Draft:Gustav Maier

Gustav Maier Gustav Maier (b. 6 September 1844 in Ulm, Germany; d. 10 March 1923 in Zurich) was a German writer, banker, ethicist, pacifist and sponsor of Albert Einstein at Zurich. Gustav was the first-born son of Aron Isaac Maier and Sophie Maier, born Guggenheim, a Jewish family living at Ulm. He attended elementary and secondary school at Ulm and, thanks to his rapid learning skills, he got the opportunity to attend the excellent Jewish high school Philantropin at Frankfurt. However, he had to leave this school before final graduation in order to help his ailing father in his fabric enterprise. Gustav Maier became an autodidact and ended up learning numerous skills (business, languages, history, etc.) on his own. In 1872 Gustav Maier married Regina Friedlaender, the daughter of the entrepreneur Dagobert Friedlaender at Bromberg, Posen. They had three sons: Paul Ernst, b. 1873, Arthur Johann, b. 1875 at Ulm and Johann (Hans) Wolfgang, b. 1882 at Frankfurt. They were close friends of Hermann Einstein and his spouse Pauline Einstein born Koch, the parents of Albert Einstein, b. 1879 at Ulm. After the death of his father, Gustav inherited the fabric business, yet was very unhappy to travel constantly to clients and to fabric markets. Hence, he sold the family business and got a job at the Ulmer Reichsbank where he became a director, thanks to his excellent organisational skills. In 1881 he moved to Frankfurt to direct the Deutsche Handelsgesellschaft, where he worked extremely hard until 1892, when he decided to move to Switzerland to dedicate his time to social activities like pacifism and ethical culture, which he combined with extensive travel. He used this international move to hide his Jewish origins and to join the relatively liberal reformed Zwingli church, in order to offer all professional opportunities to his sons. Gustav Maier has written at brochure in 1881 (1) and a book in 1898 (2) dealing with antisemitism. The former close friendship of the Maier and Einstein families at Ulm underlies the fact that, in 1895, the young Albert Einstein left Italy for Zurich in order to seek an education in physics. Thanks to the tight relational network of Gustav Maier at Zurich and Aarau, the highly gifted Albert Einstein could finally study physics at the polytechnical school at Zurich (now ETH). Gustav Maier was also supporting and sponsoring the naturalization of Albert Einstein as a Swiss citizen in 1900.

Literature Albrecht Fölsing: Albert Einstein. Eine Biographie. Frankfurt a. M. 1993 (in German) Christof Rieber: Albert Einstein. Biography of a Nonconformist. Ostfildern 2018 (in German) Christof Rieber: Gustav Maier und Ulms Juden im Kaiserreich 1871–1918. In: Ulm und Oberschwaben 62 (2021), pp. 165–201 (in German) Christof Rieber: Die Villa Breitenstein in Ermatingen. The conversion of the Jewish banker Gustav Maier to the Reformed Church. In: Schriften des Vereins für Geschichte des Bodensee und Umgebung 140 (2022) pp. 182–195 (in German) Werner G. Zimmermann: Zum 100. Geburtstag des Entdeckers der Relativitätstheorie. Albert Einstein in Zurich. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 10/11 March 1979, p. 50 Beatrice Maier Anner: Gustav Maier. Sponsor of the young Albert Einstein. Grin-Verlag. Munich 2023

Selected works 1. Gustav Maier: More light! A word about our "Jewish question". Ulm Ulm, Heinrich Kerler, 1881 1881 (Gustav Maier Archive Geneva, Switzerland. (In German; in English on www.themaierannerfiles.ch)

2. Gustav Maier: The Zola trial. Critical report of an eyewitness. Bamberg, Handelsdruckerei 1898. (In German; in English on www.themaierannerfiles.ch)