The first ten days of June that year were the Whitsun vacation marking the midpoint of the summer semester; Wegener was teaching but a single course: “Optical Phenomena of the Atmosphere.” He had contracted to give two lectures in Hamburg: one on developments in aerology, and the other to the Luftschiffverein. There were enthusiastic clubs of aeronauts in every major city, as well as in many small ones, including Marburg. Wegener’s world record for time aloft in a free balloon, established with Kurt in 1906, still stood. He was an experienced pilot, with many flights and at least two spectacular crashes, and his devotion to photography of cloud forms during these flights made his illustrated lectures popular and accessible. He was, like many other aerologists at this time, spreading the gospel of the intimate connection between the collection of physical information about the behavior of the atmosphere and the future of air travel generally.
In addition to his lectures, there was the obligatory but much-anticipated visit to the household of the Köppen family in Großborstel. There is much that Wegener had to discuss with Köppen about atmospheric optics (his current fascination) and the next module of the atmospheric physics he hoped to produce. He also had questions and some trepidation about accepting the offer to work in Hamburg. He was in a very difficult position, as Köppen had been of tremendous help to him and was making his career move along rapidly. Köppen’s request that he move to Hamburg and become his collaborator threatened to attach him to a project of several years’ duration that would be time-consuming (if remunerative) and might restrict his ability to do his “own work.” The problem here and always was that Wegener was an enthusiast; his mental conformation and imaginative style were such that he would rush from topic to topic as new ideas occurred to him. He had been able, against the background of the burdensome work on the Danmark Expedition results, to do some highly original work in thermodynamics, atmospheric layering, and atmospheric chemistry. What would happen to all of this, were his life to be consumed by another series of routine scientific tasks superimposed on the Danmark work? What would be left for him?
Alfred and Else
There was, in addition to the lectures and the need to talk to Köppen, another and more urgent mission in Hamburg. Wegener arrived at the Köppen house in the afternoon of Saturday, 4 June 1911, dined with the family, and asked Else if she would care to go for a walk after dinner and take a look at the Moon. It was a waxing gibbous Moon, rising just before sunset, and hanging low in the eastern sky as the Sun was setting, very bright against the water haze from the harbor. It was during this walk that he proposed marriage to her, and she accepted him immediately. They had known each other for three years. She had made no secret of her great interest in him during the recent few months in which they had been in regular correspondence. It is quite likely that he had intended to propose marriage to her in Marburg in April, during the forestalled balloon flight on which he had invited her.32
Wegener suggested that Else should spend the Whitsun vacation with his own family at Zechlinerhütte. Kurt, finally back from Samoa via his trips across China and then via the trans-Siberian railway to Europe, joined them on the train from Berlin to Rheinsberg along the way. Else was struck by Kurt and Alfred’s complete devotion to one another and their unconcealed delight in each other’s company. But nearly as striking was how absolutely different they were. Kurt was narrow in the shoulders and very tall, towering over Alfred. Else remembered that Kurt gave an animated account of his travels, interspersed with acid judgments (that she found harsh) about colleagues and conditions. He was nervous in his manner, constantly reaching into his pocket to make sure he still had his rail ticket. Where Kurt was nervous, Alfred was calm; where Kurt was thin, Alfred was barrel chested with powerful shoulders and broad hands—“though these were now white and smooth from his labor at his desk.”33 She liked Alfred’s manner of speech, very deliberate, never hasty, and never a word against anyone, even in retailing a story of a colleague’s lack of skill, always trying to find and emphasize the positive aspects of people and things.34
They arrived at the station in Rheinsberg and were met by sister Tony driving the wagon. Zechlinerhütte was scarcely easier to get to in 1910 than it had been in 1890, and it was a long ride along the sandy path through the forest and then along the shore of the lake. This was the same path Alfred had walked as a child, while the baggage wagon had gone on ahead. Tony, with short-cropped gray hair and a taciturn manner, completely intimidated Else, speaking not a word to her throughout the entire trip. Else’s heart sank momentarily. Here she was, nineteen years old, but in the presence of all these adults ten or fifteen years older than she; what was she doing here? “Then,” she wrote later, “the wagon stopped under the giant old Linden trees in front of the broad-fronted house, and I looked into the beautiful eyes of my mother-in-law (Anna Wegener). All my anxiety vanished. These were Alfred’s eyes!” Richard Wegener, her future father-in-law, greeted her heartily as the bride-to-be of his youngest son, and he did not conceal his delight at their planned marriage: Kurt and Tony were unmarried and confirmed in their bachelorhood.35
Else was relieved to find the family as gregarious as her own: the Wegener house was as full of visitors at all times as had been her parents’ home in Hamburg. She was entranced by everything: the long table in the dining room was constantly adorned with roses, and the lilacs were still blooming in the huge parkland and garden behind the house. After dinner, in the evenings, Alfred would row her out onto the lake so that she could see the deer come down to the water to drink. She was completely happy and at peace.36
When she returned home to Hamburg, flushed with happiness, her father wrote a note of thanks to Wegener’s parents for the warm welcome shown to his daughter. He said that he had long admired Alfred as a scientist and found him now transformed in no time into a “beloved son.” The impending marriage, about which Köppen was as pleased as he was surprised, nevertheless created difficulties for him and for Wegener. He wrote to the Wegeners senior:
There is a problem, though probably not too serious a one: I expect great things of Alfred, who is for me extremely important for the future of my science. He is one of the most industrious and productive of the younger generation of meteorologists, and is warmly praised everywhere; I only saw in him the meteorologist but it seems now that I must also speak of him as my future son-in-law. I have therefore written to professors in Berlin and Vienna along with the engagement announcement and explanation of the state of affairs, in order to prevent any misunderstandings. Alfred is certainly no lower in my esteem that he will make my daughter happy and I hope for even greater things from him than I have expected up to now!37
Köppen was taking pains to make it widely known that he had not been promoting Wegener’s career so vigorously, nor offered him the job with the Carnegie Institution money, on the expectation that he was supporting a future son-in-law. Now that this had turned out to be the case, Köppen had worked to clarify, with both Hergesell in Berlin and Julius Hann in Vienna, that his judgment of Wegener as a meteorologist had been proffered without any knowledge of this recently arrived personal relationship. He was working to make sure that Wegener did not suffer professionally by having this personal connection with Köppen which might allow Köppen’s patronage to be misinterpreted.
Wegener next wrote to Köppen at the very end of June, with a new salutation that encapsulated his dilemma: “dear father-in-law.”38 He was now bound to Köppen in a different way, one in which professional and personal would not only exist side by side but also overlap and bump into one another. He was under tremendous obligation; Köppen was his true scientific patron, and he knew it. Moreover, the Carnegie money would provide the means for his marriage. His stipend from the Ministry of Education, supplemented by his stipend from the university for his teaching, tutoring, and management of the observatory, amounted together to around 3,000 marks. Thus, the Carnegie salary was four times as great as his university stipend.
Köppen had pr
oposed a published book of about 600 pages which they should produce together uniting aerological research and synoptic meteorology—the latter being the simultaneous production of weather information at different stations and its collation to produce weather maps. Wegener had reservations, however, particularly that the book should be limited to the “unification of aerology with synoptic meteorology. I know,” he continued, “you are indicating here weather forecasting. But could not one rather say: ‘with the other branches of meteorology?’ Why should the global circulation, the outer regions of the atmosphere, the investigation of thunderstorms, and the study of cloud forms, be ruled out?”39
Köppen, designing the work plan and getting ready to draw up the contract, also proposed that Wegener take three-quarters of the money, or $1,500 a year. Wegener protested: “But why should you get less than me? There’s absolutely no basis for the opinion that I will be doing the lion share of the work and certainly against that must be counterpoised the notion that your portion should be judged to be more important than mine. I protest against this complete ‘inversion’ and want very much to find the means that you will receive as much as I. If you write Hergesell and say only this, you will see that he will completely agree.”40
It is painful to read Wegener here, trying so hard to say “yes” and to say “no” at the same time. As his letter continues on, the objections and reservations mount. Köppen must understand that if the Greenland trip should go forward (even though the chances were looking less promising at the moment than before), the contract would have to be abrogated. Further, Wegener lacked any inspiration for the book: “I wish I had more ideas for this project! For every 10 I have I only need one of them to be any good and here I don’t even have 10. Maybe something will occur to me when the project is right in front of us.” Still further, he had spoken with Richarz, who had been very pleased at Köppen’s visit and took the opportunity to say to Wegener, not for the first time, that he was prepared personally to provide the financial means that would allow Wegener to stay in Marburg. Wegener added parenthetically, “He is extremely wealthy.” He told Köppen, “I told him that such an effort would put him in a struggle with you and that you wanted me in Hamburg.”41
A week later, late at night, with his work for the day finished, he wrote again to Köppen, ostensibly to tell him that the first bound exempla of the thermodynamics book had arrived from the publisher and that he had reserved a copy for him. He finally had some ideas about the proposed collaborative book for the Carnegie Institution: some material on the stratosphere. He had been working on the wind speed in the stratosphere, one of several contemporary projects including the beginnings of some ideas on tornadoes. He had already revised some of his ideas presented in the yet-to-appear thermodynamics book, and he announced cheerfully, “Well at least I can say that here is something for the second edition!”42
Eventually, on the final page of the letter, he got around to the actual reason for writing. Köppen was, he knew, in the final stages of negotiating with the Carnegie Institution over their plan; Hergesell had written to Wegener asking him what the status of his Greenland plans was relative to his plan to collaborate with Köppen. However unlikely it was that the Greenland trip would come off, Wegener could not give it up. He knew that Köppen was quite opposed to his plan to go to Greenland and thought of it as an interruption to Wegener’s career as an atmospheric physicist. For Wegener, it appeared to be a last chance at polar exploration. “By the way, I note that you generally view the matter pessimistically; perhaps it will work out that we can do one after the other, if not in one sequence, then in another. Currently it’s for me a matter of stoicism, and I fear that your hope [that it will fall through] will be completely realized!”43
Now every time Wegener thought about the move to Hamburg and the Carnegie project with Köppen, his anxiety level rose and his reservations accumulated. Was it really such a good idea to give up his academic status as a Privatdozent in Marburg, without acquiring the same status in Hamburg? Was it really wise to give up his stipends? What would his colleagues at Marburg think, what would the Ministry of Education think, if he just “up and left” without advancing in rank?
There were other issues as well. Köppen had urged him to devote “all his energy” to their upcoming collaboration, but Wegener said in reply, “This can’t possibly mean that we can’t both of us do anything else, that we couldn’t publish scientific articles; I would like of course additionally to lecture away to my hearts content, and similarly to pursue any chance for an ordinary professorship.” He was feeling pressure not only from Wladimir Köppen but from Else as well: she was urging him to complete the Carnegie contract as quickly as possible so that they might advance the date of their marriage.44
With all the uncertainty in his life—where he would live, what he would work on, when he would marry, whether or not he would go to Greenland—there was one constant and dependable item that summer: his knowledge that in all of August and all of September he would be back in the military and on maneuvers. Germany’s state of military readiness was accelerating at this time, not in response to any crisis, but continuing the modifications of the Schlieffen plan under the leadership of the new general staff. Wegener had only a few weeks to work before he had to return to the headquarters of the Queen Elisabeth Grenadier Guard Regiment at Charlottenburg. In an undated letter, but probably from early September 1911, he wrote to Köppen, “Dear father-in-law, all my patriotism notwithstanding, I have today set aside instructions on the treatment of Hoof and Mouth disease and have instead been writing meteorology on office memo paper.”45 He continued with news that none of his projects were going forward very well. The Danmark meteorological observations were at 110 pages and growing, seemingly interminable. He had not received his free copies of his thermodynamics book or the free separate copies of his article for Abderhalden. Since Koch’s visit, he had heard nothing about the glaciological work except that it had been handed over to the press: “this is really sour pickle time [the ‘silly season’].”46
Wegener returned from eight weeks of military training to Marburg in time to begin the winter semester (early October 1911), in much better physical condition than he had left, once again tanned, and his soft hands once again hardened by work, and with something of his habitual good humor restored. He had been able to visit his prospective in-laws in Hamburg on the way back from maneuvers on 17 and 18 September and had urged the Köppens senior and their family to visit and meet his parents in Zechlinerhütte, something to which Köppen had readily agreed, feeling that the change of air would do himself and the rest of the family good.47
We have already noted that Wegener had a tendency to ride off in all directions at once, pursuing every enthusiasm of the moment. If before he departed for the military he had not even had ten ideas from which to choose one good one, now his mind was overflowing. He wrote enthusiastically and at great length to Köppen about his plan to build a new differential psychrometer. This instrument is a kind of hygrometer used to measure relative humidity by comparing the temperatures between a “dry bulb” thermometer and a “wet bulb” thermometer, the latter encased in wet muslin, with the apparatus ventilated in such a way that the latent heat of evaporation on the wet bulb yields a temperature difference between the two thermometers which, by reference to a table, may be used to calculate the relative humidity. Wegener’s design (rather too complicated to discuss here) would allow the psychrometer to record continuously, thus providing an opportunity to send it aloft. In addition to the wind speed in the stratosphere (on which he published a paper in 1911), he was also interested in whether the stratosphere was at all turbulent or thoroughly laminar in its airflow, and he wanted to measure the shift in relative humidity within this broad stratum of air.48
His correspondence with Köppen indicates that he was also still working on the spectral characteristics of meteors and thus on the elemental composition of the upper atmosphere. As if this were not enough, he ha
d decided, partly at Köppen’s suggestion, to try to understand the relationship between the horizontal and vertical components of turbulence in cumulus clouds, and he was planning to try to do some microphotography of cloud elements, having been excited by those photographs he had seen already, and counting on his own skill as a photographer to meet or exceed these standards.49 Beyond this, as he wrote to Köppen on 21 November, he was trying to understand now the relationship between rectilinear and turbulent motions in fluid media more generally. He thought that the best chance to understand these things in the atmosphere was to take the work done on them already in oceanography, and therefore he was looking again into George Darwin’s book on the tides. He wanted to put a footnote in a manuscript in progress on “turbulent motion of the atmosphere” on the relationship between rectilinear and turbulent motions at the surface of the sea, and he asked Köppen, “There must be something about this in Krümmel’s Oceanography isn’t there? I feel like showing a little local patriotism perhaps I can just put in a footnote: compare Krümmel’s Handbook of Oceanography volume 2 … 1911 page.” The reference is to Otto Krümmel’s massive two-volume Handbuch der Ozeanographie, the second volume of which had only just appeared and was not yet in the Marburg University Library.50
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