Details
EINSTEIN, Albert (1879-1955). Autograph letter signed ("A.E.") to the Ehrmann Family, Princeton, N.J., 21 March, n.d. [ca.1949]. 1 page, 4to, on Einstein's personal embossed stationery. In German.
"I HAVE RETAINED MY BLACK HUMOR DESPITE PALESTINE, CORRUPT AMERICAN POLITICS AND DAILY READING OF THE N.Y. TIMES..."
A cordial, personal letter touching on physics and politics to Rudolf and Mrs. Ehrmann. Einstein thanks them for sending him a book of poems for his birthday: "...the book probably bewitched you by its elegant Oxford-English. When I read something like that, I feel almost like I felt when I watched people dance in my early years, with the painful realisation, that this high art was hoplessly out of reach for me." He comments on the poems ("Musenfurz"), adds a mathematical joke, and concludes with an assement of his state of mind in light of American politics and the troubled situation in Palestine. "...The diagnosis by exclusion is here much simpler and much more credible than in medicine ... (I extrapolate here light-heartedly from 2 to oo [infinity symbol] which is not allowable for a mathematician but alright for a theoretical phisicist). You see that I have retained my black humor despite Palestine, corrupt American politics and daily reading of the N.Y. Times which doesn't even lie honestly but distorts the truth with malicious intent. I sometimes think that every country in which I pitch my tent goes crazy (the diagnosis of this: paranoia and delusion of grandeur)." Rudolf Ehrmann had been Einstein's physician in Berlin and after his emigration to America.
"I HAVE RETAINED MY BLACK HUMOR DESPITE PALESTINE, CORRUPT AMERICAN POLITICS AND DAILY READING OF THE N.Y. TIMES..."
A cordial, personal letter touching on physics and politics to Rudolf and Mrs. Ehrmann. Einstein thanks them for sending him a book of poems for his birthday: "...the book probably bewitched you by its elegant Oxford-English. When I read something like that, I feel almost like I felt when I watched people dance in my early years, with the painful realisation, that this high art was hoplessly out of reach for me." He comments on the poems ("Musenfurz"), adds a mathematical joke, and concludes with an assement of his state of mind in light of American politics and the troubled situation in Palestine. "...The diagnosis by exclusion is here much simpler and much more credible than in medicine ... (I extrapolate here light-heartedly from 2 to oo [infinity symbol] which is not allowable for a mathematician but alright for a theoretical phisicist). You see that I have retained my black humor despite Palestine, corrupt American politics and daily reading of the N.Y. Times which doesn't even lie honestly but distorts the truth with malicious intent. I sometimes think that every country in which I pitch my tent goes crazy (the diagnosis of this: paranoia and delusion of grandeur)." Rudolf Ehrmann had been Einstein's physician in Berlin and after his emigration to America.
