Einstein's Granddaughter: Moving Tributes at Memorial in El Cerrito

In the collective portrait painted by her friends at a memorial gathering Saturday, Evelyn Einstein was remembered as extraordinarily sharp and expressive when she wanted to be — in her laughter, her criticisms, her love of friends and conversation, her complaints, and her collection of objects that filled her Albany condominium.

Einstein, who  at age 70 after suffering many years from diabetes and other health problems, possessed a keen mind, extensive knowledge on many subjects, a love of animals and wide-ranging interests in the large and small, her friends said at the private gathering of 32 people at  in El Cerrito.

And she believed she was the , born of a dalliance he had outside of his marriage, possibly to a ballet dancer.

Officially, she was Albert Einstein's granddaughter by adoption, having been adopted at an early age by the scientist's older son, Hans Albert.

Albert Einstein scholar Robert Schulmann, a former history professor at Boston University who served as an editor of the Einstein papers, recalled her "radical free-thinking, a trait which she also shared with her grandfather Albert. It definitely ensured her unpopularity with certain members of her family, but she was always more interested in being straightforward than in toeing the line."

No family members attended Saturday's gathering, which was organized by Allen Wilkinson, a Southern California attorney and the sole heir of Evelyn Einstein's estate named in a brief,  written in a shaky hand and found under her telephone after her death.

"Evelyn was my dearest friend for over 10 years," Wilkinson said. "I would come up here occasionally, but throughout those 10 years every Wednesday and Saturday at 1 o'clock we would talk on the phone for at least two hours, often three. That woman knew so much. She was just a delight to be with."

Schulmann too recalled her phone conversations, saying they mirrored her "delicious mix of fatalism and free-spirited exuberance."

"Evelyn would start off in a hoarse, halting voice, somewhat grumpy, but half an hour into the conversation she had hit her stride and was skipping along rhetorically: a deft wisecrack at the expense of one of the insurance companies with which she was wrestling, here; a hearty laugh about some political hypocrite, there. Like grandfather Albert, she was after all contemptuous of those in authority."

"Her protest 50 years ago of the House Un-American Activities Committee's un-American activities was but a rare public demonstration of that which privately burned within her," Schulmann said.

Schulmann, who lives in Bethesda, MD, served as co-editor of a book on the astonishing cache of letters discovered in Berkeley in 1986 between Albert Einstein and his first wife, Mileva Maric. The discovery was occasioned by Evelyn Einstein's making available an unpublished manuscript by her mother Frieda.

Schulmann, who had contacted Evelyn Einstein in 1985 seeking correspondence between Maric and Albert Einstein, valued his ensuing friendship with her highly, he said. "The friendship that developed from that chance meeting was far more satisfying for me than my eventual rediscovery of the love letters between Albert Einstein and Mileva Maric."

Several people spoke of her various occupations, including her tireless devotion as a deprogrammer for former Moonies and members of other organizations or cults.

"She was very proud of the fact that she could help people in the deprogramming," said Judith Powell.

Longtime friend Lou MacMillan noted her "encyclopedic intellect on many subjects."

"She was a dear and loyal person," said Andrea Brunetti of El Cerrito, who said she knew Einstein for 30 years after first meeting her when Einstein worked for the Berkeley fire department. "She was fascinating to talk to — about everything. You could talk about so many subjects, about politics and religion. I'm an anthropology major — she loved that, she loved anthropology and travels. ... There was just never a time to talk with Evelyn that one didn't learn something. She really was a genius."

One striking theme at the gathering was Evelyn Einstein's belief that Albert Einstein was her real father, a belief shared by some of her friends.

"I think she felt truly she was Einstein's daughter," Powell said. Powell read a poem she wrote many years ago about Evelyn Einstein's link to Albert: "Bastard of the World's Most Famous Man."

The theme was echoed by Stephanie Reif, a physician's assistant who attended Evelyn Einstein at the Over-60 Health Center in Berkeley. "I couldn't help but notice that the older she got, the more she looked like Albert Einstein," Reif said.

Brunetti too said she was certain after seeing a photo of a blood relative of Albert Einstein: "I thought there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that she is Albert Einstein's daughter." 

After the memorial, Schulmann said he looked into whether she could have been Albert's daughter and that the results were "inconclusive." He said a DNA test was attempted, trying to match DNA from Evelyn and a sample from Einstein's brain but that the brain had deteriorated so much from its time in formaldehyde that it could not furnish a reliable DNA sample.

Another thread that ran through several comments was the struggle caused by having the Einstein name. It sometimes created uncertainty about trusting those who sought to be close to her, mixed with gratification in the association, a fear of seeming to take undue advantage of it, and meeting expectations of bearing such a name. 

"There was a dichotomy between enjoying some of the cachet or aura that came of being related to him (Albert Einstein) and not wanting to seem to trade on it," Brunetti said.

Einstein herself readily acknowledged this dichotomy. "It is a boon as well as a burden to have the Einstein name all one's life," she said in the opening words of the forward she wrote for a book of letters that Albert Einstein exchanged with children, Dear Professor Einstein: Albert Einstein's Letters To and From Children. "My first encounters with people would probably have been different if I had introduced myself as Evelyn Smith or Evelyn Jones. The expectations that others had of me seemed to be higher because I was 'an Einstein.' So, if I did well in school, there was never any special praise, yet the children still thought of me as a teacher's pet. I was always fearful that people would be angry with me if I did not live up to my name."

Another side of Evelyn Einstein from the Bay Area's bohemian days was recalled by Maya Batchelor-Herbert and her brother Egl Batchelor.

Egl Batchelor said she was "very intimate with my father," Bay Area artist Jonathan Batchelor. "She and my mother and my father used to go up to the mountains together."

"There was doubtlessly some shenanigans going on," he added, eliciting laughter from the audience.

Evelyn Einstein also had grumpy moods that included criticism of her friends, acknowledged Kennan Kellaris Salinero, who may have been the last person to speak with Einstein before she died. But, Salinero continued, "She carried her concern and love for each of you in her conversations and her heart."

MacMillan observed an irony about her perception of her friendships, saying, "She was concerned that she didn't have a lot of friends, but I see by the group out here that she obviously did."

Evelyn Einstein was cremated June 13, and her ashes rested in a small box that appeared to be made of wood on a long table flanked by two large candles on tall candlesticks in front of the audience at the memorial gathering. The ashes will be scattered from an airplane over San Francisco Bay, Wilkinson said.

Everybody makes mistakes ... ! If there's something in this article you think should be corrected, or if something else is amiss, call editor Emilie Raguso at 510-459-8325 or email her at emilier@patch.com.