Typed letter signed.
4to. ΒΎ page. In German.
$20,517.00
To the gastroenterologist Isidor Held (1876-1947), thanking him for the gift of a book by Upton Sinclair (probably "Dragon Harvest"), "from which I see how the machinery of world politics is reflected in his brain" and looking forward with hope and trepidation to what will follow the defeat of Nazi Germany: "I am happy with the progress the Germans have made and tremble before the next chapter [...]" (transl.).
Einstein had befriended Held, an Austrian-born physician settled in New York, through their joint efforts to help scientists and doctors escape Nazi Germany. The two men were by this time watching the collapse of Nazism and hoping that a new peaceful German leadership would emerge from the ashes of war, although Einstein here expresses his fear for the future of Europe. Held appears to have sent Einstein a copy of the latest Upton Sinclair novel, "Dragon Harvest" (1945), which was set during the period between the Munich Crisis and the Fall of Paris. It is not clear if Held had realised that Einstein and Sinclair knew each other; Einstein had contributed a preface to Sinclair's "Mental Radio" (1930), and Sinclair made Einstein a friend of his fictional hero Lanny Budd, an American socialist.
On stationery with blindstamped letterhead. Slightly spotty and wrinkled.