TLS signed “A. Einstein,” one page, 8.5 x 11, personal Princeton, New Jersey letterhead, February 20, 1939. Letter to author and schoolteacher Peter F. Wiener, granting him permission to cite a quotation in a publication, German with Tears. In full (translated): "I would like to agree that you quote the passages mentioned from my work in your book. With great respect." In fine condition, with one small file hole to the upper left corner. Accompanied by a letter of provenance stating that the consignor's father was presented with this letter by Wiener in the late 1940s.
Peter Fritz Wiener served as the assistant master at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, where the consignor's father was educated. An Austrian Jew, naturalized British, Wiener and his parents had fled Berlin for London in the early 1930s. He later wrote several arcane books on German history and culture, among them German for the Scientist, German with Tears (a survey of German education and a condemnation of the Nazi regime by a German living in England), and Martin Luther: Hitler's Spiritual Ancestor; he was a regular contributor to the letters pages of the establishment British press on a range of subjects.
At Stowe Wiener was keen to expose cloistered English schoolboys to the ways of the real world, particularly European culture and thought, and would invite people of note like diplomat Harold Nicholson and renowned architectural historian Nikolas Pevsner to talk informally to his students after hours. He also organized ambitious school trips to the United States to visit landmarks and institutions and to meet important figures like Einstein, with whom he must have struck up a lasting connection with after the first contact of this letter.
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