Original article (in Serbian) was published on 14/10/2024; Author: Teodora Koledin
Speculations about the life of Nikola Tesla continually inspire the media: from insinuations that the Serbian inventor claimed the Earth is flat, to allegations that he financially supported the Chetnik movement and collaborated with Marija Orsic, and even to disinformation about creating artificial storms. Occasionally, various quotes or anecdotes (1, 2, 3, 4) are incorrectly attributed to him, and the following story is closest to that category. Specifically, a considerable number of media outlets have been reporting for years about the last, so-called farewell letter that Nikola Tesla allegedly wrote to his sick mother, Georgina Djuka Tesla. Through detailed analysis, we have concluded that this is a fictional text that does not originate from Tesla.
What is the letter about?
The letter is divided into five shorter segments, seemingly written over five consecutive days, from November 18 to 22. The main topic of the letter is Tesla’s supernatural experience, which he defines as “a voice that sings and prays in some Moorish language, a beautiful lament” and which simultaneously “foretells” his mother’s death. While he writes to her about everyday events, he always returns to this strange occurrence at the end. Not only does he return, but he also ends the text in the same way:
Now I regret that I never wanted to associate with the Turks because they sang the same kind of laments as those from my dawn. Now I remember that they knew much more than I did about all these things that I am only now coming to understand. My years spent in science were in vain, as they were barren. Pray for me there, Mother, if you can, with that Moorish lament for the lost soul of your poor uneducated son…
The first part that relates to Tesla’s spiritual experience is — to a certain extent — true. In his autobiographical book “My Inventions”, he explains this event in the following way:
All night, every nerve in my brain was tense with anticipation, but nothing happened until early morning when I either fell asleep or perhaps fainted and saw a cloud with figures of angels of wondrous beauty, one of whom looked at me with much love and gradually took on the appearance of my mother. The apparition slowly floated through the room and disappeared, and I was awakened by an indescribably sweet song sung by many voices. At that moment, I was sure, I don’t know how, that my mother had died right then. And that was the truth.
However, at no point does he mention a “Moorish lament”, nor does he describe this mystical melody as a lament of the “Turks” or Muslims.
About distorted evidence of Tesla’s “conversion to Islam”
Before the Serbian media reported this fictional letter from Tesla, it had been shared on various web portals in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The earliest version of this letter (available on the internet) was found on the web portal Kozarac.ba, which published it in full back in 2006. At the end of the text, the author notes that it was taken from “Preporod”, likely referring to the Islamic information newspaper “Preporod”, which has been published in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1970. We assume that the letter was published in the print edition of this newspaper sometime in 2006 or earlier, but we have not been able to obtain that version.
Very quickly, the letter became part of the “evidence procedure” explaining that Tesla converted to Islam (1, 2, 3). This claim was publicly stated by Muamer Zukorlic (who was the chief mufti of the Islamic Community in Serbia during his lifetime) after the Serbian Orthodox Church proposed that Nikola Tesla’s urn be moved from the museum to the Temple of Saint Sava. Mufti cited this very letter as an argument to prove his point about the religious conversion of Tesla.
About logical fallacies: November in April and America in Paris
The content of the letter is filled with numerous inconsistencies that directly undermine its meaning and credibility. First and foremost, it is dated in all media to November, and in the last part dated November 22, we find information that Georgina Djuka Tesla passed away:
You will never receive this letter, Mother. I don’t know why I’m writing it to you, who can never read it again… May the earth be light upon you, Mother, and forgive me that my paths have led me away from you, so I cannot even come to your funeral.
We can interpret this as the first “red flag”, as Georgina Tesla reportedly died on April 4 or 16, 1892, according to various sources, not in November. This discrepancy in dates can be explained by the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars, which at that time amounted to 12 days.
The unknown, real author of the letter made another major error — suggesting that Tesla was in the United States at the time of his mother’s death, which was not the case:
Dear Mother, tomorrow I am heading home. Miss Nora has gone at my request to the Port Authority and secured a ticket for me to Lisbon; from there I will take a train to Zurich and then directly home. I estimate it will take me about ten days, or two weeks at most.
In the months leading up to Georgina’s death, Tesla was staying in Paris after giving a lecture on alternating current experiments on February 19.
The person who compiled this letter clearly did not pay much attention to the chronology of events in Tesla’s life, as evidenced by two more inconsistencies in the timeline:
Today I entered the Congressional building and asked for a few minutes of attention at the Senator’s meeting. They were not inclined to oblige, but they allowed me. I asked for a telephone and for them to connect me with the laboratory at Niagara Falls. The guys started the turbines at my command, and the Congressional Hall was illuminated by my electricity, ten times stronger than ordinary, just as I had announced.
In this context, it should be noted that Nikola Tesla never had “his own laboratory” at Niagara Falls; rather, he worked on the development of the hydroelectric plant in collaboration with American inventor George Westinghouse. However, all of this also took place in the years after his mother’s death. Westinghouse was awarded the contract for the construction of the hydroelectric plant in 1893, while electricity only reached the nearby factory in 1895. We found the same error in the last part of the letter, which concerns a fire in Tesla’s laboratory:
… because someone burned my laboratory in the city center to the ground, with all my papers and designs.
Nikola Tesla’s laboratory in New York did indeed suffer a fire that caused him significant damage, but this occurred nearly three years after Georgina’s death, in March 1895. Details about this event were reported in the press (1, 2, 3).
The Nikola Tesla Museum confirmed to us that the letter is not authentic and stated that this document “has nothing to do with Tesla”.
About the journalistic (in)attention
Interestingly, certain media outlets, in the introduction preceding the content of the letter itself, highlighted the fact that Nikola Tesla received news of his mother’s illness while in Paris. Some of them also included the accurate information that Georgina Djuka Tesla passed away on April 4, yet they still presented the public with a letter dated in November. Dozens of journalists published this news despite the obvious contradiction between this information and the content of the alleged letter, failing to avoid an easily preventable mistake.
Below, we provide a list of media outlets that shared this news. Although some of them distanced themselves to a certain extent, they often did so with a brief note at the end of the text, while manipulative headlines and introductions created the impression of sharing a valid historical document. For example, Telegraf shared its version in 2015, noting that the authenticity of the letter had not been established, but simultaneously began the text with the sentence: “This is the last letter of the famous Serbian scientist Nikola Tesla to his mother Djuka”.
Blic zena, Stil kurir (1, 2), Alo, N Portal, Kurir, Srbija danas, Informer, Luftika, Kozarac.ba, Sandzak pres (1, 2), Info.ks net, Svjetlo islama, Serbian mirror, Magicus.info, Atma, Opusteno.rs, Espreso (1, 2), N Portal, Kurir, Pink, 24sedam, Telegraf, Srbin info, Informer, Nova.rs.
By the time this article was published on the SeeCheck website, portals Kurir, Kurir Stil, Nova, Telegraf, and Espreso had corrected the false statements in accordance with professional standards.
