Lieserl Einstein
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| Lieserl Einstein | |
| Born | Lieserl Einstein February 4, 1902 Novi Sad |
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| Died | c.1903 Hungary |
| Cause of death | Scarlet fever |
| Burial place | Unknown |
| Residence | Serbia (1902-?) |
| Nationality | Serbia |
| Parents | Albert Einstein and Mileva Maric |
| Relatives | Pauline Koch, Hermann Einstein, Maja Einstein, Hans Albert Einstein and Eduard Einstein. |
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Notes
"But look, it has really become a Lieserl, like it was your wish. Is it healthy and does it cry already a lot?" Albert Einstein in a letter to Mileva Maric shortly after the birth of their daughter on February 4, 1902
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Lieserl Einstein (Serbian Cyrillic: Лизерл Ајнштајн) (late January, 1902 – September, 1903?) was the first child of physicist Albert Einstein and Mileva Marić and, according to some sources, died in infancy.[citation needed] Others believe she was adopted by Mileva's friend, Helene Savic (Serbian Cyrillic: Хелене Савић) and lived under the name, "Zorka Savic" (Serbian Cyrillic: Зорка Савић) until the 1990s.[citation needed]
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[edit] Life
Lieserl was (as mentioned in letters exchanged by Albert and Mileva) born in late January/early February in Novi Sad, Serbia. She was cared for by her mother Mileva in Serbia while Albert worked in Switzerland.
Lieserl was born before her parents married. Albert's mother did not like Mileva, so the baby was kept secret from Albert's family. From letters exchanged by Albert and Mileva, it is thought that Lieserl stayed with Mileva's family.
[edit] Death
Lieserl developed scarlet fever in early 1903. The last known mention of Lieserl was on September 19th, 1903 in a letter from Mileva to Albert; the wording is possibly telling him about her death.[citation needed]
[edit] Unearthing the letters
Lieserl's existence was unknown to biographers until 1986, when a batch of letters between Albert and Mileva was discovered by their granddaughter. Discussion of Lieserl by the couple ended in 1903, and she was never again mentioned in their extant correspondence.
Michele Zackheim, in her book on Lieserl, Einstein's Daughter, states that Lieserl was mentally challenged at birth, and that she probably died of scarlet fever as an infant. Another possibility, favored by Robert Schulmann of the Einstein Papers Project, is that Lieserl was adopted by Maric's close friend, Helene Savic, and was raised by her. Savic did in fact raise a child by the name of Zorka, who was blind from childhood and died in the 1990s.
In the fictional Time Traveler's Journal by Ed Masessa, Lieserl Einstein is the narrator who discovered a time-traveling rock and had to erase herself from existence.
"Lieserl" is also a character in the science fiction novel "Ring" by Stephen Baxter.
[edit] Siblings
Mileva and Albert had two more children in 1904 and 1910, Hans Albert and Eduard. They do not seem to have known of their elder sister's existence.
[edit] Eduard
The couple's younger son, Eduard Einstein (1910–1965), spent most of his life living with Mileva. Born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1910, he was good at music and languages. In 1930 he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Mileva died in 1948 and Eduard spent the remaining 17 years of his life in an asylum in Burghölzli.
[edit] Hans Albert
Hans Albert was born in 1904 in Bern, Switzerland and became a hydraulic engineer in California, USA.
[edit] References
- Michele Zackheim, Einstein's Daughter: the Search for Lieserl, Riverhead (October 25, 1999), ISBN 1-57322-127-9.
- Baxter, Stephen. Ring, Harper Collins Publishers, 1994, ISBN 0-06-105694-4
[edit] External links
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