Hans Albert

Hans Albert Einstein was born on May 14, 1904, the son of Albert Einstein and his first wife Mileva Marić. Einstein was delighted and used his technical creativity to make toys for the baby. He made a cable car out of rope and matchboxes. However, the relationship between father and son was often tense. When his parents divorced, Hans Albert had a grudge against his father and when he said he wanted to be an engineer at the age of fifteen, Einstein was furious. That profession had brought his father and uncle to the brink of disaster with their company. Hans Albert eventually became a professor of construction engineering at the University of California in Berkeley. He died of a heart attack in 1973 and left three children.

Eduard

Eduard "Tete" Einstein was the second son of Albert and Mileva, born in 1910. As with Hans Albert, Einstein was initially a devoted father, but the relationship deteriorated as the boy grew older. They rarely spoke after the divorce of Einstein and Mileva. Eduard went to study medicine at the University of Zurich and had the ambition to become a psychiatrist. Fate wanted him to fall prey to the mental illness schizophrenia. He spent most of his life in institutions. It is now believed that his primitive treatment there only made matters worse. He died of a stroke in 1965, was never married, and had no children.

Lieserl

Albert Einstein and Mileva Marić had a third child, daughter Lieserl. She was born in 1902, before Hans Albert and Eduard. At the time, Einstein and Mileva had no means of getting married. Einstein lived in Bern and was about to join the patent office. It would have been difficult to have an illegitimate child and build a respectable career as a civil servant. Therefore, the existence of Lieserl was kept secret. Her existence was only revealed when an unknown correspondence between Einstein and Mileva was discovered in 1986. Her fate is still unclear. Some historians assume she was relinquished for adoption, others say she died of scarlet fever (the correspondence proves she had this disease). It is a mystery that will probably never be fully unraveled.