Getting to Know Einstein's Wives

The letters were donated by Elsa Einstien’s daughter Margot in the early 1980s. Margot died in 1986 and had specified when she donated the letters that they weren’t to be released until 20 years after her death. Intermixed with excited letters about his scientific discoveries, like in 1915 when he wrote to his son, “I have just completed the most splendid work of my life,” (likely the final calculation that proved his general theory of relativity), were letters that showed a darker person.In one letter to his first wife, he gives her a meticulous list of what she should do for him and how their marriage should operate: