Einstein::Early Love

Einstein grew up in a family who were making gadgets and electromagnetic gizmos When Einstein was about 15 or 16 his family was in the electrical business in Munich, which was like being in the Internet business today.

His uncle had patents on dynamos and electrical meters. The Einstein Brothers company sold power and lighting systems around southern Europe. He was very familiar with this technology, which was the leading edge technology of the day, like computers are today.

The family moved to Italy, leaving Albert back in Munich where he was in school, and he he seemed to have some sort of nervous breakdown. He dropped out of school, and went back to Italy, where he found himself with nothing to do, so he told his parents that he was going to go to the Polytechnic in Zurich and study engineering.

They took him there, but he was too young to go to college. He took the entrance exam, and he impressed them with most of his scores, except in languages, so they sent him off to a prep school for a year, for a season.

He lived with a family, the Wintelers, a big, boisterous intellectual family, who were always arguing and bird watching and hiking and seems to have had a wonderful time. And he got involved with one of the Winteler daughters, Marie.

Later on, his sister married one of the Winteler brothers, and his best friend, Michele Besso married another one of the Winteler sisters. So the Einsteins, Bessos, and Wintelers became very intertwined.

Albert's parents liked Marie a lot, and everyone was very unhappy when Albert dumped her for Mileva(first wife). And, in fact, Marie went into a depression was hospitalized for a while. But eventually she led a normal life and married a manager of a watch factory. Albert kept talking about her his whole life, about how he would be consumed in flames if he even saw her again. He would even tell this to Mileva. He was greatly relieved when Marie finally married, either because that put finally her out of reach or he felt very guilty about dumping her and what had happened to her.