German sculptor, known as the younger of the two stepdaughters of Albert Einstein. By smuggling her stepfather’s personal papers from Berlin to Paris during the Nazi era, she helped to collect and preserve his written legacy.
Margot’s father was textile trader Max Löwenthal (1864–1914), first husband of Elsa Einstein, Albert’s first cousin. Max and Elsa Löwenthal had two daughters, Ilse (1897-1934) and Margot, and a son born in 1903, who died shortly after birth. They divorced on 11 May 1908, and Elsa moved with her two daughters to an apartment above her parents’ residence in Berlin.
Elsa began a relationship with her cousin Albert Einstein in April 1912, while Albert was still married to his first wife, the physicist Mileva Mari?. Einstein separated from Mileva in 1914 and their divorce was final on 14 February 1919. Elsa married him three and a half months later, on 2 June 1919.
Elsa’s and Albert’s mothers were sisters, which made Elsa and Albert maternal first cousins, and their fathers were first cousins.
With stepdaughters Ilse and Margot, the Einsteins formed a close-knit family. Although Albert and Elsa did not have any children of their own, Albert raised Ilse and Margot as his own. They lived in the Berlin area, also having a summer house in Caputh in nearby Potsdam.
Margot Einstein married Russian writer Dimitri Marianoff in 1930. He wrote a biography of her father Albert Einstein. The Marianoffs had no children, and divorced in 1937.
Albert and Elsa Einstein had emigrated to Princeton, New Jersey, USA, in 1933. Margot’s sister Ilse died in 1934 in Paris from leukaemia. Her mother Elsa Einstein died after a painful illness on 20 December 1936.
After her mother’s death and her own divorce Margot moved to the USA to be with her father. She died in Princeton in 1986.
Link to Elsa Einstein: Married life