You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Badersee, September 5, 1919
Dear friend,
When I see you again in Vienna at the end of this month, a whole year will have passed, a year without personal intercourse, the first in the history of our relations. Perhaps the most difficult year for you as well, as it was one of the most difficult for me, a year which ends with a burning disappointment for you, one which has robbed you of a fatherland; and yet—you will have to be thankful to it, for it has brought you a wife, without whom you wouldn't be able to bear life today; [it has brought you] the teaching position which you have wished for for so long, and which will, let us hope, continue to be yours; and—if you didn't have it yet—also the certainty that our scientific movement, in which you are assuming a leading role, has stood up to all storms and perils. So I wish you here in writing happiness for all that you have achieved and that is still to come, and may I, when we meet, only give in to the joy of our seeing each other again.
You know how much I have missed you this year; I would have felt it even more painfully if I had not simultaneously suffered under the threat of fate against our friend Toni. He will on no account learn how much he has taken out of me and how great a part he has played in aging me. But—is there another scenario with him? Everything I hear contradicts the bad expectations that you have justified1 in your last letter.
I could see you sooner if didn't feel the temptation to look at my children in Hamburg to be irresistible. I often feel as if I shouldn't postpone anything, and I am probably right in this, even without this prognosis.
The Eitingons, who are now with us, are taking us in tow to Berlin—from there we will certainly find our way alone.2 We have to be over the border in Salzburg on the 24th at the latest. A stay together here in Badersee would have been very nice and the right thing for your wife. When I received no reply to my telegram to you that the residence permit had been is