Brotherly Advice: Letters from Hugo to Paul Ehrenfest in his Final Years

At the start of the 1930s, theoretician Paul Ehrenfest spent much of his time traveling through America and Europe while engaged in a steady stream of lectures. This traveling phase coincided with a frantic and intense period of negative self-examination, financial difficulty, and various other personal concerns that would ultimately lead to his 1933 suicide. Throughout these final years, he kept up a steady correspondence with his brother Hugo, a physician based in Saint Louis. Ten years older than Paul, Hugo freely doled out frank psychological advice about subjects ranging from the proper treatment of children to the dangers of self-pity. Through a look at some of the letters exchanged between the two brothers, this talk will examine the role Hugo played during the dark final years of Paul Ehrenfest's life.