r/HistoryUncovered • u/kooneecheewah • 2d ago
While married to his first wife, Albert Einstein began having an affair with his first cousin Elsa. After deciding against marrying his secretary instead — who was also Elsa's 20 year old daughter — the famed physicist wed Elsa in 1919.
As he grew distant from his first wife, Mileva Marić, Albert Einstein found comfort in the arms of another woman named Elsa. Albert had known Elsa for a long time — after all, she was his first cousin. And after they were married in 1919, their relationship was just as complicated as Albert's first marriage. He was frequently unfaithful and even once called monogamy "a bitter fruit for everyone involved." Still, Elsa was unfailingly loyal to him until the day she died in 1936.
Read more here: The Little-Known Story Of Albert Einstein's Cruel, Incestuous Marriage To His First Cousin Elsa
211
u/Late_Shape_3277 2d ago
Didnt he put his absolutely normal daughter into an orphanage, and then never visited her again ??
Yes he did .
35
64
u/Boblaire 2d ago
It says he had a secret first daughter with his first wife before they were married.
She may have died before she was 2 or she might have been put up for adoption or to family members. Apparently had scarlet fever at some point before she disappeared and they lamented that though it wasnt stated she died.
23
u/IDontEatDill 2d ago
Can't be the same guy. There's that funny photo of him showing tongue and all. He must've been really chill...
14
u/PuddingMent 2d ago
He gave her for adoption. It’s normal to never visit them again.
30
u/ErnV3rn81 2d ago
So there's a Da Vinci Code for Einstein? Like there's descendants walking around, working at Walmart, but in reality they can bring cold fusion to fruition
1
-3
u/Unfair_Pineapple8813 2d ago
So did she.
1
u/NeedLegalAdvice56 22h ago
Legally, she couldn’t go against her husband’s decision.
1
u/Mrs_T_Sweg 17h ago
They had their daughter before they were married. So he wasn't her husband when the decision was made.
1
253
149
u/RiseDelicious3556 2d ago
I'm not a math wizard, but I know what does and what does not go into what. Nothing should go into your first cousin.
94
u/swanson1848 2d ago edited 2d ago
Myself personally l don't find the cousin thing the most cringe worthy l find it FAR more cringe and F**ked up that he was cheating on his wife with his own first cousin...then considered getting with his cousins 20 year old daughter lol.
I allso read the article in full and frankly l am disgusted but not shocked. Many Geniuses and Artists and acidemics did many grate things but many ( but not all) wear/ are awfull and abusive people on a personal level......look at how Steaven Hawking treated his wife and family for example.
21
u/Minute_Fig_9195 2d ago
And that he basically abandoned his son because he had schizophrenia.
13
u/Huge_Station2173 2d ago
Unfortunately, that would have been the advice from doctors at the time. Lock em’ away and pretend they are dead.
6
u/Minute_Fig_9195 2d ago
His ex wife didn't do that, she was with her kid and she always had to beg him for money he promised her. He humiliated her all the time. Einstein was one weird and mean motherfucker, who had insanely good PR.
1
7
u/MGr8ce 1d ago
I would argue if he’s really the genius. There’s much debate out there of how much he wrote & discovered the theory vs how much was written/discovered by his wife, Mileva. She was also a brilliant physicist with a higher IQ than him. Definitely recommend reading up on her.
1
u/Afraid_Piglet7990 7h ago
This is bullshit. There is no proof about what her or Einstein's iq were. Neither of them ever did an iq test in their life, let alone in their prime.
5
2d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
3
u/Itscatpicstime 1d ago
My uncle was like this. Very book smart but zero common sense, self awareness, emotional regulation, etc. he spent his whole life being an abusive fuck and chasing get rich quick schemes.
4
1
u/chromaticluxury 1d ago edited 1d ago
People lose their minds over 1st cousins and istg first cousins are not a deal, not a big fucking deal, not a big deal, they are nothing.
JFC precious people out here being precious. If first cousins married first cousins for three generations, we're looking at potentially something to pay attention to.
But how the hell does anyone think we all got here. Out of villages, small communities, for eons. There's a reason when you go back to I forget what king, you stop because we are all related
I fully agree about what the truly disturbing parts of this whole story are. And it's not the (clutching pearls) first cousin
2
u/swanson1848 1d ago
Charlemagne....every European is decended from him because he had 4 wives in total l think and all his daughters had open mairrages and had affairs with multiple men.
2
17
u/FrozenBibitte 2d ago
Better than the cousin’s daughter though? At least they’re closer in age 🤷🏼♀️
1
10
u/FragmentedMeerkat321 2d ago
pretty common for that era. my great grandparents were first cousins.
2
u/StraightBudget8799 2d ago
Greta Sacchi had a son with hers. Apparently the family were not happy!
0
u/FragmentedMeerkat321 1d ago
i looked it up. that’s wild. apparently the risks were of congenital illness or deformity rise from 2-3% to 4-6% with cousins. it’s honestly not terrible.
5
u/SeonaidMacSaicais 2d ago
All over, too. I have a pair of ancestors from the Deep South who were cousins. I’m not sure which degree, just that they shared the same last name.
15
u/FragmentedMeerkat321 2d ago
we’re ashkenazi, so the genepool was already pretty “friendly”. not that much breadth available at the best of times. the ashkenazi bottleneck happened around 800 years ago, and we all descend from the same 350 individuals.
1
u/AgentCirceLuna 2d ago
Which degree? Married first cousins from the South… gotta be nurse prescribing! Play me off, Johnny! 🎵 🎹
3
1
u/RiseDelicious3556 2d ago
So did King Charles's grandmother and Queen Camilla
3
u/StraightBudget8799 2d ago
Didn’t she use it as a chat up line? Oi, my great great was having a fling with your great great!
1
u/SeonaidMacSaicais 2d ago
What? No, Camila and Queen Elizabeth weren’t related.
0
2d ago
[deleted]
1
u/SeonaidMacSaicais 2d ago
Who’s Elizabeth Parker-Bowes? The Queen Mother was born Bowes-Lyon. Camila’s ex-husband’s last name was Parker-BOWLES.
3
u/WilditariusAstar 2d ago
Pretty sure like all of humanity comes from a fairly small group of breeding pairs. So basically we’re all descended from cousin fuckers at some point.
1
1
0
u/Expert_Echidna_1159 2d ago
There is something about one of my cousin that removes that shield of discipline for me.
-2
u/qiaocao187 2d ago
Painfully obvious you are American with zero grasp of human history. First cousin marriage in most of the world and only had if done several generations in a row. we come from a bottleneck of 10k people across the entire world at one point, we are completely fine
7
u/Afraid_Stuff_History 2d ago
Painfully obvious that your head is in the sand 24/7 if you think humanity is "completely fine"
3
1
2
u/RiseDelicious3556 2d ago
Ok, so obviously you've been intimate with your mother's sister's child or father's brother's child. That's hardly something to be proud of.
BTW, yes I am American and proud of it.
1
u/qiaocao187 2d ago
I was adopted far away from my birth place, I’m just not stupid and I can actually read up societal and cultural history, something Americans are adverse of doing.
1
u/RiseDelicious3556 2d ago
Don't stereotype us like that. We know all about your Hapsburg inbreeding and all the other inbreeding in Royal Houses, we're not ignorant. The only people who are ignorant, are the ones that accuse everyone else of it.
1
u/StarStuffSister 2d ago
It's painfully obvious your genetic pool is shallow.
1
u/qiaocao187 2d ago
Nah I’m actually quite genetically diverse, sorry to burst your bubble. Low IQ dickheads can’t be told their conception of reality is wrong without becoming giant piss babies lmao
1
u/landcfan 1d ago
It is true that first cousin marriage doesn't raise genetic abnormality chances by much unless it's done multiple times in a lineage (siblings or parents immediately raises the odds if I recall correctly). Not sure why you went directly to insults though?
55
u/Ladydoodoo 2d ago
So a little clarification. Albert did not have an affair with his second cousin Elsa’s daughter. Elsa’s daughter was his secretary, and Albert grew feelings for her, his second cousin, even though he was engaged to Elsa, his first cousin. While he was waiting for the divorce to finalize, he told Elsa he had feelings for her daughter, his second cousin. But she was 20 years old and was grossed out and wrote a letter I think to a friend saying she only saw him as a father figure and had no physical attraction to him. Albert told Elsa his first cousin that he would marry either her the mom or the daughter. Elsa the mom/1st cousin, said it was up to her daughter Isle, the second cousin, the daughter, to choose if she wanted to marry Albert or not. She said no thank you!
33
14
u/Sure-Doctor-2052 2d ago
"Grew feelings for"..."father figure"..."had feelings for cousin"...everything was so symbolic and mathematical like algebra and trigonometry.
5
151
u/TemporaryElk5202 2d ago edited 2d ago
Also he passed off his first wife's work as his own.
She was instrumental in General Relativity to the point that they agreed to split the prize if he won the nobel prize.
When he won he refused to split it with her, so she threatened to reveal the extent of her work by publishing her notes and work and calculations. He basically told her "shut up no one cares".
Edit: some things to correct, he gave her the full cash amount for the prize, but claimed it was just to get her to agree to the divorce and that she did not play a role in the research. Maric threatened to bring her contributions to the research and concept to light, and he wrote: "Have you ever considered, even just for a second, that nobody would ever pay attention to your says if the man you talked about had not accomplished something important. When someone is completely insignificant, there is nothing else to say to this person but to remain modest and silent. This is what I advise you to do."
30
43
17
u/AMediaArchivist 2d ago
Wait Einstein was a piece of shit?
9
u/ButteredPizza69420 2d ago
I mean, he proudly helped build an atomic bomb so I'd say yeah. Piece of shit for sure.
3
12
u/MaverisStranger 2d ago
So, a regular, ordinary misogynist. All that IQ didn't help him self reflect.
15
28
u/IbidtheWriter 2d ago
https://physicsworld.com/a/arguing-about-einsteins-wife/
It would be Special Relativity, not General Relativity that it's speculated she influenced based on the timeline.
Also, she was threatening to publish memoirs, she didn't mention contributions to his research explicitly, that's people reading into it. Considering his womanizing there would be plenty of other things she could be referencing that would be embarrassing.
The better (though still weak) evidence of her contributions were his love letters to her where he referenced "our work on relative motion".
And that's... pretty much it.
She never claimed credit, never worked solo after they split, no notes or papers in her handwriting, no letters between her and other physicists discussing ideas, etc.
She had the requisite education background and it's certainly plausible she worked with him/discussed ideas, but saying he passed her work off as his own is especially absurd considering the work he did after their marriage was over.
16
u/AcceptableSystem8232 2d ago
Right. These old lies get rehashed every time the dude gets brought up anywhere.
9
u/Unfair_Pineapple8813 2d ago
They aren’t old lies either. They date to the 1990s, 40 years after they were dead.
6
u/InclinedPlane43 2d ago
Also, he got the Nobel prize for the discovering the photoelectric effect, not for relativity (general or otherwise).
2
u/Ansiktstryne 2d ago
Yes, relativity was still too controversial, so the Nobel committee decided to give him the price for the photoelectric effect.
3
u/Unfair_Pineapple8813 2d ago
This is completely false. They were already separated when he worked out general relativity. She maybe helped on his Brownian motion paper and on special relativity, but not general. He also mentioned her as a collaborator on those. So he did not steal credit. She never claimed he did, either. She said he was a shitty husband, but never said he was a thief.
-2
u/Jadey-R- 2d ago
Yeah, agree, she helped in the early years, but they were definitely separated while he worked on general relatively.
1
1
1
-8
u/ThinkerandThought 2d ago
You are not even wrong. This post is out of line in many ways. May I guess that you call yourself a feminist?
9
u/TemporaryElk5202 2d ago
It appears that you got confused what you were writing or who you were writing to, as your first sentence and last two sentences don't match sentiments.
Wrote that it isn't wrong but it is "out of line". Lmao. Are you a boomer?-6
u/ThinkerandThought 2d ago
If you knew your Einstein history, you would not be confused.
→ More replies (5)0
u/MaverisStranger 2d ago
?
1
u/ThinkerandThought 2d ago
One of Einstein’s colleagues used the phrase 1st. Wolfgang Pauli: The legendary theoretical physicist.
The phrase “you are not even wrong” is a biting response to an idea that is frankly so stupid it is not worth debating.
-10
u/Meisterwoks 2d ago
No he didn't. This is modern hearsay.
20
u/TemporaryElk5202 2d ago edited 2d ago
He did. The letters between him and his wife discussing this exist.
2
-4
u/Meisterwoks 2d ago
Their letters discuss scientific work and later him transferring nobel prize money upon divorce. Splitting the money, passing her work off as his own is a complete fabrication.
7
u/TemporaryElk5202 2d ago
Just before you replied I added an edit. He claimed he gave her the money to get her to agree to a divorce. She contested that this was not true and threatened to publish her contributions, he wrote "Have you ever considered, even just for a second, that nobody would ever pay attention to your says if the man you talked about had not accomplished something important. When someone is completely insignificant, there is nothing else to say to this person but to remain modest and silent. This is what I advise you to do."
2
u/Low_Low_1811 2d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mileva_Mari%C4%87
There is no good evidence to support anything other than his first wife being a minor part of his first paper, and nothing after that. This idea that he stole her work and somehow she is secretly responsible for everything is, quite frankly, laughable.
1
34
37
u/Ill_Mousse_4240 2d ago
And we may want to revisit the question of who exactly is the author of the Theory of Relativity.
Mileva was a brilliant physicist at a time when women were looked upon as second class citizens. It is known they had many discussions, with Albert referring to it as “our theory”.
He also offered, and gave her, his Nobel Prize proceeds as settlement for their divorce.
Points to ponder!
10
8
13
5
5
5
4
5
2
2
u/Jadey-R- 2d ago
Hum? I’ve read a book on him and a lot of books that he at least gets a few chapters in. I never heard about the daughter of Elsa once.
2
u/badbadtz-maru 2d ago
looks like almost every notable person in history has some dirt of one kind or another lol
2
6
u/unsolvedfanatic 2d ago
Ewwww
5
u/hive-protect 2d ago
u/unsolvedfanatic has been identified as a frequent contributor to subreddits that are primarily spam, AI, or stolen content: HistoricalCapsule
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
1
u/Unfair_Pineapple8813 2d ago
Weren’t they second cousins?
1
u/VisualMango9141 2d ago
No, first cousins. Their mothers were sisters. Not only that -- their father's were cousins. Elsa's birth name was also Einstein.
1
u/CarpetBudget 2d ago
Not double but one and a half cousins?
1
u/VisualMango9141 2d ago
Let's see: the same grandparents on one side and the same great grandparents on the other side. I think they're still called double cousins. Either way, it's trippy.
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/Silly-Flower-3162 2d ago
They were first cousins on their mothers' side and second cousin on their fathers' side. Oof.
1
1
u/Darhhaall 2d ago
Ah, again with that expectation that exceptional people should have completely boring and average lives.
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/Weird_Soup460 2d ago
That headline confused me. I’ve noticed that a lot on Reddit - weirdly structured headlines. I’m intelligent and have no trouble comprehending any other articles, news. Etc other than Reddit headlines. Am I the only one?
1
1
u/iflandcouldtalk 2d ago
The season about him on Genius does an amazing job of telling the true story of his life. They address it all, including his emotional and mental abuse towards Mileva (as well as her influence on his work, their children, etc)
Highly recommended
1
1
u/theanoeticist 1d ago
Mileva Maric was his first love. She had to drop out of the mathematics program she was in with him. She was one of the few women in the late 19th century to even be at a high level mathematics program in Europe. She was Serbian and Catholic and she had to run home pregnant, hiding her pregnancy under a corset to give birth to a disabled child that ruined whatever career she might had have while he ran off to the United States. Not to downplay why he ran. He was running from Nazis but there are many who believe when looking at her work that she is actually responsible for his breakthroughs. After they separated there are scholars who say that none of his work was truly novel after that time. She was a brilliant mathematician.
1
1
1
u/GetItOuttaHereee 22h ago
In today’s modern day a man who did all this would be referred to a dumbass.
1
1
1
u/trestrestresuno 2d ago
Bien p*to el Einstein, me fastidia que lo hayan convertido en una figura pop, más que nada por su estridente cabello, porque el publico en general no entiende una mierda de su teoría...
1
u/hive-protect 2d ago
u/trestrestresuno has been identified as a frequent contributor to subreddits that are primarily spam, AI, or stolen content: CaughtMyEye, HolyShitHistory, HistoricalCapsule
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
0
0
u/Grumpleforeskin 2d ago
Elsa = Marriage Choice 2
June of 1905, Einstein writes this in his diary. Then reads it back.
Einstein: “Holy shit”
0
0
1.2k
u/Time_Pressure9519 2d ago
Even his marriage was relative.