I'm a little puzzled how some of his correspondence goes to auction while most of it is being organized by the Einstein Portal. I think a lot about the enormous correspondence--letters on paper--by major people like Einstein and Graham Greene. in addition to their published works they wrote so many letters. Since e-mail we are losing that kind of record of people. I'm not an important person but until e-mail I wrote, stamped and mailed a few letters everyday. Now I just e-mail and don't keep it.
It seems like written correspondence of this importance ought to be in a museum rather than sold to some private collector. I hope that (digital) copies of these letters are at least being preserved.
This is an issue with people who had a lot of correspondence. The recipient of the letter "owns" it and while some might pass to a museum, others (probably someone whose grandkids found it in a file) see it as inheritance. I look at a lot of a auction catalogs and am surprised how many famous peoples' correspondence gets sold by their heirs clearing out old files--with no sense of the importance to history.
Thanks for finding this archive.
I'm a little puzzled how some of his correspondence goes to auction while most of it is being organized by the Einstein Portal. I think a lot about the enormous correspondence--letters on paper--by major people like Einstein and Graham Greene. in addition to their published works they wrote so many letters. Since e-mail we are losing that kind of record of people. I'm not an important person but until e-mail I wrote, stamped and mailed a few letters everyday. Now I just e-mail and don't keep it.
It seems like written correspondence of this importance ought to be in a museum rather than sold to some private collector. I hope that (digital) copies of these letters are at least being preserved.
This is an issue with people who had a lot of correspondence. The recipient of the letter "owns" it and while some might pass to a museum, others (probably someone whose grandkids found it in a file) see it as inheritance. I look at a lot of a auction catalogs and am surprised how many famous peoples' correspondence gets sold by their heirs clearing out old files--with no sense of the importance to history.
If Einstein makes these prices, imagine what Zweistein will bring...
And Dreistein...
Holy mackerel, that's big bucks!