I believe that under similar circumstances I would have ranked as high [as Bessel] in mercantile knowledge. For my part I possessed in myself up until an advanced age nothing, as the world is, which could have given me a safe treasure even against starvation, except school-teaching, which has always been repugnant to me.
During the time of disturbance over the Göttingen Seven, on March 4, 1838, Gauss wrote to his friend Olbers:
Of course I have taken initial steps to be able to lift off the many lead weights which hang on me here. To that belonged the preparations to be able to mobilize the small estate which I have partly to administer, partly my own property. If everything is successful, as I more desire than hope, then in the next 4–5 months I shall be able to manage something more than 15,000 thalers, and perhaps you can give me good advice in this connection, since you probably often have the opportunity for important transactions. For my part I am in general not in favor of hanging everything on one nail. I thought of Austrian bank stock and Russian papers. Do you perhaps have detailed information about the profit and safety of Belgian property such as Brussels bank stocks?
Olbers was unable to give Gauss any definite advice. He wrote that he did not know of a good opportunity for investment of money and that he had to accept the reduction by Hanover and the Württemberg Credit Union of the interest rate from 4 to 3,5 per cent on the bonds of his native city Bremen, because he did not know any way of reinvesting them at a higher rate.
In the above letter Gauss referred to the fact that he administered the estate of his father-in-law, J. P. Waldeck, who had died in 1815. Eventually half of the estate went to Gauss’ wife and half to her sister, Luise Christiane Sophie, who had married a municipal court director and syndic. Dr. Carl Andreas Hoefer, and lived in Greifswald. The Hoefers had three sons and two daughters. At her death on September 12, 1831, the estate of Frau Minna Gauss was appraised at 18,263 thalers. She left it to her three children, but attached certain special conditions to the inheritance of Eugene, who had caused his parents trouble. The codicil provided that if by 1838 (two years after becoming of age), Eugene showed fully valid proofs of improvement, he would then enjoy the interest from his share. If by 1843 he proved himself to be financially responsible, he would receive the capital. If he should try to fight the provision in court, he would get the legal minimum. Gauss was administrator of his wife’s estate, but he did not know of this condition in her will, which she had written a year before, until after her death.
Gauss turned over to his son Wilhelm his share in Frau Minna’s estate on August 4, 1837, shortly before Wilhelm left for America; it amounted to 6,837 thalers. Wilhelm and Therese were to receive 4,500 thalers each, while the residual estate of 13,763 thalers was divided into three equal parts. Eugene’s share amounted to 4,587 thalers. Beginning with his birthday in 1836 the interest at 3,5 per cent was added to his capital. Eventually Eugene received his full share of his mother’s estate, with interest.
Frau Osthoff, the mother of Gauss’ first wife, died in 1821, and made a friend of the family her administrator. She named Gauss’ two children of his first marriage her only heirs, but stipulated that they were to receive the inheritance after coming of age. They were not allowed to touch the interest until that time. This will caused Gauss great vexation, for he wanted to use some of the money in educating the children. Frau Waldeck, his second mother-in-law, died in 1848 and named Joseph Gauss her administrator; the Gauss children received their proper share of her estate.
Joseph was also the administrator of his father’s estate. To their great surprise his children ascertained that Gauss’ estate in stocks and bonds was valued at 152,892 thalers. Each of the children inherited 38,215 thalers. A balance due Therese from her mother’s estate brought her share to 44,975 thalers. An even greater surprise was in store—on the two days between his death and burial the children found cash amounting to 17,965 thalers hidden away in Gauss’ home. It lay in his desk, his wardrobe, in cabinets, and dresser drawers.
Gauss received a basic salary of only 1,000 thalers per year, plus student fees. The number of his students was always small. During the years that he served as director of the Royal Society of Sciences he was paid 110 thalers annually. It is fabulous how he was able to build up so large an estate. He invested in Vienna bank stock, in the Austrian metal league, and in the Hamburg Fire Insurance Company. Other investments included Norwegian and Swedish bonds, particularly Swedish mining stock. There were Russian, Hanoverian, Prussian, Belgian, Baden, Württemberg, and Mecklenburg Credit Union bonds, and some Buckeberg municipal bonds. Rates of interest ranged from 2,5 to 5 per cent and dates of maturity extended as late as 1893. He knew when to sell at a profit. The last transaction was made only three weeks before his death.
As a youth Gauss had been undecided whether to dedicate his life to philology or mathematics. Outside mathematics and science his greatest talent lay in the learning of foreign languages. He had a reading knowledge of the modern European languages and spoke and wrote the principal ones quite correctly. From boyhood he was familiar with the ancient languages and well versed in their literature. He published his major works in Latin. On more than one occasion his Latin style has been highly praised by competent authorities. His use of his mother tongue was well-nigh perfect.
At the age of sixty-two Gauss decided that he ought to learn a new language or a new science, in order to keep his mental faculties fresh and to be receptive to new impressions. For a brief time he thought of taking up botany, but for physical reasons decided against it. Then he tried Sanscrit, but did not like it, and soon dropped the subject. Finally, Gauss turned to Russian.
On August 17, 1839, he wrote to Schumacher: “At the beginning of last spring, regarding the acquiring of some new aptitude as a type of rejuvenation, I had begun to busy myself with the Russian language and found much interest in it.” He added that since May, 1839, his study of Russian had been almost completely interrupted, but requested Schumacher to procure some Russian books for him, since he wanted to begin again. On August 22, 1839, Schumacher sent him a Russian calendar, and in a letter of August 8, 1840, Gauss wrote his friend he wanted to read some literary prose. Schumacher was planning a trip to St. Petersburg, and Gauss asked him to bring back some novels. He bought for Gauss the works of Betúscheff and made him a gift of five volumes of memoirs of the Russian topographical bureau. On December 29, 1841, Gauss wrote Schumacher that he was finding little time for Russian. As late as June 13, 1845, Schumacher recommended Bolotoff to him for explanation of Russian pronunciation. He used C. P. Reiff’s Russian-French dictionary.68 The Gauss library contained seventy-five volumes of Russian literature, including eight volumes of the works of Pushkin, Russia’s greatest poet.
It seems that a desire to read Lobachevsky’s works in the original was not the first stimulus for Gauss’ study of Russian, as has been sometimes assumed. Gauss devoted incredible energy to the study of Russian, and in two years he had mastered it by himself to such an extent that he not only read fluently all books in prose and poetry, but also carried on his Russian correspondence in that language. One day when he was visited by a Russian minister of state he conversed in Russian with the visitor, who declared that Gauss’ pronunciation was perfectly correct.
In general, Gauss evaluated languages according to their logical sharpness and the wealth of ideas which they could express. Often he complained of insufficiency, especially when it was a matter of expressing some scientific subject matter exactly. He then attempted cautiously to introduce new nomenclature for new concepts, and these terms were usually accepted, although he resorted to this procedure only when there was an urgent need.
One of the few recreations in which he indulged as a change from his mathematical studies was extended reading in the most varied branches of human knowledge. German and English literature particularly attracted him, and, as was noted above, Russian literature furnished him many pleasant hours in his final years.
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sp; His favorite German author was Jean Paul (1763–1825). Some people have been surprised at this fact, but upon closer examination the reasons stand out clearly. Gauss appreciated Jean Paul’s great wealth of similes, his depth of intellect, and his inexhaustible humor. He was the best-seller of his day—more widely read than Goethe and Schiller. Jean Paul and Gauss both manifested the same polarity between rationalism and romanticism. As a young man he reveled in the beautiful descriptions found in Jean Paul’s works. He enjoyed the sentimental and patriotic elements of Jean Paul’s writing; he was firmly attached to his fatherland and his people, not the aristocracy, royalty, or nobility, but the small-time, everyday folks. There were also religious reasons why Gauss was attracted to Jean Paul, but these will be mentioned in a later chapter.
Gauss often complained because, as he said, Jean Paul was misguided by a belief in animal magnetism, and this weakened his enjoyment of those pleasant elements mentioned above. He called Doctor Katzenhergers Badereise a masterpiece and always laughed about the struggle of the doctor and the druggist over the eight-legged rabbit, and the art of making the ducats full weight by means of earwax. Jean Paul’s character and style reminded Gauss of his friend Bolyai, which is another explanation of the attraction. Gauss and Jean Paul respected each other highly, although they never saw each other. There is no evidence that they corresponded.
On January 2, 1813, Charles F. D. de Villers (1765–1815), a Frenchman who from 1811 to 1814 served as professor of philosophy in Göttingen, wrote thus to his friend Jean Paul:
Among your warmest admirers here is to be counted the sky, star, and number man, Prof. Gauss. The quiet, gentle and intellectual Gauss reads and loves you almost as passionately as I—this common inclination has established mutual attraction between us, and I have you to thank for the friend with whom I otherwise would have perhaps had few points of contact.
Occasionally Gauss used an appropriate quotation from Jean Paul in his letters and works. On December 31, 1839, he wrote to Minna that his younger daughter Therese was enjoying better health than usual that winter and had been reading Dr. Katzenbergers Badereise; she was actually enjoying it, a fact which surprised her father. Gauss read Tobias Smollet’s Peregrine Pickle and The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, in each of which there is a doctor similar to Katzenberger, who represented the medical cynic.
In his home Gauss had a number of hand billets of Jean Paul, his complete works, the biography by Spazier, and a silver medal of the poet. After his death the medal was given to one of the sons in America. Gauss had a close friend, A. W. Eschenburg in Detmold, the son of his old teacher who had translated Shakespeare. The following words which he wrote in Eschenburg’s album are strongly reminiscent of Jean Paul’s Streckverse:
For the darling of heaven all his paths are strewn with roses; happily he looks back and with happy confidence into the cloudless future. Joy, the daughter of heaven, is his inseparable companion, when he looks at grief it turns into a gentle smile; all hearts beat for him and everybody vies for his love. Happy is he whom heaven loves, but more happy is he whom heaven’s darling loves.
Gauss’ tastes in his recreational and general reading were well-nigh universal. He studied subjects far removed from his own field, such as bookkeeping and shorthand, occasionally using the latter in his notes. In the field of ancient classics he read Aristotle, Plato, Theophrastus, Cicero, Virgil, Tacitus, Livy, Thucydides, Hesiod, Euripides, Pindar, Anacreon, Xenophon, Julius Caesar, Diogenes Laertius, Aulus Gellius, Herodotus, Suetonius, Cornelius Nepos, Terence, Phaedrus, Ovid, Curtius Rufus, Seneca, Pliny, Horace, Sallust, Lucian, Juvenal, Plautus, Martial, and Tibullus.
His acquaintance with French literature was gained mainly through the works of Lesage, Montaigne, Rousseau, Voltaire, Maupertuis, Montesquieu, Condorcet, de Luc, Saussure, Brigard, and Boileau. In reading Boileau, he entered copious marginalia.
Gauss read all of Holberg in the original Danish. His knowledge of Swedish, Italian, and Spanish was rather superficial.
English was the foreign language in which Gauss was most fluent. He owned a copy of Dr. Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (ed. 1778), and used George Crabb’s English Grammar and Flügel’s Practical Dictionary of the English and German Languages (Leipzig, 1847). The Gauss library contained twenty English novels by G. P. R. James. Other important English writers Gauss enjoyed were Pope (Rape of the Lock), Sheridan (School for Scandal), Smollet, Moore, Milton, James Thomson, Swift (Gulliver’s Travels), Goldsmith (Vicar of Wakefield), Richardson (Clarissa Harlowe), and Robertson (History of Charles V).
After his two sons migrated. Gauss paid special attention to American literature. He owned and read all the works of James Fenimore Cooper; Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin interested him especially, since one of his sons had become a slave owner and suffered considerable financial loss from runaway slaves. In the New York Review, October, 1840, he was pleased to read a favorable account of some of his work. Some of his friends sent him a copy of the Harvard catalogue for 1845 (printed in Latin) and copies of the American Almanac (1847) and the Boston Almanac (1849).
The Gauss library contains a French-Polish Dictionary, but it is extremely doubtful whether he ever gave attention to Polish. Through reading Jean Paul he was attracted to the study of Pestalozzi. His library contained the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1754–1771; it is mere conjecture to seek the reason why he acquired this set.
No attempt is made here to discuss Gauss’ reading and knowledge of German literature, so extensive that it would carry us far afield. Goethe could not understand or appreciate mathematics, hence it is not surprising that the greatest mathematician of modern times did not fully appreciate Goethe. They never saw each other or corresponded. Goethe probably heard much about Gauss through mutual friends, the Sartorius family. The style and mode of thought in Goethe did not appeal to Gauss and could not satisfy him, although he knew all of the poet’s works. He considered Goethe too poor in thought content, but recognized the value and perfect form of his lyric poetry.69 Schiller’s philosophical views were totally repugnant to him, and he cared less for him than he did for Goethe. He called the Resignation a blasphemous, morally ruined poem and in his edition wrote on the margin in Gothic script the word “Mephistopheles!” Of Schiller’s dramas Gauss valued highly Wallensteins Lager; the Piccolomini and Wallensteins Tod left him quite cold, since the hero did not interest him at all. He was very fond of Schiller’s little poem “Archimedes und der Schüler” (1795), although he considered the treatment of the distichs a failure. In 1807 Gauss used this poem in his inaugural lecture on astronomy.
The tragic was in general not the element in which Gauss liked to move about. Misanthropic, cynical, melancholic, or pessimistic tendencies, as found in Lord Byron, or through his influence on German literature, were repugnant to Gauss. He found Byron’s mode of thought too unpleasant and demonic. Even some of the tragic aspects in Shakespeare’s works were too much for Gauss. There is so much tragedy in daily life that he did not want it in his literature.
Gauss knew all the works of Sir Walter Scott very thoroughly and he passionately admired them. The tragic ending in Kenilworth made a painful impression on him and he would have preferred not to read it. He read Scott’s Life of Napoleon with great interest and felt quite satisfied, being in full agreement with the author. One day he found a passage in Scott which set him to laughing. It was just too much for an astronomer. Gauss compared all the editions he could get his hands on to make sure it was not a misprint. The words were; “The moon rises broad in the northwest.” He made a note on the margin beside this passage. In his last years he enjoyed reading Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Macaulay’s History of England.
A nephew of Gauss’ wife became well known in German literature, Edmund Franz Andreas Hoefer (1819–1882), who lived most of his life in Stuttgart and Cannstadt. He was editor of the Hausblätter from 1854 to 1868. Hoefer’s novels and short stories we
re widely read in their day; he also published a history of German literature. His work was considered a splendid example of regionalism (Heimatkunst). Hoefer was a close friend of Wilhelm Raabe, one of Germany’s most important writers in the nineteenth century.
Gauss always paid close attention to political events, particularly those in his own country. He made a long list of what he regarded as the most important political events, beginning with the French Revolution in 1789 and ending with an event on July 1, 1810. It makes interesting reading today. His strong character and consistency manifested itself in the field of politics. Gauss was an absolutely conservative and aristocratic person. In his later years students used to call him a reactionary. He preferred government by a strong leader of high intelligence to any other form of government. Mob rule with its acts of violence, and especially the Revolution of 1848, aroused in him indescribable horror. On May 17, 1849, he wrote to Schumacher:
Our public affairs are getting more and more dismal. I do not know what philosopher70 it was who set up the doctrine that one should neither mourn nor laugh at bad times, but understand them. I confess that the first prohibition is very difficult to fulfill, but even more difficult is the carrying out of the third command. Sometimes those seem to me to be right who believe that not merely St. Paul’s Church,71 but almost all Germany has become a madhouse.
In 1848 the government of Hanover tried to overcome the bad effects of the events of 1837 by calling back all of the Göttingen Seven. Ewald and Weber were the only two who returned. Their return brought joy to Gauss in his last years. Actually the Revolution of 1848 did not have a bad effect on the university. Göttingen was reputed to be almost the most radical city in the Kingdom of Hanover, outstripped only by Hildesheim. A military unit had to be sent to Göttingen. The students paraded out of the city and there were some minor disturbances between the students and police. Students on the conservative side formed companies and patrolled the streets of the city at night. Rumors were rife. Most students were on the conservative side and were more interested in internal reform of the university. Johann Miquel, a student leader on the revolutionary side, was a close associate of Karl Marx. He later became minister of finance and vice-president of the ministry of state in Prussia.
Carl Friedrich Gauss, Titan of Science_A Study of His Life and Work Page 28