In order to avoid disturbances, a strong military unit was sent to Göttingen and every livery owner was forbidden to rent Coaches or carriages to anyone, to prevent a demonstration by the students who might want to accompany their popular teachers as they left the city. Dahlmann, Gervinus, and Jacob Grimm left the city as though they were traitors. But word got around, and a large number of students preceded the exiles to Witzenhausen and put on there an enthusiastic demonstration.
Ewald, Dahlmann, and Jacob Grimm published works defending themselves. They claimed that their motives were idealistic, involving honor and freedom, matters of conscience, not political agitation. The effects were far-reaching. After that time the professor in Germany was shoved more into the center of public and political life. Great sympathy for the Göttingen Seven was stirred throughout Germany; money was collected for the exiles. The University of Königsberg even gave Albrecht an honorary doctorate.
The events of 1837 threw Ewald off his accustomed way of life, that of a serene scholar, and he never returned to it completely. In fact, in later years he made himself rather ridiculous by his political action, and actually got himself into serious trouble when he opposed Prussia’s annexation of Hanover. He believed in a patriarchal rather than a parliamentary form of government.
Many persons in Hanover and Göttingen thought that the goal of the Seven was too high, criticized them severely, and ascribed ulterior motives to them. Included were many Göttingen professors. It was difficult to fill the vacancies in the faculty. Other governments tried to attract the exiles to their university faculties. The Duke of Brunswick wanted to reopen the University of Helmstedt by employing all of the Seven, and there was a rumor that all would go to the University of Marburg. Gradually they found positions: Gervinus went to Heidelberg, Ewald to Tübingen, the Grimms to Berlin, Dahlmann to Bonn, Albrecht and Weber to Leipzig.
Gauss has been criticized for not having signed the protest. Dahlmann had counted on his signature. It is wrong to accuse Göttingen professors who did not sign of manifesting cowardice or weakness of character. Gauss’ friends believed that he would leave Göttingen at least as a mild protest. A rumor without actual foundation circulated that he was going to Paris.54 Why didn’t Gauss sign the document? The reasons therefore are several, and his own letters indicate them. In the first place. Gauss was then sixty years of age and had been in Göttingen most of his life. Moreover, his mother, who was ninety-five years old and blind, lived with him. He felt it would be impossible to move her. Secondly, Gauss had a deep interest in politics and kept himself well informed in that field, but he was never active in any way politically. He abhorred anything that smacked of political radicalism and was thoroughly conservative. He felt that the step which his colleagues took was utterly useless and would hurt the university. In the last point he was correct. It required more than fifty years for Göttingen to recover from the blow, from a loss of prestige.
Gauss was especially hard hit by the fact that Ewald and Weber were among the signers. Both of them, soon after the affair, went to London for a visit. Ewald spent six months in England working mainly on Sanscrit and the works of Jewish linguists written in Arabic. He spent his time in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and in the British Museum, London. Weber left Göttingen in March, 1838, on a tour of scientific study. He went via Leipzig to Berlin, where he was joined by Poggendorff; he did not return to Göttingen until August, 1838. Gauss did not know in advance that Weber was going to London.
Gauss exerted special effort on behalf of Weber during the period of Weber’s absence abroad, requesting that he be restored. He turned to Count Friedrich von Laffert at Ilfeld, who was the government official in charge of the affairs of the University of Göttingen. People around the King regarded Weber as the least dangerous of the Seven, in fact they thought he had been “seduced” to sign. But Gauss’ effort was in vain.
His next step was to attempt direct action. He knew that his friend Alexander von Humboldt would come in contact with the King during the latter’s visit to Berlin the second half of May, 1838. Therefore, he asked Humboldt to use his great influence by pleading the cause of Weber before the King. Gauss wrote Humboldt that the continuance of his whole scientific activity depended on Weber’s staying in Göttingen, and one should remember that he was not a person given to exaggeration. It is significant that Gauss did not take any steps in behalf of Ewald, merely because he was his son-in-law, feeling that it would be “improper.” He hesitated to ask Weber to sign a statement that he had acted too hurriedly in signing the protest. In fact, he said that under the same circumstances he would not recant in this manner. Gauss felt sure it would place him in a bad light before colleagues and students if he tried to get Weber to recant in order to be restored. His last hope was Humboldt.
Meanwhile Gauss was further distressed, for he was now separated from his daughter Minna. In May, 1838, Ewald was appointed professor of Oriental philology at the University of Tübingen, where he labored with great intensity for ten years.
Humboldt did not have the opportunity55 to discuss Weber’s case with the King; however, he did take it up unsuccessfully with two members of the court and found that the King was willing to restore no member of Seven, except under conditions which were too humiliating to be accepted. When the Board of Curators requested Gauss to make proposals for filling Weber’s professorship, he used it as a last attempt to get his friend restored. Weber’s professorship was given to Benedikt Listing (1808–1882), a pupil of Gauss.
The Grimm brothers were on the polite terms of faculty colleagues with Gauss. They were suspicious of his efforts in behalf of Weber and thought he was concerned only about the fate of Ewald and Weber. They thought Weber was too much under the influence of Gauss. Letters of Gauss show that he was concerned about the Grimm brothers, although naturally not so active in their behalf as in the case of Weber. At the time of the trouble there were rumors that letters were being opened, and Gauss was more careful about what he wrote than he would otherwise have been.
Gauss would have attempted to persuade Ewald and Weber not to sign the protest, but he did not know details of it until six or seven days later, after it had been made public. He felt that Weber, Ewald, and Albrecht signed the protest as a matter of conscience and that they regarded it as a private communication to the Board of Curators. On January 7, 1838, Gauss summarized his feelings about the entire matter in a letter to Schumacher in these words: “Just in the present affliction of our poor Georgia Augusta, I cannot free myself of a certain piety, and just now it would be harder for me to leave Göttingen than at any other time, at least as long as I don’t have to give up all hope of saving something that is personally dear to me in it.”
In a letter to his daughter Minna he stated that he wished to be ready to do what duty and honor demanded. He felt that his own position was insecure, but such was never the case.
In the summer of 1838 Gauss began to fear that he was losing his hearing. He became temporarily deaf, first in one ear, then in the other, sometimes in both. Then after several days he would suddenly have perfect hearing. Due to the suddenness. Gauss thought it was purely a local condition. He had little faith in doctors and was not convinced by the statement of Karl Friedrich Heinrich Marx (1796–1877), professor of medicine in Göttingen, that it was a general affection of the nervous system. Gauss felt sure it was merely a stoppage of the Eustachian tube and read several medical works on the subject. He thought of journeying to Dr. Kramer in Berlin for an operation, since he did not have sufficient confidence in any doctor in Göttingen, but finally decided against that course. The thought of “having a silver tube driven through the nose and the interior of the head” was abhorrent to him. Finally he decided it was trouble in the outer ear and began to use his own cure of almond oil. Gauss wrote to his friend Olbers that many physicians were inclined to seek unusual, more complicated, and rarer causes and to overlook the obvious ones. When the symptoms began, he took a small spoon and explored for earwa
x; at first the ear seemed dry and he found no wax, but later brought out hard wax. Olbers recommended spraying the ear with tepid, soapy water, keeping cantharides in water for a while behind the ear, and taking foot baths strengthened with ground mustard. Some months later the trouble disappeared, and Gauss attributed the cure to almond oil; he was sure the cause had been purely mechanical. The deafness never returned.
In March, 1839, Gauss sent to Ewald a copy of the volume on the university jubilee of 1837. The faculty had nothing to do with the editing of it, but he was pleased to see that his own lecture was printed exactly as he had turned it in. He was amused by the fact that the long sermon on the occasion had been greatly abbreviated. At the time, Therese had been in a grocery store and got some sacks made of paper on which the original sermon was printed. Gauss sent it to Ewald as a curiosity.
In November, 1838, the Royal Society of London conferred on Gauss the Copley Medal. At that time it was regarded as the highest honor of the society. He was pleased especially because he thought it would mean greater participation in magnetic research in England. The actual value of the metal in the medal was six louis d’or; Gauss wrote in a letter to his daughter Minna that if the value had been more he would have sold it and divided the proceeds between Joseph and Wilhelm.56
In the spring of 1839 Therese’s health was poor. Gauss’ aged mother was very feeble, and he himself suffered occasionally from catarrh and headaches, frequently from insomnia. When hot weather arrived, it always affected him noticeably. He could stand the winter without serious difficulty.
During his last illness in 1808, Gauss’ father wrote his will, in which he gave his wife Dorothea a life interest in all his property. If his two sons insisted on immediate division, she was to receive one third. Dorothea continued to live in Brunswick, but she was lonely and longed to be with her son. Yet she could not make up her mind to give up her home. This loneliness was accentuated by the fact that, although she could read printed matter, she could not read handwriting. All communication with the son of whom she was so proud was through the aid of others. Finally in 1817, at the age of seventy-four, she yielded to Gauss’ pleading and moved with him into the new apartment at the observatory. The home in Brunswick was sold, and Gauss’ brother received his share of the estate, which he would otherwise have gotten at the death of Frau Dorothea.
In her new home the aged mother of the mathematician lived on for many years, lovingly and tenderly cared for by Gauss, his daughters, and his wife. The old woman could never be persuaded to dispense with her peasant clothing or to take her meals at the table with the others. She never accustomed herself fully to her new home. Her room was a small one on the first floor, overlooking the charming garden of the observatory, and she could easily step out on the terrace. There was a large acacia tree in front of her window. She moved about unhampered in the family and among the intimate friends of her son.
To her grandchildren Dorothea dictated letters to her stepson, in which there was news about herself and the family in Göttingen, as well as questions about relatives and friends in Brunswick and her native village, Velpke. Whenever she heard that someone from Brunswick was in Göttingen, she looked the person up, asked questions, and gave some errand to be performed. One of her favorite occupations was to buy gingerbread at the Göttingen markets and make friends with the women she met there.
Dorothea’s joy was great in 1830 when she heard that Gebhart Gauss (1811–1879), nephew of Carl Friedrich, was coming through Göttingen as a journeyman plumber. But Gauss’ wife was on the sickbed from which she never got up, and Gebhart could not stay at the observatory. Dorothea hoped to see him on his return. At the age of eighty-seven she thought of taking a trip to Brunswick; two years later she lost her eyesight and had to drop the plan. Her physical strength was remarkable up until the last months of her life, and her memory remained perfect. After the blindness she had to be led by someone when she visited Minna Ewald or friends in the city. In the last months she did not leave her room, and finally died on April 18, 1839, aged ninety-seven. Gauss was grief-stricken. He realized that the life of Dorothea Gauss had been a hard one. In one letter he spoke of it as “full of thorns.” As early as 1810 he wrote that her marriage had been unhappy because she and his father were not compatible. The elder Gauss was often harsh and domineering in the home, although behind it all lay a good heart. In the same letter (1810) Gauss wrote that his mother had “many weaknesses,” but that she was worthy of love.
Gauss was worried for some months about the safety of Wilhelm, his youngest son, and Wilhelm’s bride. They went to Bremen and had to wait some time for favorable winds, but finally on October 29, 1837, sailed on the Alexander, whose captain, Mertens, became very fond of Wilhelm. The ship ran into a bad storm, but eventually reached New Orleans. Several months passed before Gauss got word of their safe landing. Meanwhile, he heard of the yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans at the time of their landing, and was quite concerned until much later when he heard of their safe arrival in Missouri. They had gone up the Mississippi on a river boat.
In the fall of 1838, Gauss was extremely happy to hear of the birth of his first grandchild on May 30, at St. Charles, Missouri. In the excitement of announcing this event to Olbers, he forgot to tell whether it was a boy or a girl. Olbers promptly inquired, and Gauss wrote him that it was a boy, who promised to become “a. husky American.” The baby was given Gauss’ name in the Anglicized form, Charles Frederick. Later Gauss was surprised when he heard that his grandchildren were allowed to ride ponies, alone, on the open prairie. How impossible in Europe! When Charles Frederick was fourteen Gauss asked for a letter from him, even though it had to be written in English. Charles Frederick lived on until 1913 in St. Louis, Missouri, where he became a millionaire manufacturer of hats. In his last years Gauss had the great pleasure of hearing of the birth of eight grandsons and six granddaughters; four grandsons were born after his death, making a total of eighteen grandchildren.
The last letter from Olbers to Gauss was dated May 30, 1839; at the close of it Gauss wrote: died March 2, 1840. This was a heavy blow, for he had lost a most intimate friend, one who had stood by him since his youth. Olbers had a genial character, was financially well off, and was cared for by his son during the years as a widower. Yet he began to complain of sickness due to age, and of being lonely.
On the sunny side of this period must be chronicled the marriage of Joseph, Gauss’ oldest son, on March 18, 1840, to Sophie Erythropel, daughter of a physician in Stade. He approved his son’s choice and was very fond of his daughter-in-law. They frequently visited Gauss and Therese. Gauss began to fear that he would never see a grandchild, but finally a son, Carl August Adolph (1849–1927), was born to the couple. One Christmas, when Carl was a small boy about three years of age, they presented to Gauss an oil portrait of him. Carl lived most of his life in Hamlin, Germany, and was the only grandchild Gauss ever saw, since the others were in America. Of course, he had excellent daguerreotypes of the others. Carl remembered how his grandfather tried to show him a star through the great telescope; how he stood full of expectation near the eyepiece, while his grandfather, wearing a velvet cap, was turning the crank which moved the shutter on the dome of the observatory. Another time the child was playing in the garden of the observatory when his grandfather met him and asked: “What do you expect to make of yourself?” Whereupon young Carl replied: “Well, what do you expect to make of yourself ?” Then the old man patted the child’s shoulder and said smilingly: “My boy, I am already somebody.”
Ewald and Minna were never entirely happy in Tübingen, and never felt quite at home in the South German atmosphere. They shipped their furniture and belongings on leaving Göttingen, but there seems to have been a housing shortage in Tübingen at the time, and they had great difficulty in finding a home. The real cause of their unhappiness in Tübingen was Minna’s poor health, which actually must have been tuberculosis.
Finally she died at six o�
��clock on the evening of August 12, 1840, and was buried in Tübingen. On the morning after her death Ewald wrote a letter to Gauss conveying the sad news. This was probably the hardest blow that ever afflicted Gauss; there is some reason to believe that Minna was his favorite child. On August 22, 1840, Gauss replied to Ewald’s announcement of Minna’s death:
dear ewald,
Several times since the receipt of your two letters, which arrived at the same time, I took up my pen, to mix my tears with yours, but my strength failed. Even now I cannot realize that my darling angelic child is lost to us on this earth. It was always my dearest, most consoling hope to be reunited with her here, and to see my last years thereby cheered. Now it is gone, this hope! God give us strength to bear the heavy grief. In need of consolation myself, dear Ewald, I can express to you no other [consolation] except that the splendid one is elevated above her earthly sufferings and has gone to the better home. You knew how to appreciate her value. The earth rarely sees such absolutely pure, noble creatures. She was the image of her mother.
The second paragraph of the letter expresses concern about Therese’s health and voices the hope that heaven may strengthen her, then continues:
May heaven also strengthen you, dear Ewald, and may you give me from time to time report of your health. If we may measure the happiness of immortals by human standards, then the happiness of the deceased, who found her happiness in this world only in the happiness of those she loved, will be incomplete as long as the latter are bowed down by grief.
Always with hearty friendship,
gauss
Having been commissioned by the Czar of Russia to paint an oil portrait of Gauss for the Pulkova observatory, Christian Albrecht Jensen (1792–1870) of Copenhagen arrived in Göttingen during the summer of 1840. Gauss himself and others, except Schumacher, were highly pleased with it. Three copies of it, one belonging to Sartorius, were kept in Göttingen. A later copy by Biermiller hangs in the observatory today, and the present biographer has an exact copy by J. H. Landry. It is the best-known portrait of Gauss, and has been frequently reproduced. Arrangements with the Czar were probably made by Struve. Gauss had these words of Edmund in Shakespeare’s King Lear placed under it as his motto: “Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy laws my services are bound.”57
Carl Friedrich Gauss, Titan of Science_A Study of His Life and Work Page 24