Einstein Family - Maria "Maja" Einstein (Albert's Sister)

Maria "Maja" Einstein (Albert's Sister)

Maria "Maja" Einstein and her older brother Albert Einstein were the two children of Hermann Einstein and Pauline Einstein (née Koch), who had moved from Ulm to Munich in June 1880, when Albert was two. There Hermann and his brother Jakob had founded Einstein & Cie., an electrical engineering company.

She was born November 18, 1881 in Munich. When little Albert saw his sister for the first time he thought she was a kind of toy and asked: "Yes, but where does it have its small wheels?" Maja and Albert got along very well all their lives. She was Albert's only friend during his childhood.

She attended elementary school in Munich from 1887 to 1894. She then moved with her parents to Milan, where she attended the German International School; Albert had stayed behind with relatives in Munich to complete his schooling. From 1899 to 1902, she attended a workshop for teachers in Aarau. After she passed her final exams she studied Romance languages and literature in Berlin, Bern and Paris. In 1909, she graduated from University of Bern, her dissertation was entitled "Contribution to the Tradition of the Chevalier au Cygne and the Enfances Godefroi".

In the year following her graduation, she married Paul Winteler, but they were to be childless. The young couple moved to Luzern in 1911, where Maja's husband had found a job. In 1922 they moved to Colonnata near Florence in Italy.

After Italian leader Benito Mussolini introduced anti-Semitic laws in Italy, Albert invited Maja to emigrate to the United States in 1939 and live in his residence in Mercer Street, Princeton, New Jersey. Her husband was denied entry into the United States on health grounds. Maja spent some pleasant years with Albert, until she suffered a stroke in 1946, and became bedridden. She later developed progressive arteriosclerosis, and died in Princeton on June 25, 1951 four years before her brother.