'We are looking for a hide-out for the summer': Einstein's calm acceptance of his exiled status on the day he dramatically renounced his German citizenship.

Einstein and his wife had been under the mistaken impression that his younger son, Eduard, was staying with Maja (see previous lot, to which this letter is possibly a postscript), and Einstein now writes: 'It was an error on my part to think that Tetel was with you. It may have been because you wrote so extensively about him. There may also have been a hidden wish behind it. He is in fact reasonably well, but he is depressed and loses the thread of conversation in a characteristic way'. He ends by sending good wishes: 'We are now looking for a hide-out [Unterschlupf] for the summer'.

In contrast to Einstein's remarkably phlegmatic note, Elsa's letter shows her extreme agitation at the political developments which have left them homeless and stateless: letters in Germany are now being opened, and her children are being victimised because of Albert's public opposition to the Nazis: 'Maja, life is hard and grim. Do not write anything to the children that has any relation to politics, nothing to do with Albert's interviews. Oh my God, all our friends have either fled or are in prison. The newspapers are censored ... Maja, these are terrible times. I have been so wretched and ill for days that I can hardly drag myself around. In 10 minutes we shall land in Antwerp. I would wish that we were already sitting somewhere in a quiet nook, I also feel such dread about the landing!'.

In the two months since Hitler's appointment as Chanceller, the Gestapo had repeatedly raided the Einsteins' Berlin flat, and on 15 March, before leaving America, Einstein had declared his self-imposed exile from Germany, though he and Elsa still at that point intended to visit their summer house in Caputh. On learning whilst at sea that the Caputh house too had been raided, they abandoned the plan, and on arrival in Antwerp on 28 March (the day of the present letter) Einstein handed in his German passport at the consulate and renounced his citizenship: the Nazi government retaliated by seizing all his German property and funds. He was never to return to the country of his birth.
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