Jost Winteler
Jost Winteler's name is carved into a plaque on a house in Aarau, Switzerland. It reads: 'In this house lived 1895/96 as a cantonal student Albert Einstein 1879-1955 The famous physicist.' Winteler's own name is nowhere on it, yet without him the story behind that plaque looks very different. He was a Swiss schoolteacher who took in a homesick teenager and treated him like a son. That teenager was Albert Einstein, and he later called Winteler 'Papa.' What was life like inside a house that welcomed a stranger's son as one of its own? And what became of the friendship after that single year together ended? This is the story of the mentor behind the plaque, whose influence outlasted heartbreak, tragedy, and nearly a century.
On the 21st of November 1846, Jost Winteler was born in Filzbach, in the canton of Glarus. His father worked as a secondary school teacher, and young Jost began his schooling at home, starting around 1855. In 1862 he moved on to a school in Nesslau, in the canton of St. Gallen. From 1862 to 1866, he attended the Progymnasium in Schiers, in the canton of Graubünden. He then earned his Matura, the equivalent of a high school diploma, from the Thurgau Kantonsschule in Frauenfeld.
From 1866 to 1870, Winteler studied history and German language at the University of Zürich, where he received his Diplom. He then moved on to the University of Jena, studying philology there from 1870 to 1875. His doctoral thesis, Die Kerenzer Mundart des Kantons Glarus: In Ihren Grundzügen Dargestellt, appeared in 1876, supervised by the linguist Eduard Sievers. His academic training has been described as 'rigorous.'
It was in Jena that Winteler met a young woman named Pauline Eckart. On the 16th of November 1871, the two married; Pauline went by the nickname 'Rosa.' Together they raised seven children. Anna was born in 1872, followed by Jost Fridolin, known as 'Fritz,' in 1873. Rosa arrived in 1875, and Marie followed on the 24th of April 1877. Mathias was born in 1878, then Julius, who was also called 'Jost Jr.' Paul was born in 1882.
In the autumn of 1876, Winteler began teaching at the Zollikofer school for girls in Romanshorn, in the canton of Thurgau. From 1877 to 1880, he taught at the gymnasium in Burgdorf, in the canton of Bern. He then became director of the gymnasium in Murten, in the canton of Fribourg, starting in 1880. But he resigned from that post in 1884, after coming into conflict with the school's 'hardline' ultramontanist governors.
For the next twenty-five years, from 1884 to 1909, Winteler taught Greek and history at the Aargau Kantonsschule. The school stood near an experimental institution founded by the educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Like Pestalozzi's school, students there were 'allowed to reach their own conclusions.' It was, by one account, 'one of the best-regarded in Switzerland.' Einstein's sister, Maja, later described it as having 'a deservedly high reputation.' Its name drew students from as far away as overseas. One particular new arrival, in the autumn of 1895, was about to test that reputation like no other.
Albert Einstein came to Aarau only because he had failed the general-education half of the entrance exam for the Swiss Federal Polytechnical School in Zürich. The director of the Polytechnic, Albin Herzog, advised him to finish his schooling first. He should earn his Matura at a local secondary school before retaking the exam the following year. Gustav Maier, a mutual friend of both the Wintelers and the Einsteins, helped arrange for Einstein to board at Winteler's home for a year. Winteler had already boarded several students before, so the arrangement was nothing new to him.
In late October 1895, sixteen-year-old Einstein stepped off a train in Aarau, having just come from Zürich, a city some 25 miles away. Winteler met him at the station and brought him home, which stood right across the street from both the Gymnasium and the Technical School. Because Einstein had chosen to attend the technical school rather than the gymnasium, he never had Winteler as an official teacher. On the 26th of October 1895, Einstein was enrolled as a third-year pupil, three days after the school year had already begun. Locals called Aarau the 'City of beautiful Gables,' and Einstein himself later described it as 'an unforgettable oasis in that European oasis, Switzerland.'
Einstein's maternal cousin, Robert Koch, was sent to stay with one of Winteler's neighbors, since the two boys were set to attend the same school. On the 26th of October 1895, Winteler's friend Gustav Maier wrote to him, warning that Koch should remain 'under your most immediate supervision.' Maier suggested that if Koch proved too unruly, he should 'swap' rooms with his 'much more mature' cousin Albert. The swap never happened, and Einstein remained at Winteler's house for the whole of his stay in Aarau. The house was so large that Einstein was able to have a room entirely to himself.
Two days after Einstein's arrival, on the 29th of October, his father, Hermann Einstein, wrote to Winteler to thank him for taking in his son. 'I have high hopes regarding the many intellectual benefits his stay there is going to bring him,' Hermann wrote. He added that 'the stimulating conversations in your house will also be of special benefit to his knowledge.' Hermann looked up to Jost, who had received a far more extensive education than himself. Winteler and Einstein waited to discuss the terms of the boarding arrangement until Albert felt settled in his new home. Only then was Einstein ready to begin his life as a member of Winteler's household.
Inside Rößligut, Winteler's own name for his house, Einstein was folded into the family from the very start. Jost, his wife Pauline, and their seven children treated him at once as one of their own; the siblings treated him like a brother. According to Walter Isaacson's book Einstein: His Life and Universe, the Wintelers were 'a wonderful family.' They helped the shy young Einstein 'flower emotionally and open himself to intimacy.' Winteler's eldest child later recalled that Albert would sometimes study alone, but 'more often... sit with the family around the table.'
After supper, Jost often led the family in discussion, or else read aloud at the table instead. These debates ranged widely, some of them controversial, and Winteler encouraged Albert and his own children to 'say... whatever they felt, without fear of reprimand.' Winteler's home has been described as 'boisterous,' and as 'a place of books, music, and parties.' The writer Dennis Overbye, author of Einstein in Love, made the comparison directly. Albert, he wrote, 'quickly felt more at home in the Winteler household than he ever felt at his own home.'
The year before, Einstein had endured isolation and loneliness. His parents and sister had relocated to Italy so his father could start a new electrical business, after the old one failed. Left behind in Munich with a 'distant relative' to finish his studies, Albert witnessed the demolition of his childhood home. It happened just before the rest of his family departed for Italy without him. Combined with his hatred of the school he was attending, it left the fifteen-year-old in what has been called 'a full-out depression.' Einstein's sister wrote, in Albert Einstein: A Biographical Sketch, that his time with the Wintelers was 'one of the best periods of his life.'
Einstein found the Alte Kantonsschule Aarau, where Winteler served as headmaster, far more welcoming than the Luitpold Gymnasium he had left behind in Germany. That school, in Munich, is known today as the Albert-Einstein-Gymnasium München. Einstein had come to despise his old school's heavy emphasis on militarism, parades, and mandatory service, all of which clashed with his pacifist instincts. At first, the school's proximity to Germany stoked his fear that it would prove just as rigid. Meeting Winteler put those fears to rest. Where the Luitpold Gymnasium was, in Einstein's words, a 'factory of rote learning,' Winteler's school placed value on 'free action and personal responsibility.' Maja Winteler-Einstein wrote that her brother 'found welcome and understanding' there, with 'no traces of either a commanding tone or the cultivation of authority worship.' Teachers, she added, were seen not as authority figures but as 'a man of distinct personality' alongside the scholar. The Kantonsschule Aarau turned out to be Einstein's favorite school.
During that year in Aarau, Einstein conducted his first Gedankenexperiment, a visualized thought experiment tied to his future special theory of relativity. In his autobiographical notes, he recalled wondering: 'If one runs after a light wave with light velocity, then one would encounter a time-independent wavefield.' He added, 'However, something like that does not seem to exist,' calling it his first youthful step toward the theory that would make him famous. Among the many things Aarau offered Einstein that year, one would prove far more complicated than physics.
A few months after moving in, Einstein fell for Winteler's youngest daughter, Marie, described as the 'prettiest' of the children. Marie was eighteen at the time, two years older than Albert, and both his parents and hers were 'thrilled' by the budding romance. By Christmastime the two were already a couple, though privacy was hard to come by in a household of ten.
Albert and Marie enjoyed playing the piano together, one of the few private pleasures available in such a full house. Rather than return to his family in Pavia, Italy, Einstein chose to spend Christmas of 1895 with the Wintelers. His parents wrote to the Wintelers on the 30th of December 1895, thanking them for their holiday greetings and their care of their son. Einstein's mother, Pauline, wrote that she was 'happy' and 'relieved' to know Albert was 'under such exquisite care,' and thanked Marie for writing to her. Hermann Einstein wrote that it was a relief to know his son was under 'loving care' that nourished more than his physical well-being. At such a young age, he wrote, 'the heart is most receptive to a good model,' and predicted Winteler's influence would 'leave a lasting effect.' Hermann also returned Albert's report card, unworried by the mix of grades, since he was used to seeing 'not-so-good grades along with very good ones.'
Einstein and Marie kept up a correspondence even after his affection for her began to cool. In May 1897, after putting off the decision, Albert ended the relationship by writing not to Marie but to Winteler's wife. He cited a desire to devote himself to his 'intellectual work.' By then, though, he had already met his future wife, Mileva Marić, 'the only woman in Einstein's section of the Polytechnic.' The breakup left Marie heartbroken and put a real strain on Einstein's relationship with the Winteler family. At one point the tension grew so sharp that a family friend thought it best not even to mention Einstein's name to the Wintelers. Einstein, for his part, was hurt to believe the Wintelers thought he was 'living a life of debauchery.'
Despite the strain, the friendship between Jost Winteler and Einstein never fully broke, and the two families would 'long remain entwined.' Paul Winteler, Jost's youngest child, went on to marry Einstein's sister, Maja, and Anna Winteler, Jost's eldest, married Einstein's closest friend, Michele Besso. Through his sister's marriage into the family, Einstein 'truly became a member of the Winteler family.' That family tie meant Einstein and Jost Winteler had every reason to keep writing to one another, long after Aarau was behind them.
In 1901, about four years after Einstein left Aarau, he was out of work, and Winteler stepped in to help him search. After hearing of a vacant position at the Burgdorf Technikum, Winteler alerted Einstein's parents to the opening. Einstein did not get the job, but he was grateful for his old mentor's effort. Writing to Winteler on the 8th of July 1901, Einstein said he was 'very happy' to learn his old teacher had thought of him. He added, 'I thank you with all my heart for your friendly offices.' He explained that he had written directly to the Burgdorf Technikum's director, noting that his teachers at the Aargau Kantonsschule could vouch for his character. Einstein told the director that he and Winteler were 'personal friends,' so that Winteler would not feel pressured to give an 'objective judgment.' 'In this way you can easily refrain from giving an opinion if this seems more appropriate to you,' Einstein wrote.
At twenty-two, Einstein also told Winteler that he was 'exceptionally pleased' with teaching, and that he had never realized how much he would enjoy it. Winteler was one of four teachers, alongside August Tuchschmidt, Friedrich Mühlberg, and Heinrich Ganter, credited with inspiring Einstein to become a teacher himself.
In that same letter, Einstein confided in Winteler about a dispute with Paul Drude. Drude was a German professor and editor of the physics journal Annalen der Physik. Months earlier, in June, Einstein had written to Drude criticizing two points in his work on electron theory, but Drude dismissed both objections. Furious, Einstein vowed to Winteler that he would 'soon make it hot for the man' by writing a critical article, though he never followed through. He closed the letter with what would become one of his most famous lines: 'Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.'
On the 7th of February 1907, Einstein addressed Winteler as 'Dear Professor.' He mentioned that Michele Besso, his best friend and Winteler's son-in-law, had 'probably' gone to Trieste. He thanked Winteler for his 'kind letter' and asked to be told of his next visit to Bern, 'so that I can look you up.' In a letter written on the 23rd of June 1913, Einstein reported that Besso had again gone to Trieste, 'for a business meeting.' In the same letter, he jokingly called Paul Winteler 'Uncle Paul.' Winteler, it seems, had asked whether Besso might know the whereabouts of his own youngest son. Einstein doubted it, though he guessed that Rosa would 'certainly be able to give you this information.' He encouraged Jost to 'drop in to see me if your path should lead you to Zürich.' On the 9th of January 1914, while visiting Rosa, Einstein wrote again. 'I cannot resist the temptation to send you my kind regards,' he said, promising to visit before April.
When Winteler turned seventy-seven, he received another letter from Einstein, dated the 3rd of October 1924, coincidentally the twenty-eighth anniversary of Einstein's graduation certificate. Einstein was in Lucerne at the time, visiting Anna and her husband, Michele Besso, whom he described as 'cheerful company.' He reminisced about 'those fine, quiet walks near Aarau during which you said so many things to me.' Those walks near Aarau, it turned out, had left Einstein with more than fond memories.
Politically, Winteler stood as a liberal whose 'political idealism helped to shape Einstein's social philosophy.' The two were kindred spirits. They shared beliefs in 'world federalism, internationalism, pacifism, and democratic socialism, with a strong devotion to individual liberty and freedom of expression.' Both men also distrusted the nationalism of imperial Germany. That distrust would later prove prophetic. In a letter to his sister on the 31st of August 1935, Einstein reflected on his old mentor. 'I think often of Papa Winteler,' he wrote, 'and of the prophetic accuracy of his political views.'
Winteler encouraged Einstein to think of himself as 'a citizen of the world,' which may have influenced Einstein's choice to give up his German citizenship. Einstein remained stateless from the 28th of January 1896 until the 21st of February 1901, when he acquired Swiss citizenship. Jost is said to have possessed an 'edgy honesty,' and he helped Gustav Maier found the Swiss branch of the Society for Ethical Culture.
Barry Parker's book Einstein: The Passions of a Scientist describes Jost as 'easy-going' and 'unusually kind.' Parker also wrote that 'the Wintelers had a warmth and openness of heart that marked them out from their cool Swiss neighbors.'
In August 1896, Einstein wrote to Winteler's wife, describing 'little Mama as usual again... grinning a bit shyly.' It was, he added, 'as if the professor had given her a very tender kiss,' a glimpse of a clearly devoted marriage. Einstein's schoolmate Hans Byland once described the Winteler family as 'romantically inclined.' The Wintelers valued 'a great sense of humor,' and Einstein, who shared that sentiment, would often 'laugh heartily' in their company.
A keen outdoorsman, Jost regularly organized kite-flying expeditions and nature hikes for his family, friends, and a few students. As a passionate ornithologist, he searched for 'rare birds' on these outings. He was also known for the eccentricity of holding conversations with his pet birds.
Einstein, for all his admiration, still noted several faults in Winteler, chiefly that he was, in Einstein's words, 'a rather self-willed and complicit' man. But Einstein had similar complaints about nearly everyone he knew. To his first wife, Mileva Marić, Einstein once grumbled that Winteler was 'an old schoolmaster, whatever he says.' Even so, he always held Winteler in the highest esteem. Jost himself has been described as 'handsome' and 'distinguished-looking.' Not everyone in Winteler's household shared his easy temperament, and one of his own sons would prove that in the most devastating way.
On the 1st of November 1906, Winteler suffered a triple tragedy within his own family. His son Julius, who had been working as a merchant ship's cook in America, had returned to Switzerland showing clear signs of severe mental illness. That day, Julius shot and killed his mother, Pauline, and his brother-in-law, Ernst Bandi, before taking his own life. Winteler believed his son had inherited the illness from his wife's side of the family. Albert Einstein, Winteler's former houseguest, sent a 'distraught' letter of condolence on the 3rd of November 1906. Einstein wrote that he could not help but 'shudder at the thought of the terrible blow that blind fate has dealt you.' Einstein was living in Bern, a Swiss city 52 miles, or 83 kilometers, from Aarau, when the tragedy occurred.
Jost had at least five grandchildren. Vero Besso, born in 1898 and living until 1971, was the son of Winteler's eldest daughter, Anna, and her husband, Michele Besso. Benvenuto, born in 1905, and Ernst, born in 1907, were the sons of Winteler's daughter Rosa and her husband, Ernst Bandi. Paul Albert, born on the 8th of August 1912, and Heinz, born in 1915, were Marie's sons. Carlo Michelstaedter, an Italian writer and philosopher, became Winteler's son-in-law when Jost's son Fritz married Michelstaedter's older sister, Paula.
Jost began losing his voice in 1909, the same year he took on part-time work as a religious instructor. He retired from teaching in the spring of 1914 and moved to Krummenau, in the canton of St. Gallen. Jost Winteler died on the 23rd of February 1929, at the age of eighty-two, in Wattwil, canton of St. Gallen.
In 2006, a building at the Alte Kantonsschule Aarau was renamed 'Albert-Einstein-Haus' in honor of Winteler's former houseguest. The building had originally been named for the physicist August Tuchschmid, who lived from 1855 to 1939. Jost Winteler was portrayed by the actor Nicholas Rowe in National Geographic's first scripted series, Genius, which premiered on the 25th of April 2017. The series was based on Walter Isaacson's biography Einstein: His Life and Universe. Its pilot episode, directed by Ron Howard, was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special. Winteler's scenes in Genius appear across three episodes: Einstein: Chapter One, Einstein: Chapter Two, and Einstein: Chapter Four.
Common questions
Who was Jost Winteler?
Jost Winteler was a Swiss professor of Greek and history at the Aargau Kantonsschule, as well as a linguist, philologist, ornithologist, journalist, and published poet. He is best known as the mentor and father figure to a teenage Albert Einstein, who boarded at his home in Aarau for a year starting in October 1895.
How did Jost Winteler meet Albert Einstein?
Jost Winteler met Albert Einstein in late October 1895, when the sixteen-year-old arrived at the train station in Aarau after failing the entrance exam to the Swiss Federal Polytechnical School in Zürich. Gustav Maier, a mutual friend of the Winteler and Einstein families, helped arrange for Einstein to board at Winteler's home for a year while he finished his secondary education.
Did Albert Einstein date Jost Winteler's daughter?
Albert Einstein fell in love with Winteler's youngest daughter, Marie, a few months after moving into the Winteler household, and the two became a couple by Christmas of 1895. Einstein ended the relationship in May 1897, after he had already met his future wife, Mileva Marić.
What happened to Jost Winteler's family on the 1st of November 1906?
On the 1st of November 1906, Winteler's son Julius, who had returned from working as a merchant ship's cook in America showing signs of severe mental illness, shot and killed his mother, Pauline, and his brother-in-law, Ernst Bandi, before taking his own life. Albert Einstein, then living in Bern, sent Winteler a letter of condolence three days later.
When and where did Jost Winteler die?
Jost Winteler died on the 23rd of February 1929, at the age of eighty-two, in Wattwil, in the canton of St. Gallen. He had retired from teaching in the spring of 1914 and had been living in Krummenau, also in the canton of St. Gallen.
How is Jost Winteler remembered today?
Winteler's former home in Aarau bears a plaque noting that Albert Einstein lived there as a student in 1895 and 1896. In 2006, a building at the Alte Kantonsschule Aarau was renamed 'Albert-Einstein-Haus,' and Winteler was portrayed by the actor Nicholas Rowe in the National Geographic series Genius in 2017.
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