Andy Warhol Was a Hoarder (37 page)

The great physicist's family origins give little clue to the towering genius that would ultimately emerge. Einstein's father showed a talent for math early on and was interested in pursuing the subject, but there was not enough money to advance his studies. After a brief and unimpressive stint selling feather beds, Hermann launched a gas and electrical engineering company with his
brother and, later, installed power stations. With his formidable walrus mustache, he looked the part of a tough Prussian but was known to be gentle and kind. From his father, Einstein seems to have inherited a knack for numbers; his mother, a gifted pianist, imbued him with a lifelong passion for music. Practical and funny, she had the stronger personality of the two and encouraged Albert and his younger sister, Maja, to be self-sufficient. Maja later wrote in a biographical account that by the time her big brother was four years old, he was crossing busy city streets alone.

Albert stood out from the day he was born. His mother was immediately alarmed by the large size and angular shape of the back of his head and, according to Maja, “feared she had given birth to a deformed child.” His grandmother thought he was overweight. “Much too fat! Much too fat!” she cried, throwing her hands up. Early on, young Albert was remarkably quiet. Although there is marked variation in children's linguistic development, most babies babble by about six months and say a few words around their first birthday. There are discrepant accounts of when, precisely, Einstein began speaking in full sentences, but it seems clear that he was at least two and might have been closer to three, qualifying him for what today would be called a “late talker.”

Once he did begin speaking, the young boy engaged in what Maja described as “a characteristic, if strange, habit” of repeating sentences to himself, a habit that would persist for years. Delayed speech and the repetition of words or phrases, known as echolalia, are common features of autism. Echolalia, once regarded as problematic, is now viewed as a natural part of linguistic and cognitive development. At the time, Einstein's verbal obstacles caused considerable consternation. “He had such difficulty with language that those around him feared he would never learn to speak,” Maja recalled. Einstein himself later remarked on this, too: “It is true
that my parents were worried because I began to speak relatively late, so much so they consulted a doctor.” The family maid called him “der Depperte,” the dopey one.

Einstein's early social behaviors also showed several characteristic autistic traits. Young children often resort to anger when they are frustrated or anxious, a pattern that is often exacerbated in children with autism, who struggle to soothe themselves. Early in life, Einstein was known to be surprisingly volatile. Maja recalled a spate of temper tantrums so violent that her brother's face would go pale and the tip of his nose turn white. Then the hurling would begin. When he was five, Albert lobbed a chair at his school tutor, who fled and never returned. Maja didn't escape his wrath, either. Once, he threw a bowling ball at her head; another time, he came after her with a child's pickax. She survived. “This should suffice to show that it takes a sound skull to be the sister of an intellectual,” she wrote.

With Einstein's temper came a piercing curiosity. People on the autism spectrum are often captivated by objects to the exclusion of friends and family. Einstein had great powers of concentration, becoming readily absorbed in single tasks. He was a solitary youngster who preferred playing on his own to engaging with other children—even his own cousins, who visited often. Instead, he played with puzzles, created complex structures out of building blocks, and crafted houses of cards that reached 14 stories high. At school, he was the oddball, the kid who had no interest in sports or his peers. The neighborhood boys, who preferred to tussle in the streets, nicknamed him “the bore.” Biographer Dennis Overbye writes that Einstein's “more typical playmates were the chickens or pigeons, or the small boat he sailed in a pail of water.”

Young Albert was captivated by things, ideas, unknowns. When he was about four years old, his father showed him a compass.
Other children might have found the device entertaining for a little while, then tossed it into the toy heap. Not Einstein. It was a transformative event, a moment of “wonder,” as he later recalled. He was endlessly fascinated by how the needle moved with mysterious precision, driven by some external force. In his report, Hans Asperger noted that the children he studied had “the ability to see things and events around them from a new point of view, which often shows surprising maturity.” For Einstein, the small device had a profound impact, stretching his young mind and stirring him to ponder the mysteries of science. “I can still remember—or at least I believe I can remember—that this experience made a deep and lasting impression on me,” he later wrote. “Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.”

Einstein's expansive mind was not well suited to the rigid teachings of his early education in Germany. A determined and contemplative thinker, he took his time mulling over questions. This did not go over well with his teachers, who expected quick and automatic answers. Einstein refused to suppress his contempt for the focus on memorization and harsh discipline, which he later likened to “the methods of the Prussian Army.” Instead, he reveled in the independent learning provided by a young medical student named Max Talmud. Although the Einsteins did not belong to a synagogue or observe kosher laws or religious rituals, they invited Talmud to join them for a family meal each week as part of a Jewish custom to feed a needy scholar.

Starting at the age of ten, Talmud engaged Einstein in erudite conversations and brought him books, including a geometry text and works by the philosopher Immanuel Kant. He also introduced Einstein to a 21-volume series about biology and physics, which included an exploration of the speed of light—a principal component of what would become Einstein's special theory
of relativity. Talmud's visits provided the intellectual stimulation Einstein craved. He devoured the books and, before long, even surpassed his young tutor in math. “In all those years, I never saw him reading any light literature,” Talmud recalled. “Nor did I ever see him in the company of his schoolmates or other boys his age.”

Though clearly brilliant, Einstein's performance at school was tumultuous. Although his grades were mostly very good, he lagged behind in languages, which were “never his forte,” according to Maja. His Greek teacher, Herr Degenhart, was unimpressed by his efforts and told Einstein that he would never get anywhere in life. One day, Degenhart made it clear that he would rather not have him in class. When Einstein shot back that he had done nothing wrong, the teacher responded: “Yes, that is true, but you sit there in the back row and smile and your mere presence here spoils the respect of the class for me.” Whether forced to leave or not, this was just the excuse Einstein needed to flee the drudgery of the systematic teaching he so despised. At 15, he dropped out of his Munich high school. Two years later, after completing the necessary coursework at a secondary school in Switzerland, he enrolled in the Polytechnic in Zurich.

There, Einstein persisted in his lackadaisical approach to educational norms; he regularly cut classes and once threw the instructions for a physics lab assignment into the trash, determined to do the work his own way. Hans Asperger noted this same tendency in the children he studied. “What they find difficult are the mechanical aspects of learning,” he wrote. “They follow their own ideas, which are mostly far removed from ordinary concerns, and do not like to be distracted from their thoughts.” They also had a penchant for disrespecting authority. A math teacher called Einstein a “lazy dog.”

Einstein's nonconformity and irreverence—characteristics that would define him throughout his life—battered his relationships
with his teachers. At first enamored of one of his professors, Heinrich Weber, Einstein soon concluded that Weber's lectures were too narrowly focused on the past. “Given his brash attitude, Einstein didn't hide his feelings. And given his dignified sense of himself, Weber bristled at Einstein's ill-concealed disdain,” writes Isaacson. “By the end of their four years together they were antagonists.” It didn't help that Einstein addressed his teacher informally as “Herr Weber,” instead of the more respectful “Herr Professor.”

Because they have difficulty detecting nonverbal cues and perceiving the feelings of others, people on the autism spectrum often speak bluntly and forcefully and may come off as tactless. However Einstein's utterances are interpreted—as brutally honest, disrespectful, or representative of an autistic trait—they struck many as cocky and impertinent, a problem that torpedoed his academic career early on. When Einstein graduated from the Polytechnic in 1900 at the age of 21, he was the only one in his division who had not landed a job offer. In hindsight, this was a boon to his career; it was while working as a patent examiner, the only position he could get, that Einstein had the time to come up with his special theory of relativity and his revolutionary ideas about the speed of light and the size of atoms. At the time, however, not getting a teaching job was discouraging. Einstein believed anti-Semitism played a role. But there were other factors working against him. When applying for jobs, he brashly pointed out other scientists' mistakes and suffered one rejection letter after the next. It wasn't until 1909, nine years after graduation, that Einstein got his first teaching job as an assistant professor at the University of Zurich. One of his peers once said he “had no understanding how to relate to people.”

This shortcoming played out in the way Einstein interacted at times with his first wife, Mileva Marić, and his children, with whom he could be both supportive and loving, but also surprisingly
distant. Einstein and Mileva met when they were fellow students at the Polytechnic. Although his mother vehemently disapproved of the relationship—Mileva was judged for being Serbian, older by a few years, and walked with a limp—Einstein pursued his girlfriend with the passion of early romance. “I miss the two little arms and the glowing little girl full of tenderness and kisses,” he wrote to her in August 1900. “I can't wait for the moment when I'll be able to hug you and press you and live with you again.” Two years later, a daughter was born out of wedlock and mysteriously disappeared (she may have died from scarlet fever or been adopted by another family). In 1903, Einstein, then almost 24, and Mileva, 28, married and soon had two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard. But the scientist threw himself into his work, leaving Mileva burdened by the demands of child rearing and forced to give up any hopes of having her own career in physics. A friend of Einstein's described her as gloomy.

By 1914, when Einstein moved his family from Zurich to Berlin to take on a professorship at the University of Berlin, the physicist was having an affair with his first cousin, Elsa, who was divorced, with two daughters of her own—Ilse and Margot. His marriage was in disarray. Romantic relationships can be rocky terrain for people on the autism spectrum, but they can be as interested in finding love as anyone else. Many
do
want social connections and intimate partnerships, despite the misconception that they are not interested or emotionally incapable. The challenge is figuring out how to go about initiating a relationship when it can be difficult to read social cues.

Sustaining relationships can be taxing as well. Sensory issues—a sensitivity to touch and a discomfort with physical contact—are common among people on the autism spectrum and can, in some cases, make intimacy uncomfortable. “Mindblindness,” the
inability to perceive how others are feeling, can lead to misunderstandings. And a preoccupation with work or hobbies is often frustrating for partners who feel they are not getting the attention and affection they desire.

Einstein was far more comfortable sorting out the complexities of physics than wrangling the emotional tumult of relationships. The manner in which he treated Mileva during the height of their marital upset seems to display a kind of mindblindness about how his actions could affect her. In a letter to Elsa, who would later become his second wife, Einstein described Mileva as “an unfriendly, humorless creature who does not get anything out of life.” Then he confronted Mileva with cold-hearted disdain, issuing a list of requirements that she would have to submit to in order for them to stay together for the sake of their two young children. These included bringing him three meals a day in his room, cleaning his bedroom and study, and doing his laundry. He also demanded that she “renounce all personal relations” with him—no sitting at home with him, no intimacy—and that she “desist immediately from addressing me if I request it” and “leave my bedroom or office immediately without protest if I so request.”

It was clearly an untenable ultimatum, and the marriage ended soon after. Mileva took the boys back to Zurich while Einstein stayed on in Berlin with Elsa. Einstein's letters to his children show both fatherly love and a notable disconnect. Although he expressed delight in their activities and reported deriving great joy from his boys, he also disappointed them by not showing up for promised visits. Hans, who later became an engineer, wrote to his father with mechanical ideas, at one point posing a calculation about the sideward pressure of wind and the strength of a sail. But he was, at the same time, upset that Einstein was so removed from himself, his
mother, and his brother. “We know absolutely nothing about each other; you have no idea what we need and require; I know nothing about you,” he wrote. Einstein echoed this sentiment in a letter to his younger son, known as Tete, who would later be diagnosed with schizophrenia, a condition Einstein blamed on his wife's side of the family. “The two of us were so rarely together that I hardly know you at all, even though I am your father,” he wrote in 1920. “I'm sure you have only a vague idea of me too.”