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ALS in German, signed “Einstein,” one page, 8.5 x 10.5, no date but postmarked July 5, 1920. Handwritten letter to Swiss physicist Édouard Guillaume, in full (translated): "My behavior must seem unfriendly and uncollegial to you; it’s as if I wanted to condemn you by silence. In reality, however, it’s something quite different. I’ve often tried to understand what you say, but I’ve always failed utterly. If I wrote about Grossmann that it’s nonsense, this has to be understood with respect to me, or better, with respect to the state of my brain at the present moment. We call nonsense what we can’t understand; there is no other criterion. And you must forgive me all the more as essays and manuscripts rain down on poor me like lashes of the whip on a hackney-carriage nag. But since you press me so energetically, I have no choice but to seek enlightenment through repeated correspondence on the basis of the little enclosed notice and your letter.
You say that Θ Θ′ are periods of pendulums, that is, things, not quantities, and you write, Θ t = Θ′ t′.
Are these symbolic equations of some kind? I can’t make sense of it as an equation between quantities. I therefore don’t understand anything that follows, and I think for the time being that you have surrendered to an impermissible mysticism, forgetting that equations are about quantities. When I talk about the 'length l' or the 'period t' of a pendulum, what I mean by that is always the 'measured value l of the length when measured in a given unit of length' or the 'measured value t of the period when measured in a given unit of time.'
Only after you have cleared this indigestion up for me will I be able to think further. Sincere greetings to you, the old colleagues, and your wife." In fine condition. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope, addressed in Einstein's own hand and incorporating his signature, "A. Einstein," as part of the return address.
Édouard Guillaume (1881–1959) was a Swiss physicist and patent examiner who became a persistent irritant to Einstein during the 1910s–1920s, stubbornly insisting he had developed a modified relativity theory that preserved the concept of 'universal time'—an idea Einstein had fundamentally demolished. Guillaume pursued his heterodox views relentlessly, corresponding aggressively with leading physicists despite finding no traction in the mainstream.
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