Typed letter signed ('A. Einstein') to Paul Epstein, 112 Mercer Street, Princeton, 9 May 1939.

In German. One page, 280 x 218 mm, on personal blindstamped letterhead. Provenance: by descent from Paul S. Epstein.

'A paper that is especially close to my heart'. Einstein has heard a 'rumbling' that a general cultural department is to be set up at CalTech, and he accordingly recommends Rudolf Kayser, 'a Germanist and cultural historian'. Rather pessimistically, he adds 'I am constantly writing such official letters rather than personal ones, but perhaps it’s no different for you. And even so one so rarely succeeds in securing the right position for someone'. He concludes with reference to an enclosure (no longer present) of 'one of my own papers which lies especially close to my heart. Show it also to Tolman'.

The paper referred to is probably Einstein's 'Stationary system with spherical symmetry consisting of many gravitating masses' (Annals of Mathematics (ser. 2), 40, 922–936), his only publication of that year. Richard Tolman (1881-1948) was professor of physical chemistry and mathematical physics at CalTech: in his later years he worked extensively on thermodynamics in relativistic systems. Somewhat disingenuously, Einstein omits to mention in his recommendation of Rudolf Kayser that Kayser was also his son-in-law, having been married to his stepdaughter Ilse (who had died in 1934). Kayser had been the editor of Die Neue Rundschau, one of the most important literary magazines in Germany (publishing Thomas Mann, Herman Hesse, and Stephen Zweig), before he was forced into exile, arriving in New York in 1935. He had also been instrumental in smuggling Einstein’s papers out of Berlin. As predicted, Kayser did not get the job.

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