Alfred Wegener

by Mott T. Greene

  In the midst of this confusion and disappointment there was at least one bright spot. Richard Aßmann had solicited (as Wegener mentioned in a letter to Köppen on 4 January 1914) a fuller version of his article on the origin of continents, for a series of popular-science books that he edited for Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn.19 Vieweg was a well-known scientific publisher, and the series for which Aßmann had recruited the book was the “Sammlung Vieweg,” which featured short (circa 100 pages) titles on novel themes. The motto of the series reflects this: “Current Issues [Tagesfragen] in Science and Technology.” Aßmann’s offer of publication was a statement of support; Wegener was still, for Aßmann, his young “theorist.” What he had seen in Wegener’s publication on continents and oceans (in Petermanns Mitteilungen) was the same boldness of conception which he admired in Wegener’s atmospheric physics.

  Aßmann was not alone in finding something to admire in Wegener’s work on the origin of continents and oceans. The previous September (1912), while Alfred had been struggling to balance hay bales on the backs of Icelandic ponies in Greenland, the Seventeenth Conference of the Geodetic Association had taken place in Hamburg, with the participation of (among many others) Friedrich Helmert, as well as Wegener’s old astronomy professor from Berlin, Wilhelm Förster, and also Carl Albrecht (1843–1915), who, with Förster, had been a leader in the development of the International Latitude Service.

  Wladimir Köppen was at the meeting and had mentioned to these old friends and colleagues (in a break between sessions) Alfred’s hypothesis of continental displacements. Köppen was clearly testing their reactions, worried about what they might think. Much to Köppen’s surprise, Carl Albrecht said that he thought that Wegener’s proposal of continental displacements was a really interesting idea, and it probably wouldn’t take more than a year or two of measurements to find out whether it was true. Förster and Helmert agreed completely.20 Albrecht’s interest in Chandler wobble and the motion of Earth’s pole had been the driving force behind the program at Potsdam in the 1890s to establish the reality and extent of such polar motion. Moreover, this interest and the program were some of the main reasons that Wilhelm Förster had directed Wegener to do a thesis on the Alfonsine Tables. In fact, Wegener’s instructor in geodesy at Berlin, Marcuse, was Albrecht’s student and assistant, and it was Albrecht who had arranged with the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey to send Marcuse to Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1890.21

  While Albrecht’s name is mostly associated with his work in the determination of latitude, he had also been deeply concerned with exact measurements of longitude. He had been a pioneer in the electrotelegraphic measurement of longitude distances, as well as an observer in the 1890s in the measurement of the longitude arcs joining Paris, Warsaw, Bucharest, Pulkovo (St. Petersburg), Greenwich, and Horta (Azores). This work was preliminary to the unification of global geodesy and time reckoning, finally cemented in place in the year 1912, when all astronomical measurements and time measurements henceforth were to be calculated from the 0° of longitude at Greenwich.

  Albrecht wanted very much to use Wegener’s hypothesis as an excuse for a test of longitude measurements using radio time signals, then still called, quaintly, “Hertzian telegraphy,” but this proved impractical. Nevertheless, Albrecht went immediately to work to establish a protocol to measure the longitude arcs from Borkum (in the North Sea) to Horta and from there to New York, using the German telegraph cables connecting these places. Albrecht was anxious to use the station at Horta because he had established its longitude himself in the 1890s and reconfirmed it many times in the succeeding years. Albrecht was so excited by the idea of testing for shifts in longitude that he determined that he himself, at the age of 71, should go to the Azores and take the measurements that were to get under way in July 1914.22

  Wegener was, of course, pleased to hear of this test. He was confident that his hypothesis of continental displacements was correct, and he was certain that an appropriate measurement program would confirm it in short order. He even referred to the longitude measurements as an experimentum crucis, employing Isaac Newton’s term for a definitive experiment that must remove from consideration every hypothesis but one.23 In this context, one might have expected him to reinvolve himself with the topic of continental displacements, especially since the rush to prepare for Greenland (in 1912) had constrained the detailed presentation of evidence for his argument. Yet there is no hint in his correspondence from this time (early 1914) of any enthusiasm for the book project or any impetus to work on the idea of displacements. Wegener appears, at this juncture, to have been content to await the results of the planned measurement program. This would make sense: if the measurements determined no movement, there would be no reason for such a book.

  Even had Wegener been willing and able to go forward with further research on continental motions, or atmospheric turbulence, or atmospheric layering, or optics, or any of the choices before him, he had no opportunity. He barely had time to finish the magazine articles on Greenland and to recover his journals (they had been in Berlin being transcribed) before facing the reality of two months of intensive military training at Charlottenburg in Berlin, in March and April of 1914. Else would accompany him to Berlin, and they would be allowed to live together in civilian quarters, but his time would be taken up all day, every day.24

  In the meantime, there were additional distractions. He and Koch had agreed to give, in January 1914, a joint lecture in Berlin at Urania, the observatory where Wegener had apprenticed; this was associated with the piece Wegener wrote for Himmel und Erde.25 In February Koch and his wife paid a visit to the newlyweds in Marburg, which delighted Else. While there, Koch repeated with Wegener before the university community the Berlin lecture, after which they had to suffer the “dignity” of being crowned with beribboned laurel wreaths. Back at the apartment, Else and Frau Koch laughingly unwound the ribbons and reserved the laurel leaves for kitchen use. The ribbons would come in handy for children’s clothing, Else wrote, and this was much on her mind, for she had just discovered that she was pregnant, with the child most likely due in the latter part of August 1914.26 This was wonderful news for the young couple, but it must have increased Wegener’s sense of financial anxiety, as money was a constant and nagging worry.

  During the time that Wegener had been in Greenland, Richarz (as Wegener’s professor and director of the Physics Institute) had worked with successive deans at Marburg to try to improve Wegener’s financial situation. Their joint failure to create an “extraordinary” professorship for Wegener bothered Richarz very much. Using a combination of his own and Aßmann’s influence, he had named Alfred, in January 1914, as Germany’s representative to the impending conference of the International Commission for Polar Aeronautics, scheduled to meet in Copenhagen in February. The “Marburgers” were using every means at their disposal to raise Alfred’s profile, nationally and internationally, in hope of inducing the Minister of Education to create a professorship for their distinguished younger colleague. The rector of the university joined in and issued a proclamation, published both at the university and in the city of Marburg, reporting Kaiser Wilhelm’s official letter of congratulation to Wegener for his knighthood in Denmark.27 It appeared now that the best chance for a professorship for Wegener lay in accentuating his celebrity as one of Germany’s rising polar scientists and using the fame derived from his (still standing) world record for time aloft in a balloon back in 1906.

  Wegener accepted Richarz’s invitation and dutifully went to Copenhagen to participate in the conference, though (notably) he begged off, while he was there, from giving a lecture before the Greenland Scientific Commission on the details of his ice cap traverse, citing the press of work.28 Upon his return to Marburg, he announced to Richarz that his participation in this aeronautical effort was redundant and that he probably need not attend again. Wegener was here and elsewhere almost willfully blind to the sorts of work that one did within the social system of science in order to position
oneself for professional success. He seems to have pinned his hopes for advancement on his scientific work alone, and while accepting Köppen’s arrangement of paid scientific writing, he shied away from any kind of administrative role in polar science or meteorology. In this matter, he was completely consistent. He had refused to give up the Marburg instructorship in 1912 when Köppen had pressed him to move to Hamburg and accept a position at the Marine Observatory. He had earlier declined Aßmann’s very generous terms to return to Lindenberg as a theoretical scientist without observational duties, again sure that he could make a go of it in Marburg.

  In early March, Alfred and Else moved to Berlin, to small and temporary lodgings in Charlottenburg, close to his regimental headquarters. She remarked (years later) that Alfred seemed exhausted throughout the entire time in Berlin and had difficulty concentrating. He tried to work, but without his books and papers and the calm of his workroom in Marburg, he seemed unable to keep his ideas clearly in mind, and he spoke of this to her. Even traveling by streetcar from Charlottenburg to the Meteorological Institute, in order to obtain books, left him depressed and unable to concentrate. He found the noise of ordinary street life in Berlin almost unbearable. His “nervous constitution” and inability to tolerate noise (of which he had spoken to Köppen two years before) were certainly a reality here, yet Else found herself surprised by it; it was astonishing, she wrote, that someone with the physical strength and courage to do what he had done in Greenland, and who had survived the solitude of the overwintering so well, should have his nervous constitution undone by the crowds and hubbub of Berlin’s city streets.29

  Preparing (in April) to return to Marburg for the summer semester, at the end of his stint of military training, Wegener informed the dean that he had decided to change his lectures in thermodynamics and mechanics of the atmosphere to a shorter course entitled “Optical Phenomena of the Atmosphere.”30 Just before a Whitsun (June) visit to Marburg by the Köppen family, Wegener reported to Köppen that he had begun to make progress in the work on the meteorological encyclopedia for Thesing. He had begun by writing the articles on meteorological optics and acoustics. His chapter on synoptic meteorology for the planned encyclopedia allowed him to work through this topic historically: the development of weather maps, a history of the idea of low-pressure systems, the ideas of Bjerknes on squall lines (the emerging concepts of frontal weather), and other topics.31 These broad reflections were stimulating and encouraging. His ability to focus and work seemed to be returning to him, and his episodes of anxiety and depression were becoming more rare.

  With the departure of the Köppen family for Hamburg after their Marburg visit, Alfred and Else turned resolutely in June and July of 1914 to their own work; few letters from this period survive. Alfred seems to have been consumed by the encyclopedia volume; this now had intellectual content for him and no longer felt so much like bread labor.

  While he was consumed by his meteorological work, Else was busy translating Koch’s expedition account of the ice cap traverse into German. Koch had spent the last two months in Greenland, while waiting for the ship home, collating his and Wegener’s journals into a single expedition record. Koch, who had still not worked up all of the cartographic materials from 1906–1908, nevertheless completed this popular book in record time; it was published before the end of 1913. It was a beautiful volume under the title Gennem den Hvide Ørken (Through the white desert), published in large format, with striking halftone photographs on almost every page, as well as an abundance of maps and diagrams.32 Wegener reasoned that he had essentially written half the book published by Koch: all but a few of the photographs were his, and they told the story as he had seen it; his diary entries additionally recorded his participation and his thoughts. He had no desire or impulse to write a “Greenland book” of his own. However, when it became clear (in early 1914) that the Danish edition had sold well, Alfred and Else decided that she should undertake a German edition, translating Koch’s journals and the Danish parts of Wegener’s. She had learned Danish and Norwegian during her time in Bergen the previous year, with the intention that she could “help with his scientific work.” This would be the first major help of that kind, both scientifically and financially.

  By early July 1914, Wegener was at his desk eight to ten hours a day, sometimes more. Else admired his capacity for work. “He scarcely went out, and when he did he missed his books and the quiet of his study. Sitting in the house at his writing desk he could concentrate for hours at a time writing; from time to time contemplating the blue smoke rising from his cigar, occasionally exchanging a few words with me, or reading me a passage, asking me whether it was clear, and then plunging back into his writing, most often remaining at work deep into the night.”33

  His output of encyclopedia articles during June and July must have been prodigious. On 23 June, Köppen wrote him in mock despair: “It is raining manuscripts from you over here [in Hamburg]!”34 Even with Köppen’s fabled capacity for work, he could not keep up with the flood of paper that Wegener was sending. Alfred was back in stride now, doing what he did best. Köppen estimated that at this pace they might be done with the work on the encyclopedia by 1 August, and at the latest by 15 August.

  With the work on the encyclopedia nearly complete, Alfred and Else plunged into the reorganization and cataloging of his (by now) huge collection of reprints. The new file boxes for these had arrived, and the young couple worked out a library system to provide Alfred with easy access to documents, as he needed them. The scale of the synthesizing work he envisioned (in the completion of his physics of the atmosphere) was such that merely stacking reprints on the writing table, so that they could be conveniently “to hand,” was no longer practicable.

  The work of organizing meteorology in an encyclopedic form and of considering the organizational scheme for his various reprints in meteorology, astronomy, geophysics, geodesy, and (now increasingly) geology gave Wegener further opportunity and cause to reflect on his place in the world of science. His superiors at Marburg had gone forward to the Ministry of Education with the plan that he should have an extraordinary professorship in astronomy and meteorology. This initiative had failed. Looking at his own interests and the needs of his students, he began to think that the position might better be reconfigured (in the next round of applications) as an extraordinary professorship in cosmic physics—an idea he had long cherished.

  Wegener mused aloud to Köppen, in a letter on 23 July, that cosmic physics perhaps had stronger claims as a university subject than meteorology, especially since high school teachers already had to demonstrate a proficiency in the subject matter in order to pass their examinations. Meteorology would for a long time remain a special subject within physics, but cosmic physics promised to be more pragmatically comprehensive with regard to his own interests and “the emerging scientific worldview,” as he saw it.35

  Crossing disciplinary boundaries was, for Wegener, an expression of an interest in problems, rather than an interest in topics or subject matters. Wegener had been, from his earliest days in meteorology, interested in the manifold problems generated by sharp surfaces of discontinuity. These surfaces had led him to work on atmospheric layering, to work on the chemical composition of the atmosphere, and eventually to thinking about surfaces of discontinuity within the solid body of Earth. In physics, then as now, solving a problem in one area leads one to think about other areas in which the achieved solution might apply. Wegener’s inspection of the depth contours of the Atlantic had led him to imagine that surfaces of discontinuity played a role. This had led, in turn, directly to the idea of continental displacements.

  As he moved forward in the summer of 1914 into atmospheric optics and acoustics, it was clear to him that these areas of physics would also yield important problems that might be solved with reference to sharp surfaces of discontinuity. Mirages, which he had photographed extensively while in Greenland in 1912 and 1913 (and had thought about as early as 1906), were the result of
discontinuities in the atmosphere close to the ground and of inversions. His work in atmospheric acoustics, not yet well formulated, would also have to do with reflection and refraction of sound waves at the contact surfaces, the “layer boundaries,” of media of different density. To respect the disciplinary partitions of Earth into geology, geophysics, oceanography, meteorology, and atmospheric physics would be to miss the invariant elements consistent across these different sections of a single subject matter: Earth as a physical planetary body in a solar system.

  To understand this attitude toward problems and solutions is to see why he had been reluctant to move ahead with a book-length treatment on continental displacements at this time. From Wegener’s standpoint, the physical work of formulating a hypothesis and producing a “crucial experiment” to determine its validity had already been done. His only interest in the topic of continental displacements in the summer of 1914 was the possibility of strengthening the measurement-based argument for the validity of the hypothesis.

  With the measurement protocol in place to establish the drifting apart of North America from Europe using the German cable across the Atlantic, Alfred wrote in June to his old professor at Berlin, Julius Bauschinger, to secure the exact latitude of those Australian astronomical observatories with which the Berlin astronomers correlated their astronomical observations.36 Since, in Wegener’s vision of continental motion, there were major latitude shifts (India and Australia moving to the north) as well as major longitude shifts (the Americas moving to the west), cable communications across the Pacific with Australia might be able to produce a record, in the Southern Hemisphere, of the contemporary and continuous latitude shifts of India and Australia to the north. The telegraph cable between Brisbane, Australia, and Vancouver, British Columbia, on the western coast of North America had been completed in 1902; Australia also had cable connections to the Cocos and Keeling Islands and to India. In conjunction with the observations of the International Latitude Service, these would be three independent sets of measurements directed to the establishment of the reality and extent of lateral motions of continental fragments across Earth’s surface at the present time.