CORRECTIONS & ADDITIONS MADE ON 3/21/2026
Note: Albert Einstein spent three-and-a-half days in October 1921 visiting his sister and her husband in Florence (in error several sources repeat they were then living in Fiesole, where my aunt and uncle briefly lived between 1936 and 1938.) This has evolved into an almost legendary tale that Albert often visited Florence and Fiesole and regularly played his violin in the cloister of the Convento San Francesco in Fiesole, accompanied by the Padre’s organ playing. A recent trip to Fiesole and a simultaneous contact by a researcher from the Einstein Papers Project asking about my possible kinship with a Dr. Max Adolf Bruck, who corresponded with Einstein between 1931 and 1941, inexplicably captured my imagination about Albert Einstein’s visit there. I offer no explanation for the evolution of this tale, other than self-aggrandizement, but merely discuss what the evidence suggests.
Related Posts:
I never know where the idea for a post will come from. Given that I’ve had my family history blog going for nine years and have researched and written about a myriad of topics and people, many not specifically related to my family, I’m no longer surprised what will catch my fancy. What has caught my attention now stems from my recent visit to Florence and the Tuscan hill town above it, Fiesole, where my aunt and uncle temporarily escaped the Nazis between 1936 and 1938. This was the subject of my previous post. Beyond finally visiting the Villa Primavera that was the site of my aunt and uncle’s refuge for a brief period, I heard an interesting tale that forms the basis for this post. Let me start at the beginning.
During my recent travels with my wife to Paris and Florence, I received an email from a reader, a German lady named Barbara Wolff, asking if I was familiar with a Dr. Max (Adolf) Bruck. I am not. One of her most recent research tasks as part of the so-called Einstein Papers Project (EPP) has been to identify Max Bruck, born on the 14th of April 1908 in Frankenstein, Silesia [today: Ząbkowice Śląskie, Poland], who communicated with Albert Einstein between 1931 and 1941. More on this below.
First, let me place this in context so readers will understand the basis of Barbara’s question and the admittedly tiny sliver of Einstein’s life that has captured my interest. Albeit a brief connection to Fiesole and Florence, I find it fascinating as Barbara wrote to me that “unfortunately, numerous myths and legends are spread about Einstein.” (Personal communication, email dated 3/1/2026) Let me concisely explain how Barbara can make this claim and try and separate truth from fiction vis-à-vis Einstein’s brief association with Florence and Fiesole.
After a long tenure at the at the Albert Einstein Archives, Barbara has joined the team of the Einstein Papers Project. For those ignorant of this project, as I sadly am, let me explain what I learned. The EPP is a long-term academic endeavor dedicated to researching, transcribing, translating, and publishing the massive written legacy of Albert Einstein. The Albert Einstein Archives, the AEA, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, holds the original papers and collaborates closely with the project. The online Einstein Archives has a database of 90,000+ records of all known Einstein manuscripts and correspondence and the full text of 2,000 digitized items. The project produces “The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein,” a projected 30-volume series published by Princeton University Press, seventeen volumes of which have been published to date and are currently working on volume 18. The EPP has been hosted at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California, since 2000.
Max Bruck does not appear in my ancestral tree, but I promised Barbara that upon my return stateside I would investigate him and see what I could learn. With the date and place of Max’s birth, I found some relevant documents though nothing the EPP has not already located. Personally, the most interesting thing I found was an ancestral “tree” with Max and his father Bruno Bruck’s names, from an unpublished family history written by Alfred Julius Bruck which I first came across at the Mormon Church’s FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City many years ago. (Figure 1) I will always recall the title because it was pretentiously named, “A Thousand Year History of the Bruck Family”; I have a copy of a less pretentiously called version. In any case, were I interested enough, I could uncover the ancestral connection between Max and myself. Perhaps one day.
At this moment, permit me a short digression. I’ve made the point ad nauseum that what brings me a delicious thrill doing ancestral research is discovering unexpected connections between places and people. When introducing herself Barbara Wolff mentioned in passing that she was a childhood friend of my second cousin, Margarita Vilgertshofer, née Bruck, with whom I’m in regular contact. I’ve occasionally mentioned Margarita in blog posts which is how Barbara became aware that we’re related. Since Barbara had lost contact with her as a child, I’ve put them back in touch.
Moving on. For reasons I can no longer recall, perhaps just making idle conversation, while recently visiting Giuditta Melli, my wife’s and my friend from Florence, I mentioned I’d recently been contacted by Barbara Wolff from the EPP, completely unaware of Albert Einstein’s remote connection to Florence and Fiesole. We happened to be in Fiesole at the time, and Giuditta suggested a walk to the nearby Convento San Francesco (Figure 2) where she told us that Einstein would often play his violin in the cloister accompanied by the Franciscan father’s organ playing. (Figure 3) This revelation came as a complete surprise. I was led to believe that Albert Einstein had visited on multiple occasions and had become good friends with Father Odorico Caramelli (1884-1962) (Figure 4), the so-called Guardian of the Convento at the time. I resolved to further investigate this.
Fast forward. Upon my return home, I naively mentioned to Barbara what I’d learned about Albert Einstein’s “multiple visits” to Florence and Fiesole and his purported friendship with the Franciscan father who ran the Convento San Francesco in Fiesole, asking if she knew more about this. I use the term “naively” realizing in retrospect it was pretentious of me to think this would not be general knowledge among scholars who’ve long studied Einstein. However, what I learned in the process reinforces something I’ve emphasized in some of my posts, the need to rely on primary source documents, so in this instance what Albert Einstein wrote and what researchers studying his archive have uncovered.
In response to my innocent question, Barbara patiently explained the “few summers” Albert Einstein spent in Florence-Fiesole was confined to a short stint in October 1921. Albert was very close to his sister Maria “Maya” Winteler, née Einstein (1881-1951), two years his junior. Maya, born in Munich, earned a degree in Romance languages and literature in Bern, Switzerland in 1909. A year later she married a lawyer, Paul Winteler. Maya no doubt met her future husband through her brother. Years before, after Albert Einstein failed his entrance exam to the Zurich Polytechnic Institute, he’d been sent to Aarau, Switzerland to study and lodged with the Winteler family for almost a year.
Maya and Paul eventually moved to Italy in around 1921, first renting an apartment in Florence at Via Ficino 8, then in November 1921 moving to Fiesole to Via Giuseppe Verdi. In 1922, they bought a home in the Sesto-Fiorentino (Figure 5) area of Florence they named “Samos,” after the beautiful Greek island.
When Albert visited Maya and her husband in October 1921, they would then have been living, as just noted, at Via Ficino 8 in Florence; an error that is often repeated in various sources, according to Barbara, is that when Albert visited, he stayed with his sister and brother-in-law in Fiesole. Regardless, this is when Albert “. . . established a friendship—sort of—with Pater Odorico Caramelli and Frater Clementino.” Barbara further notes that “despite many later invitations [to Samos] the only visit her brother could pay her took place in 1921. That was the year when he indeed made music with the Franciscan monk. . .the ‘few summers’ were actually just a short stint in October 1921.”
It was Einstein’s stepdaughter Margot, about whom Einstein fervently remarked, “when Margot passes, flowers are born,” that took up the relationship with the Franciscan father. She sculpted her “Maternita” (Figure 6) for the cloister in around 1937.
A prominent free, English-language news magazine and website published every other Thursday in Florence, called “The Florentine,” has erroneously written that Albert “often visited” his sister in Florence. This same article makes other claims that are not supported by reality, according to Barbara, specifically that during his “visits to Florence, Albert also spent time with his first cousin, Robert Einstein, and his family.” Robert and his family were still living in Rome at the time Albert had left Europe for good.
Yet another fanciful recollection relates to the caption to a watercolor rendered by Robert’s young niece, Lorenza Mazzetti, which pretends to provide a glimpse into a family visit. It is captioned: “This is a portrait of Uncle Robert’s cousin, Maya’s brother. His name is Albert Einstein. He lives in America, and when he’s there, he works as a scientist, and when he comes here, he goes on the swing.” As Barbara remarks, “this is pure self-important fabrication.”
The Albert Einstein Archives includes a letter dated the 17th of September 1953, written by Albert Einstein together with Margot (she attached a French translation to her stepfather’s German handwriting). Some published accounts claim this letter was addressed to Father Odorico Caramelli at the Convento San Francesco in Fiesole when in fact it was sent to Father Fiorenzo Falcini, another monk at the Convento.
ITALIAN VERSION:
“Caro padre ora che lei è tornato dal suo lungo viaggio mi si offre l’opportunità di esternarle dal profondo dell’animo la mia riconoscenza per tutte le gentili premure che Lei ha avuto per mia cugina durante la sua malattia, alleviandole la sofferenza. Quando da giovane venni in Italia ho potuto constatare con gioia quali sentimenti alberghino nell’animo del popolo italiano. Inoltre da più parti mi è stato riferito che durante gli oscuri tempi del fascismo e del dominio di Hitler, molte persone hanno rischiato la vita per soccorrere le vittime della persecuzione. In questa straordinaria situazione ove la solidarietà umana è tutto, i suoi compatrioti si sono rivelati i più onesti e i più nobili tra le genti da me conosciute durante la mia lunga vita. Queste caratteristiche si armonizzano con lo sviluppato senso di quella bellezza, tanto forte in voi che si rivela in tutte le manifestazioni della vita. Avrei preferito scrivere in italiano, ma non sono più capace”.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION:
“Dear father, now that you have returned from your long journey, I am offered the opportunity to express to you from the bottom of my soul my gratitude for all the kind care you had for my cousin during her illness, relieving her suffering. When I came to Italy as a young man I saw with joy how much empathy and genuine humaneness is alive in the Italian people. In addition, I have been told from many sides that during the dark times of fascism and Hitler’s rule, many people risked their lives to help the victims of persecution. In this extraordinary situation where human solidarity is everything, your compatriots have proved to be the most honest and noble among the peoples I have known during my long life. These characteristics harmonise with the highly developed sense of beauty, evident in all the manifestations of life. I would have preferred to write in Italian, but I’m not able to anymore.”
Barbara tells me the unnamed cousin referred to in this letter is Alice Steinhardt, née Koch, who died in Florence in June 1953 after a prolonged illness. One of the Franciscan monks (Alessandro or Fiorenzo Falcini) notified Einstein’s family in Princeton. Because Alice’s name is not specifically mentioned in the above letter, in some reports Einstein’s words are erroneously associated with Einstein’s cousin Robert’s mourning for the loss of his wife and children.
Regarding Robert Einstein’s wife and two daughters, they were killed by German soldiers in August 1944 at Villa Il Focardo near Florence. A book by Thomas Harding entitled “The Einstein Vendetta” examines the question of whether the killings were a deliberate act of revenge ordered by high-ranking Nazis because of their kinship to Albert Einstein and for his prominent stand against the Nazi regime, or random wartime killings. Robert was hiding in nearby woods when his family was killed, and his guilt and grief caused him to commit suicide less than a year later.
I’ve gone to lengths to explain Einstein’s 1953 letter because of varying accounts it has spawned.
In researching this post, I stumbled upon a 2023 article by Antonella Gasperini from the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, entitled “History, science and music at the Arcetri Observatory.” The Observatory preserves an important historical heritage consisting of archival documents, ancient books, and scientific instrumentation. Among the items in their collection is the Blüthner piano that belonged to Maya Einstein that was given to her by her brother and then entrusted to Hans Joachim Staude when she fled Florence in 1939, in hopes of recovering it after the war. Regrettably, Maya suffered from arteriosclerosis, and while her return to Italy in 1946 was considered and discussed, her condition made living an independent life impossible. She died in Princeton in 1951, never recovering her piano nor reuniting with her husband who’d been unable to accompany her to America for medical reasons.
Barbara confirmed that with one exception, highlighted in an “Editor’s Note,” the article accurately captures Albert Einstein’s brief connection to Fiesole. I include the author’s discussion about the history of Maya’s piano. Quoting:
“The latest acquisition of a historical asset by the Arcetri Observatory dates back to 2016 and concerns an object that is ‘unusual’ in an astronomical observatory: a Blüthner piano (no. 51833), built in Leipzig in 1899. Not just any old piano, but one with a unique history, in which music, history and science come together. An object from which invisible threads reach out, binding the stories of people, of families affected by the tragic history of the 20th century, made up of exiles, persecutions and migrations. It is the piano that belonged to Maja Einstein, Albert’s sister, who had decided to move permanently to Italy with her husband Paul Winteler in 1921, briefly to Fiesole and then to a country house between Florence and Sesto Fiorentino that they named ‘Samos’.
At the beginning of her stay in Florence, Maja established a close friendship with the friars of the Convent of St. Francis in Fiesole, which would last for many years. The Convent of St. Francis was not only a destination for many visitors and believers, but also for men of culture who came to meet Father Odorico Caramelli, a musician and intellectual linked to Giovanni Papini and the world of Florentine cultural magazines at the turn of the century. When Einstein was invited by Federigo Enriques to give lectures in Bologna in October 1921, the physicist decided to spend a few days with his sister, taking his son Hans Albert with him. He arrived in Florence on the 18th of October but asked to remain incognito. He had just won the Nobel Prize and was already at the peak of his fame. [EDITOR’S NOTE: THE TRUTH IS THAT HE WON THE NOBEL PRIZE IN 1922 FOR THE YEAR 1921.] The calendar of the time in Florence was full (he left on the 21st of October), but we know for certain that he visited the Convent of Fiesole. According to some testimonies, the memory of this visit took on a mythical aura over time. For example:
At night he would descend into the woods outside the Convents and, sitting on the wall of the Etruscan cistern, he would play to the moon.
It seems hard to imagine that, during the three and a half days spent in Florence, Einstein went to play in the moonlight every night, but he definitely went to Fiesole on the 20th of October, as proven by his signature in the visitors’ register. Another possible destination for Einstein during his few days in Florence seems to have been the Arcetri Observatory, but the only evidence of this is entrusted to a recollection by Pierantonio Abetti, Giorgio’s son, who writes in an article dated 2003:
In the 1920s, Albert Einstein came to visit his sister every summer and went up to the Observatory to talk to my father.
Here again, family memory may have been misleading, because biographical studies reveal that Einstein visited Florence for the last time during those few days in October 1921. It is plausible, however, that Einstein and Abetti knew each other through common scientific interests, although this is not supported by further evidence. In his article, Pierantonio also reproduced a photo of Einstein with a dedication to Abetti dated 1931, as proof of the acquaintance and esteem between the two scientists, but this does not prove Einstein’s actual presence at the Observatory in that year.
Someone who undoubtedly visited the Observatory in 1931 was Maja Einstein, as documented in the register of signatures of visitors to the Observatory dated 11 November 1931, together with Nesta de Robeck, a piano teacher in the Anglo-Florentine circle, and the astronomer Luigi Jacchia (a coincidence or an acquaintance?) who was a student in Bologna at the time11. Maja took part in Florentine cultural life, especially music, and participated in local artistic initiatives. In ‘Samos’, the Einstein-Wintelers had built up a circle of friends – musicians, painters, young art history scholars – who lived under the banner of art. Among them was Hans Joachim Staude, a painter and musician from Hamburg, who had trained in Aby Warburg’s circle.
Live music was played during the evenings at ‘Samos’, and Maja often duetted at the piano with Staude. Maja was not a professional musician, but music was the essence of her life. When Albert decided to buy her a second-hand Blüthner piano in 1931, restoring it and sending it to Florence, Maja was overjoyed, as testified by numerous letters.
Unfortunately, with the publication of the Race Manifesto in July 1938 and the exclusion of Jews from political social life at the end of 1938, the political situation became increasingly critical, and, at the beginning of 1929 [sic] [EDITOR’S NOTE: 1939], Maja was forced to leave Italy and join her brother in the United States. She then decided to entrust her beloved piano to Hans Joachim Staude in the hope of returning soon and reuniting with her husband. After the war, she made several attempts to return to Europe, but poor health forced Maja to remain in Princeton until her death in 1951.
The Blüthner No. 51833 remained with the Staude family for over seventy years. Thanks to the willingness of the family and the interest of Francesco Palla, astronomer and director of the Observatory from 2005 to 2011, in 2016, the piano, a very special cultural asset, finally found its place in the library with the commitment to make the history of discrimination linked to this instrument known and not forgotten.”
So, based on Antonella Gasperini and Barbara Wolff’s research, Albert Einstein’s “multiple visits” to Florence and Fiesole boil down to one three-and-a-half day stay in Florence with his sister Maya and her husband in their apartment in October 1921. As far as Albert Einstein’s playing his violin at the Convento San Francesco in Fiesole accompanied by Father Caramelli playing the organ, this must perforce have happened over one or two days.
In the previous post, I discussed so-called “Soggiorno degli Stranieri in Italia”, “Stay of Foreigners in Italy” forms which guests staying at the bed-and-breakfast run by my aunt Suzanne and Lucia von Jacobi at the Villa Primavera and other visitors to Italy were compelled to complete. I thought Albert Einstein might have been required to complete one during his visit. Independently, however, I discovered these forms were only required during Italy’s Fascist era from 1922 until 1943. The best evidence we have that Albert Einstein visited the Convento in Fiesole, as Gasperini notes, is his signature in the visitors’ register dated the 20th of October 1921. As Gasperini further remarks, the memory of Einstein’s visit has over time taken on a “mythical aura,” a trap I almost fell into.
Closing the loop. As noted at the outset of this post, I’ve had my family history blog for almost nine years. In Post 122 and Post 122, Postscript, I wrote about Herta Brauer, a relative by marriage, who wound up in the Dominican Republic, one of the few places in the world willing to accept Jewish emigres during the Second World War. Herta went on to achieve great fame in the Dominican Republic and established the ballet company there that has produced a string of world-class ballet dancers. Because the then dictator Rafael Trujillo took an unreciprocated love interest in her, she was in danger of being murdered by him and forced to flee. A documentary has just been completed about Herta which placed me in contact with a gentleman affiliated with the project several years ago.
In any case, in one of her emails, Barbara mentioned in passing the existence in the Albert Einstein Archives of a letter Max Albert Bruck wrote to Einstein on the 11th of November 1941 from the Dominican Republic. Curious whether I could find documentary evidence of Max’s presence there, I asked my acquaintance in the Dominican Republic if he could locate anything in their archives. And, to my great pleasure he did, one document of which even includes a photograph of him. (Figures 7a-c) Another document identifies him as a farmer in Sosua, then later he is identified as a doctor, which was his actual profession.
As readers can see, a blog post which starts in a Tuscan hill town in Italy almost seamlessly winds up on an island in the Caribbean. These are the types of connections I absurdly like to make.
One final comment. My exchanges with Barbara Wolff have been casual emails, so any errors I’ve made in translation are exclusively my own doing.
REFERENCES
Agnoli, F. Albert Einstein and Fra Odorico. Philosophy, religion and politics in Albert Einstein, ESD.
Gasperini, A. (2023) Storia, scienza e musica all’Osservatoria di Arceti (History, science and music at the Arceti Observatory.) Firenze University Press, 12 (1), 85-92.
https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/cdg/article/download/14411/13285
Pirro, D. Maria (Maya) Einstein. The Florentine, 2015 Feb 05.
https://www.theflorentine.net/2015/02/05/maria-maja-einstein/
