Albert, as said two years younger sister Maia, learned to speak late. He used to „drawl” sentences like conteplating them. Mother, Paulina teached him to play cello, uncle Jacob teached algebra and an older friend, a medicine student, used to borrow him popular-science books. In age 15, he studied by himself differential calculus.
When Albert was one year old, his father’s company was to close, so the family moved from Ulm to München. Bismarck’s scholastic system, closed-minded teachers and studying as the must, changed the school into a nightmare. In Italy, where the father moved just before Albert’s (matura) graduation, he revived.
His parents wanted Albert to study at Polytechnic in Zurich – the best high school outside Germany. Without matura he had to pass entrance exams. He fell in German and philosophy. Following Rector’s advice, Albert stayed one year in Switzerland, where he finally got matura. But against his father’s will, Albert decided to become a scientist, not an engineer.
One more time Albert will not follow his father: when he got in love with Mileva Maric, a student of mathematics from Serbia (under Austria at thas time). In 1901 they had a daugther which died soon. Mileva failed her graduation exam and stayed without job. Only after his father death, Alberts married to Mileva. The university research position, promised to him, goes to another person: Albert also stays without a job. His friend find him to take a position as a patent adviser in Bern. In a short time, before 1906, he published 6 works
Mileva and Albert Einstein (1903) [Physics Today, Sep. 1994, str. 38]
In 1908 he got a „Privatdozent” at Bern University and a year later an associated professorship of Zurich Polytechnics. That position was offered to his friend Fridrich Adler – a faithful socialist who recognized that Einstein was better for that place.
Marriage with Mileva was as a marriage in love. Albert wrote to Mileva with tenderness „my little doll”, and about the relativity theory he wrote „our theory”. In summer 1914, short before a war, Mileva left Berlin and came back with the children to Zurich. Albert with friend published pacifistic „Manifest to European” – what made him isolated inside the university staff.