Elsa einstein She was the second wife of the famous scientist, physics genius and Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein, in addition to being his first cousin. The cousins' affair began in 1912 during the scientist's marriage to his first wife Mileva Maric, from whom he divorced in 1919 to immediately marry Elsa.
Elsa was also divorced: from her first union she had two daughters and a son who died very young. During her marriage to Einstein, she was a devoted wife, absolutely devoted to her husband's care, and to supporting him in his career as a science celebrity..
A sign of his devotion was that he followed him on his move to the United States in 1933, when Nazism prevented him from continuing in Germany. Elsa also tolerated the scientist's affairs, in some cases scandalous.
Elsa died in 1936 at her home in Princeton from heart and liver problems, shortly after her eldest daughter Ilse died of cancer in Paris..
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Elsa Einstein was born in Germany on January 18, 1876. Her father was Rudolf Einstein, a cousin of the laureate scientist's father. His mother was also the sister of Albert Einstein's mother, which means that Elsa and the physicist were first cousins..
In 1896 Elsa married Max Lowenthal, who was a textile producer. To honor the union with her husband and according to the customs of the time, she changed her name to Elsa Lowenthal.
From this relationship three children were born: Ilse, Margot and a boy who died in infancy. The marriage to Lowenthal ended in 1908, and the girls were raised by Elsa..
At that time his cousin Albert was already married to Mileva Maric, a mathematician of Serbian origin who stopped her scientific career to marry Einstein in 1903.
Before getting married, Mileva gave birth to a girl named Lieserl Einstein, about whom there is a mystery since it is speculated that she died one year after she was born or that she was given up for adoption because she was conceived out of wedlock.
During the union of Mileva and Einstein Hans Albert and Eduard were born. The latter was born with health problems, so his mother dedicated herself to his care.
Although Albert was still married to Mileva, in 1912 he began to get close to Elsa in a special way, with whom he established an extramarital romantic relationship.
Elsa lived in Berlin, a city to which Albert forced his wife and children to move in 1912. Due to the First World War, Mileva and her children left for Switzerland and Albert was left alone in Berlin. The marriage was completely affected by then.
In the scientist's epistolary file, it is revealed that during this time he had a rather bitter, cold and distant correspondence with his first wife, forcing her to have strange patterns of coexistence, such as never having physical encounters and taking care of their meals and attentions..
In 1916 Albert Einstein asked for a divorce, which was consummated in 1919 when they signed a clause in which Mileva would keep a very good portion of money if the physicist were to win the Nobel, which happened a couple of years later.
On June 2, 1919 Albert and Elsa were married. She changed her last name to Einstein and added her two daughters to the union.
Margot, Elsa's second daughter, preserved about 1,400 Einstein letters. These were exposed to the public light two decades after Margot passed away in 1986..
Thanks to that correspondence, it has been known that the scientist considered whether to propose to Ilse, the first-born of his cousin Elsa, who assisted him as a private secretary. In the end he chose his cousin. Although this aura of controversial relationship and frowned upon was always maintained, Albert was a father figure to the daughters of Elsa's first marriage..
Before marrying Albert, in 1917 Elsa devoted herself entirely to caring for her cousin, who had fallen ill in a delicate situation. After the marriage, Elsa devoted herself completely to the life of the scientist.
She made sure that everything at home was in order, accompanied him on his travels, supported his work and dealt with the issues of the life of a celebrity of science in which her husband was involved, even taking care to keep visitors away unwanted.
In 1921, the year the physicist won the Nobel, Elsa supported him in raising funds to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
In the early 1930s, it was impossible for Einstein to stay in Germany in the face of Nazi dominance. For this reason he decided to go to the United States and settle in Princeton, where he was a teacher. Elsa went with him.
As in Europe, Elsa devoted herself to domestic life so that her husband could concentrate on science.
There they lived the honeys of scientific fame, but not everything was rosy. Einstein's various love affairs were notorious, such as with an Austrian woman named Margarete Lebach, who almost ended the marriage of the relatives..
Elsa also discovered her husband's infidelity with her friend Ethel Michanowski, as well as several romances that, with the complicity of her private secretary, she kept away from the public light. Thanks to the scientist's epistolary archive, it has been known that he had more than half a dozen lovers.
Once settled in Princeton, Elsa learned that her eldest daughter Ilse had cancer and went to Paris to take care of her. Ilse passed away in 1934 and Elsa returned to the United States.
Later, his other daughter Margot traveled to the United States to be with her mother, but the company did not last long. Elsa fell ill with liver and heart problems, which ended her life on December 20, 1936 at her home in Princeton..
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