Sherlock Holmes and The Mystery Of Einstein's Daughter

Foreword

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm and grew up in Munich, bustling, wealthy towns in the Swabian region of southern Germany. At the age of five he was shown how a compass needle always swings to magnetic North. From that moment he determined to become a great physicist, more famous than Isaac Newton.

Even today it is not widely known that at the age of twenty-three Einstein sired an illegitimate daughter with Mileva Marić, a physics student he met at the Zurich Polytechnikum, later his first wife. Mileva’s father Miloš had risen from the peasantry through the Army and the Austria-Hungarian civil service to a position of influence throughout the Vojvodina region of Serbia.

Mileva and Albert referred to the infant daughter by the Swabian diminutive ‘Lieserl’ – Little Liese. Her life was fleeting. At around 21 months of age she disappeared from the face of the Earth. The real Lieserl may never have come to the eyes of the outside world but for an unexpected find eighty three years after her disappearance. In California Einstein’s first son Hans Albert Einstein investigated an old shoebox tucked away on the top shelf of a wardrobe. It contained several dozen yellowed letters in German type, an exchange between Albert and Mileva. Italian, Swiss, German and Austro-Hungarian postmarks reflected their peripatetic life. Several letters dated between early 1901 and 1903 mention Lieserl. After September 1903 her name never appears again. Anywhere.

Lieserl’s fate remains a subject of mystery and speculation. Researchers regularly trek to Serbia to conduct investigations. They comb through registries, synagogues, church and monastery archives throughout the Vojvodina region, the place of her birth and short life. To no avail. In The Mystery of Einstein’s Daughter Holmes exclaims, ‘the most ruthless effort has been made by public officials, priests, monks, friends, relatives and relatives by marriage to seek out and destroy every document with Lieserl’s name on it. The question is – why?’

Most researchers conclude the child was born with serious brain damage. Serbian bureaucracy of those times would have written the words ‘Acute Stupidity’ into her medical records. Later, when Albert and Mileva’s second son Eduard developed severe schizophrenia Einstein would hint at an inheritable disorder on the Marić side of the family. More likely Lieserl’s condition was the consequence of a very difficult birth – the mother suffered from congenital dysplasia of the hip.

Three hapless ‘must have’ theories hold sway. Lieserl must have died in an outbreak of scarlet fever in Novi-Sad in the late summer of 1903. She must have been adopted by family friends in Belgrade. She must have been placed in a home for children with special needs.

In The Mystery of Einstein’s Daughter, Holmes and Watson are led to a dramatic Fourth Theory.

While works of fiction, the principal characters of my novels Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle and Sherlock Holmes and The Case of The Bulgarian Codex are taken from real life. So too in Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of Einstein’s Daughter.

I have put explanations of some of the more unusual references in the Endnotes.

Tim Symonds

Sussex

England