving correspondence between the mothers. They gladly anticipated that a marriage was forthcoming. (Incidentally, both mother’s names were Pauline, and so Albert sometimes called them Mama-1 and Mama-2.) While I’m on a tangent here, it will be fitting to mention other connections that later came about. After Albert left Aarau, his sister, Maja, took courses in the city and also boarded with the Winteler family. She fell in love with and married their son, Paul, in 1910. Also Albert’s best friend, Michele Besso, married daughter, Anna, in 1898. In short, these were other ways in which Albert remained linked with the family over his life.
For a glimpse into their relationship, let me quote from letters between Albert and Marie. Listen to the turns of phrase; later I want to contrast this with Albert’s love letters to Mileva. Here are some of his salutations: “My dear little Marie,” “Dearest Sweetheart,” “Sweet Darling,” “Beloved Marie.” Some short phrases: he calls her “my child,” “you delicate little soul,” “you little rascal,” “my comforting angel.” And some sentences. “I love you with all the powers of my beleaguered soul.” “Music has so wonderfully united our souls.” The latter, of course, shows how significant their musical duets were.
Here is a longer piece dated 21 April 1896, where he is replying to a letter from her: “It is so wonderful to be able to press to one’s heart such a bit of paper which [your] two so dear little eyes have lovingly beheld and on which the dainty little hands have charmingly glided back and forth. I was now made to realize to the fullest extent, my little angel, the meaning of homesickness and pining. But love brings much happiness – much more so than pining brings pain. Only now do I realize how indispensable my dear little sunshine has become to my happiness.”
Receiving love letters like this, Marie was smitten by Albert and hence believed that marriage was in the offing. In fact, Albert even corresponded with her mother, saying, for example, “I have thought about you a great deal” and then calling himself her “stepson.” This was in August of 1896, so I’m inclined to believe that he too was thinking of marriage. But inevitably, he was to leave Aarau after passing all his courses, and in October of that year he moved to Zurich to study at the Polytechnic. We know that at the Polytechnic Albert met Mileva, the only woman in his small Physics classes, who was ignored by the other students.
Nonetheless, his correspondence with Marie continued. She was teaching elementary school, writing of her struggles in the classroom, and clearly expecting some talk of marriage. But a hint that something was amiss in their relationship emerges in the opening lines of this letter from Marie, written sometime in November of 1896. To put this into context, you need to know that Albert was sending her his dirty laundry, which she would wash and send back. (Believe me: I’m not making this up.) It goes to show how domestic the relationship was, which reinforces for me Marie’s continued belief in a forthcoming wedding.
She writes: “Beloved sweetheart! Your little basket arrived today and in vain did I strain my eyes looking for a little note, even though the mere sight of your dear handwriting in the address was enough to make me happy.” Nothing but the dirty laundry! Was Albert just taking Marie for granted? We need to keep this in context. We don’t know the extent of his relationship with Mileva this early in the school term. Maybe he still was thinking of marrying Marie. So, at the least it was insensitive. What we do know is that Marie made it clear that this laundry business was no small task; for, later in the letter, she writes. “Last Sunday I was crossing the woods in pouring rain to take your little basket to the post office, did it arrive soon?”
In the same letter she also makes reference to a previous letter from Albert. “My love, I do not quite understand a passage in your letter. You write that you do not want to correspond with me any longer, but why not, sweetheart?” Yes, why not? Perhaps he was involved in some way with Mileva by now and was distancing himself from Marie. She ends the letter with: “I love you for all eternity, sweetheart, and may God preserve and protect you. With deepest love yours, Little Marie.”
Albert wrote to her again. We know this from a letter to him of November 30, 1896 where Marie mentions that she had sent him a gift of a teapot. Apparently he wrote back, calling it “stupid,” which would be downright nasty – but not surprising, since we know how erratic Albert can be. At least, that’s how I interpret this sentence: “My dear sweetheart, the ‘matter’ of my sending you the stupid little teapot does not have to please you as long as you are going to brew some good tea in it.” Quite clearly, Marie doesn’t have it in her to reprimand him for his sometimes nasty behavior.
Later in her letter, Marie talks of her teaching duties, and how much she enjoys the task. Interestingly, she tells him of a “little boy in the first grade who shares with you a facial feature and, imagine that, whose name is also Albert.” She goes on to say how she gives this boy extra help.
Then there is this letter from Albert in March 1897. “Beloved little Marie, I love you with all the powers of my beleaguered soul. … To see you saddened because of me is the greatest pain to me. … How inhuman I must have become for my darling to perceive it as coldness. … What am I to you, what can I offer you! I’m nothing but a schoolboy & have nothing. … And yet you ask whether I love you so much out of pity! … Alas, you so misunderstand the empathy of ideal love.” Remember that phrase “ideal love”; we’ll come back to it at the end.
This brings me to an important letter from Albert to Pauline Winteler, sometime later in 1897, perhaps May. “I am writing you … in order to cut short an inner struggle whose outcome is, in fact, already settled in my mind.” He goes on to speak of the pain he has caused “the dear child through my fault. It fills me with a peculiar kind of satisfaction that now I myself have to taste some of the pain that I brought upon the dear girl through my thoughtlessness and ignorance of her delicate nature. Strenuous intellectual work and looking at God’s Nature are the reconciling, fortifying, yet relentlessly strict angels that shall lead me through all of life’s troubles. If only I were able to give some of this to the good child! … I appear to myself as an ostrich who buries his head in the desert sand so as not to perceive the danger. … But why denigrate oneself, others take care of that when necessary, therefore let’s stop.”
Unmistakably, we know now that, in Albert’s mind, the relationship with Marie is over and he is making a Mea Culpa – of sorts – to her mother. He is repeating what he wrote to Marie, that he is in pain because he has caused her pain – a rather egocentric idea, to say the least. And his excuse? He was too busy with his physics – probing into the mechanism of God’s creation – to deal with the triviality of human interaction. Of course, all this indeed is true, since this is Einstein. But at this stage of his life, it’s really only a young student’s fantasy. More importantly, it exposes what I’ve said above: science was the overriding infatuation in his life. And, God forbid, if someone would try to get in his way.
Indeed, let me repeat this phrase: “if only I were able to give some of this to [Marie].” I read this in light of the fact that in Zurich, Mileva was a fellow student, who knows the physics. It’s now a year into their studies and we know that they were at some stage of a relationship. So, indeed, Mileva could do what Marie could not; namely, converse with Albert about his beloved physics.
This brings me to the first item that proves that Albert and Mileva were in a relationship. It is a letter from Mileva to Albert in 1897, sometime in late October. She is in Germany taking physics courses. The language is formal; like intellectual friends exchanging ideas and experiences. Interestingly, it begins by her thanking him for a four-page-letter to her – which, sadly, we don’t have. But, importantly, she refers to “the joy you provided me through our trip together.” So we know that by now they are a couple. In fact, she mentions that her father gave her some tobacco to give to Albert; so, clearly their relationship is also known to her parents.
It’s also obvious how Mileva has filled in the hole left by Marie’s departure from Albert’s world. Listen to this musing from Mileva. “Man is very capable of imagining infinite happiness, and he should be able to grasp the infinity of space. I think that should be much easier.” Right up Albert’s alley, one might say. And this: “Oh, it was really neat at the lecture … yesterday … on the kinetic theory of heat of gases … [where the professor calculated that the colliding molecules] travel a distance of only 1/100 of a hairbreadth.” Surely, Marie wouldn’t have found this to be “neat” – no, not at all.
Despite Albert and Mileva now being a couple, he was still communicating with the Winteler family, possibly since his sister, Maja, was living with them. Thus, during a visit to his sister, we have this letter from him dated Aarau, 6 September 1899. At the time Marie was no longer living at home. “Dear little Marie, Little Mama relayed to me the friendly greeting that you sent me & the permission to write you. … Until now, the fear of upsetting your delicate heart has always kept me from doing so. … I know, dear girl, what pain I have caused you, and have already experienced grave suffering myself as a result.” Notice how Albert always turns the argument around, excusing himself. It’s like saying: “Oh, I hit you so hard, now my hand hurts. Pity me too.” Pathetic, I say.
He continues: “But if you look forward innocently to communicating with me & are able to replace old unfounded pain with new joy, write to me again.” His phrase “unfounded pain” tells it all. For Marie, the shabby way he treated her, and just dumped her, was real and hurtful. Calling it “unfounded” is an insult. Nonetheless, like Mileva, Marie remained love-struck by the charm of Albert and was ever eager to forgive him.
The story of Albert’s subsequent abusive relationship with Mileva was told in the first Part of the “dark side” of Albert. For now, we need to recall a few milestones in this story, since there is more to tell of Marie – as we follow her through the rest of her life, despite the meagre information we have about this.
Early in 1902 Mileva gave birth to Lieserl, whom she had to give up, after raising her with her Serbian parents for several months. As seen, Albert never saw his only daughter, and Mileva never forgot her. As I argued in part one: giving up Lieserl was probably a major source of the episodically occurring depression throughout her life. In January 1903, Albert and Mileva were married in a small civil ceremony. Neither set of parents attended. Their married life initially went smoothly, settling in Bern, where Albert got a job in the patent office. In his spare time, he was writing landmark papers on physics, while Mileva was the dutiful housewife. Two sons, Hans Albert (1904) and Eduard (1910), were born.
At this point, I sadly need to interject that back in Aarau in 1906, in the Winteler household, their son, Julius – after returning from a trip to America as a cook on a merchant ship – shot and killed his mother along with his sister Rosa’s husband, then himself. I believe this is important for, among other things, the impact it surely had on Marie; although, as far as I know, we have no documented record of this. But we do have the letter that Albert wrote to Jost. Referring to him as “Highly esteemed Professor Winteler,” he offers his “deepest condolences” despite knowing how “feeble words are in the face of such pain.” He also talks of the “kindness” that Pauline bestowed upon him, “while I caused her only sorrow and pain”– clearly referring to his relationship with Marie.
Meanwhile, by around 1909, Einstein was being seen as an important physicist within the European Physics community. In a letter to a close friend, Mileva says that Albert “lives only for his work” and the family is “unimportant to him.” That there was a strain on the marriage is further seen in the fact that Albert sends a letter to “Dearest Marie,” seemingly, of all things, to rekindle their relationship. He tells her that his “life is as wretched as possible regarding the personal aspect. I escape the eternal longing for you only through strenuous work & rumination. My only happiness would be to see you again.”
We don’t have Marie’s immediate reaction to this from Albert, but we can surmise that it would have been quite a shock – or what my late therapist wife would call, using her vernacular, “for crazy making.” Apparently Marie did reply to this letter of September 1909, because we have another letter from Albert in March 1910 in which he speaks of her having “trusted” him last year, but that she regrets it now; and he refers to a meeting between them, naming specific places where they walked in and around Bern. (Marie, at this time, had a teaching job not far from Bern.) And he reiterates: “I think of you with heartfelt love every free minute and am as unhappy as one can be.” Apparently she never replied to this letter, for we have this postcard from him to her on 15 July 1910: “Warm regards to the eternally silent one from your A. E.”
But she did reply to this; we have a letter of 7 August 1910 to her from Albert that begins: “As I was reading your letter, …” However, the message was not what Albert was waiting for, since he continues thusly, “it seemed to me as if I were watching my grave being dug.” I am quite sure I know what is happening here: Marie became engaged around this time, which eventually led to a marriage. So she has obviously told Albert of this, and this letter is his response. He thus goes on: “The little leftover joy that I still had has been destroyed. … However, I thank you … for giving me … the few hours of pure joy … 15 years ago [1895] and last year. Now you are a different person. … Farewell … and think of me [as] the unhappy one, rather than … with hatred and bitterness. … Your, Albert.” Knowing how Marie, like Mileva, was ever-forgiving, she probably harboured no animosity.
On 16 November 1911, Marie married Albert [!] Müller, a watch factory manager, 10 years younger that her. (So, again, another “Albert” has come into her life.) At the time, the Einsteins were in Prague, where Albert accepted an appointment in the German University. Besso told him of the marriage. In his reply, 26 December 1911, Albert writes: “I am sincerely pleased about Marie’s getting married. Thus wanes a dark stain in my life. Now everything is as it should be. Whom is she marrying?” (Incidentally, while mentioning Besso, it’s worthwhile to point out that there is an extensive correspondence between them that continued until Besso died in 1955, just a month before Einstein. For me, one of the riveting highlights of their relationship is the clear resentment of Albert by Besso’s wife, who openly reprimands Einstein for the dreadful way he treated her sister, as well as Mileva – and Anna harps on this, over and over, until she dies in 1944.)
Sometime around the spring of 1912, Besso informs Albert that Marie is pregnant. We know this because in a long letter to Besso of 26 March, near the end, Albert says, “I am happy that you are doing so well, and also that Marie is expecting a little boy (?), to whom I will be a kind of uncle, as a matter of fact.” The reference here is due to the fact that his sister Maja was married to Marie’s brother, Paul. On 8 August 1912 Marie gave birth to a son, they named Paul Albert. She later had a second boy, but I don’t have any further information on this.
While on this topic around Albert and Marie, let me add this. Albert also continued in contact with Marie’s sister Rosa. In a letter to her in January of 1914 he ends it this way (note the sly reference to Marie’s husband, also Albert): “With kindest regards to you and the kids, to Marie and to my namesake and general representative Albert, whose acquaintance I still hope to make one of these days.” As far as I know, Einstein never met Marie’s husband, nor saw Marie ever again.
Her subsequent life, it seems, was not a happy one – although we only have an outline of it, unlike the detailed agonizing life of Mileva that we saw in Part one. Marie and her Albert were divorced in 1927. As seen, she was an elementary school teacher, although records show that she missed a lot of classes due to sickness. She gave piano and organ lessons, possibly to supplement her income; she may have been dismissed from jobs later in life.
We also know that she tried to reach the first Albert in 1940; there exist two letters in June and September to him in Princeton, N.J. (Albert and his second wife, Elsa Löwenthal, had moved to the USA in 1933.) Similar to Mileva pleading for help to get their son Eduard out of Nazi-surrounded Switzerland, Marie wants to immigrate with a son to the USA and is asking for money and help. However, there is no record of him having read these letters. Most probably, his secretary, Helen Dukas – who was known to censor his mail – never showed it to him. But she did save it, along with the rest of the many items she sorted in his daily mailbox.
Marie was often plagued with depression, and in the end she died in a mental institution on 24 September, 1957, over two years after Einstein died. She was 80 years old, having been born on 24 April, 1877.
I will end this story where I began – the TV series by Ron Howard. Not surpassingly, in the episode involving Albert and Marie, he portrays them having an intimate relationship, which I’m quite sure never happened.
My aim here is not about moral values or judgements, but historical accuracy. Somewhere into the third or fourth episodes of Howard’s “Einstein,” I gave up keeping a list of the historical errors – and just sat back and watched it. Nonetheless, it perturbs me how the popular media often play fast and loose with the facts of history. I could harp on and on about how much work and effort goes into the writing of serious history by serious historians – but I’ll leave it there.
Albert and Marie met in the late 19th century, not the late 20th. They were living in a house with two parents and usually six siblings. There was little to no space available for privacy. Recall the salutations of Albert to Marie, and compare them with the following to Mileva: “sweet little witch,” “wild little rascal,” “my little beast,” “my street urchin,” “you wild witch,” “my little brat.” Of course, we know that their relationship eventually was intimate.
To me, the evidence of history suggests that the relationship between Albert and Marie was Platonic. Recall the quote above by Albert about “ideal love” in 1897. Sometime later in her life, Marie succinctly summarized her friendship with Einstein this way:
“Wir haben uns innig geliebt, aber es war eine durchaus ideale Liebe.”
“We loved each other deeply, but it was a completely ideal love.”
* * *
Readings:
The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Vol. 1-16 (1879-1927), by multiple editors (Princeton University Press, 1987–2021), a work in progress.
The Life and Letters of Mileva Marić, Einstein’s First Wife, edited by Milan Popovic (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).
A Solitary Smile: A Novel on Einstein, by David R. Topper(Bee Line Press, 2019).
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David R. Topper writes in Winnipeg, Canada. His work has appeared in Mono, Poetic Sun, Discretionary Love, Poetry Pacific,Academy of theHeart & Mind, Altered Reality Mag., and elsewhere. His poem Seascape with Gulls: My Father’s Last Painting won first prize in the annual poetry contest of CommuterLit Mag. May 12, 2025