Albert, as said by his two years younger sister Maja, learned to speak quite late. He used to „drawl” sentences like contemplating them. The mother, Paulina taught him to play cello, his uncle Jacob taught him algebra and an older friend, a medicine student, used to borrow him popular-science books. At age of 15, he studied by himself differential calculus.
When Albert was one year old, his father’s company was to bankrupt, so the family moved from Ulm to München. Bismarck’s scholastic system, closed-minded teachers and studying as a duty, changed the school into a nightmare. In Italy, where the father moved just before Albert’s graduation, he revived.
His parents wanted him to study at the Polytechnic in Zurich – the best high school outside Germany. Without Abitur he had to pass the admission exams. He fell in German and philosophy. Following Rector’s advice, Albert stayed one year in Switzerland, where he finally got Abitur. But against his father’s will, Albert decided to become a scientist, not an engineer.
Once more Albert did not obey his father: when he got in love with Mileva Maric, a student of mathematics from Serbia (under Austria at that time). In 1901 they had a daughter who (probably) died. Mileva failed her graduation exams and stayed without job. The university research position, promised to him, went to another person: Albert also stayed without a job. Only after his father death, Albert married to Mileva. In 1904 their first son was born. Albert’s friend found him a work in Bern as a patent adviser. In a short time, till 1906, Albert published 6 works.
In 1908 he got a „Privatdozent” at Bern University and a year later an associated professorship of Zurich Polytechnics. This position was offered to his friend Fridrich Adler – a faithful socialist who recognized that Einstein was better.
Marriage with Mileva was 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 the war, Mileva left Berlin and came back with children to Zurich. Albert, with a friend, published a pacifistic „Manifest to Europeans” – what made him isolated inside the university staff.