In addition to the decline of German as a scientific language, Wegener was denied another important source of continuity for his ideas: none of his doctoral students ever became a university professor. Most of his students, given his preference for “cosmic physics” and the scarcity of university professorships in meteorology, were destined for careers as secondary school teachers (Gymnasium). He never founded, nor did he attempt to found, a tradition of research with a distinctive methodology, or distinctive content, in any of the many disciplines he pursued.
Finally, and so obviously that one almost forgets to mention it, all of his scientific work was prematurely deprived of its strongest advocate with his death in 1930 on the Greenland ice cap. Had he not died as he did, his family history, his heavy smoking, and his heart defect all point toward a death in his later sixties or early seventies, which would have taken him into the post–Second World War period: he would have been seventy years old in 1950, and by then interest in his theories was already reviving, and he might have played a role. Wegener always showed great flexibility in modifying his views based on new research, and he seemed to take an almost proprietary interest in any work that he could see had been inspired by his own, even if it seemed to modify his previous views in some crucial aspect. The work on continental displacements in the later 1930s and early 1940s would certainly have found favor in his eyes, and he would likely have continued to modify his own views in the direction the community was going. His conception of science was always social and evolutionary, and he believed above all in the value of “the work” (Die Arbeit), far beyond anything that might attach to his own credit or name.
Notes
Preface
1. Else Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen (Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1960); Ulrich Wutzke, Durch die weiße Wüste: Leben und Leistungen des Grönlandforschers und Entdeckers der Kontinentaldrift Alfred Wegener, Petermann ed. (Gotha: Justus Perthes Verlag, 1997).
2. Alfred Wegener, Thermodynamik der Atmosphäre (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1911).
3. I owe this observation to Thomas Hankins, my dissertation supervisor and the biographer of Jean d’Alembert and William Rowan Hamilton.
4. Claude Lévi-Strauss, La Pensée Sauvage (Paris: Plon, 1962), 340ff.
5. Mott T. Greene, “Writing Scientific Biography,” Journal of the History of Biology 40 (2007): 727–759.
Chapter 1. The Boy: Berlin and Brandenburg, 1880–1899
1. Demolished by the East German government in 1950.
2. Destroyed in World War II by Allied bombing.
3. Destroyed in 1944. Mario Krammer, Berlin im Wandel der Jahrhunderte: Eine Kulturgeschichte der deutschen Hauptstadt (Berlin: Rembrandt-Verlag, 1956), 80. The redbrick buildings remain.
4. “Alfred’s Jugend,” typescript by Kurt Wegener (ca. 1950), Heimatmuseum Neuruppin, 1.
5. Else Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen (Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1960), 11.
6. Destroyed in World War II by Allied bombing.
7. “Alfred’s Jugend,” 1.
8. Else Wegener’s genealogical record of the Wegener family is deposited in the Heimatmuseum, Neuruppin, along with the family photographic album and some mementos. This material supplements the collection at the Wegener Gendenkstätte, Zechlinerhütte.
9. E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 10.
10. Richard Wegener, Begriff und Beweis der Existenz Gottes bei Spinoza (Berlin: Druck der Nauk’schen Buchdruckerei, 1873).
11. “Alfred’s Jugend,” 1.
12. Richard Wegener, Poetische Fruchtgarten (Göthen: Paul Schettler’s Erben, 1895).
13. Richard Wegener, Aufsätze zur Litteratur (Berlin: Wallroth, 1882).
14. Richard Wegener, Die Bühneneinrichtung des Shakepeareschen Theaters nach den zeitgenössischen Dramen (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1907).
15. R. Wegener, Poetische Fruchtgarten, 42–43.
16. Ibid., 43–45.
17. “Alfred’s Jugend,” 1.
18. Kurt remembers Käte dying at the age of eight, which would have put the event in 1887; Else Wegener, in her 1960 memoir, is quite definite that Kurt was six and Alfred four when this happened. This is more consistent with Kurt’s comment that “they scarcely remembered her.”
19. E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 10.
20. Philip A. Ashworth, “Berlin,” in Encyclopedia Britannica (New York: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1910), III, 789.
21. Martin Schwarzbach, Alfred Wegener: The Father of Continental Drift (Madison, WI: Science Tech. Inc., 1986), 241.
22. “Alfred’s Jugend,” 3.
23. It is today a memorial museum to Alfred Wegener, and the Wegeners senior, Tony Wegener, and Kurt Wegener are all buried in the family plot in the village churchyard nearby. There is also a gravestone memorializing Alfred Wegener himself.
24. E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 11.
25. Theodor Fontane, Graffschaft Rüppin, Wanderung durch die Mark Brandenburg (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1909–1912).
26. “Alfred’s Jugend,” 1.
27. E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 11.
28. “Alfred’s Jugend,” 3.
29. Ibid., 4.
30. E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 11.
31. George Coore, “Education: National Systems,” in Encyclopedia Britannica (New York: Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1910), VIII, 967.
32. E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 11.
33. Ibid.
34. “Alfred’s Jugend,” 2.
35. E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 12.
36. “Alfred’s Jugend,” 2.
37. Ibid., 4.
38. E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 12.
39. “Alfred’s Jugend,” 3. The phrase “nulla dies sine linea” was a Latin proverb, perhaps based originally on a Greek one, and it supposedly takes its origin from the habits of the famous painter Apelles. Here is the account of Pliny the Elder, Hist. Nat., Bk. 35.84: “It was the regular custom of Apelles to never pass a day that was so busy that he didn’t keep his artistic hand in by drawing a line—something which passed from him into a proverb.” So the “linea” in question was originally not a line of verse or writing of any sort, but a line of drawing. I thank my colleague David Lupher for this reference and discussion.
40. “Alfred’s Jugend,” 1.
41. E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 12.
42. Friedrich Diesterweg, Populäre Himmelskunde und mathematische Geographie, 12th and 13th eds. (Berlin: E. Goldschmidt, 1890); M(ax). W(ilhelm). Meyer, Das Weltgebäude: Eine gemeinsverstandliche Himmelskunde (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1898).
43. “Alfred’s Jugend,” 3.
Chapter 2. The Student: Berlin-Heidelberg-Innsbruck-Berlin, 1899–1901
1. Christa Jungnickel and Russell McCormmach, Intellectual Mastery of Nature: Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein, vol. 2, The Now Mighty Theoretical Physics, 1870–1925 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 26–28.
2. Wegener’s academic records are in the “Wegenerarchiv” in the library and archive of the Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung in Bremerhaven.
3. Kurt-R. Biermann, “Weierstrass, Karl Theodor Wilhelm,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Charles Coulston Gillispie (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1980), 222; and H. Boerner, “Schwarz, Hermann Amandus,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, passim.
4. Walther Lietzmann, Aus Meinen Lebenserinnerungen (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1960), 22–23.
5. Ibid., 23.
6. Ibid., 22.
7. Else Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen (Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1960), 12; J(ohannes) Georgi, “Memories of Alfred Wegener,” in Continental Drift, ed. Stanl
ey Keith Runcorn, International Geophysics Series (New York: Academic Press, 1962), 312.
8. Jungnickel and McCormmach, Intellectual Mastery of Nature, 2:213.
9. Jürgen Hamel and Klaus-Harro Tiemann, “Der Vertretung der Astronomie an der Berlin Universität in den Jahren 1810 bis 1914,” Vorträge und Schriften (Archenhold-Sternwarte Berlin-Treptow) 69 (1988): 25.
10. Kurt Lambeck, The Earth’s Variable Rotation: Geophysical Causes and Consequences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 85–86; Adolf Marcuse, Die Erdmessungs-expedition nach den Hawaiischen Inseln (Berlin: W. Portmetter, 1892), 18; Adolf Marcuse, Ergebnisse er polhöhenbestimmungen in Berlin ausgeführt in den Jahren 1889, 1890, 1891 am Universal-Transit der Königlichen Sternwarte, Centralbureau der Internationalen Erdmessung, Neue Folge der Veröffentlichungen, no. 6 (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1902), 29.
11. Lietzmann, Aus Meinen Lebenserinnerungen, 22.
12. Hamel and Tiemann, “Der Vertretung der Astronomie,” 7, 25.
13. Adolf Marcuse, Die Hawaiischen Inseln von Dr. Adolf Marcuse: Mit vier karten und vierzig Abbildungen nach photographischen Original-Aufnahmen (Berlin: R. Friedlander & Sohn, 1894), 186.
14. Lietzmann, Aus Meinen Lebenserinnerungen, 24.
15. F. Fraunberger, “Quincke, Gerog Hermann,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 241.
16. Ibid., 242.
17. Wilhelm Valentiner, Atlas des Sonnensystems: 25 Abbildungen in Lichtdruck (Lahr: M. Schauenberg, 1884); Wilhelm Valentiner, Handwörterbuch der Astronomie, vol. 4 (Leipzig: Barth, 1897–1902).
18. The author can vouch for this characterization of such organizations from personal experience as a member and officer of the ΑΔΦ fraternity at Columbia College in New York City between 1963 and 1967.
19. “Strafs-Verfugung” (Summons) in the Wegener Nachlass, Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung Bremerhaven. I am indebted to Ulrich Wutzke’s transcription in Ulrich Wutzke, Der Forscher von der Friedrichsgracht: Leben und Leistung Alfred Wegeners, 1st ed. (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1988), 15, 17.
20. E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 12.
21. Lietzmann, Aus Meinen Lebenserinnerungen, 23.
22. Julius Bauschinger, Die Bahnbestimmung der Himmelskörper (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1906); Julius Bauschinger, ed., J. H. Lambert’s Abhandlungen zur Bahnbestimmung der Cometen: Insignores orbitae comitarum proprietates (1761); Observations sur l’Orbite apparente des Cometes (1771); Auszüge aus den “Beiträgen zum Gebrauche der Mathematik,” Ostwalds Klassiker der exakten Wissenschaften, no. 133 (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1902).
23. Julius Bauschinger and Jean Peters, Logarithmisch-trigonometrische Tafeln mit acht Dezimalstellen ehthaltend die Lograrithmen aller Zahlen von 1 bis 200000 und die Logarithmen der trigonometrishce Funktionen für jede Sexagesimalsekunde des Quadranten, mit Unterstützung der Kgl. Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin und der Kais. Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, 2 vols. (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1910–1911).
24. Ibid., 257.
25. Gisela Kutzbach, The Thermal Theory of Cyclones: A History of Meteorological Thought in the Nineteenth Century, Historical Monograph Series (Boston: American Meteorological Society, 1979), 225.
26. A. Kh. Khrgian, Meteorology: A Historical Survey (Ocherki razvitiya meteorologii), trans. Ross Hardin, 2nd ed., rev. Kh. P. Pogosyan (Jerusalem: Israel Program for Scientific Translations, 1970), 272.
27. Registration information from Wegener’s student records in the library of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Bremerhaven.
28. Josef Blaas, Geologischer Führer durch die Tiroler und Vorarlberger Alpen, 7 vols. (Innsbruck: Wagner’schen Universitäts-Buchhandlung, 1902).
29. Personal communication from Peter Misch (1983), Professor Emeritus of Structural Geology at the University of Washington, recalling his student days with Hans Stille, before the advent of geochemistry as a regular university subject gave many geologists the means and confidence to work metamorphic rocks into the historical narrative of the evolution of a mountain chain.
30. The following account is expanded from the scanty information in E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 13.
31. Alan Blackshaw, Mountaineering, 2nd rev. ed. (Baltimore: Penguin, 1970), 464–465.
32. E. Wegener, Alfred Wegener: Tagebücher, Briefe, Erinnerungen, 13.
33. Franz Hubmann, Dream of Empire: The World of Germany in Original Photographs, 1840–1914 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), 186–187.
34. Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz, Das Volk in Waffen, ein Buch über Heerwesen und Kriegsführung unserer Zeit, Funfte umgearbeitete und verbesserte Aufl. ed. (Berlin: R. V. Decker, 1899), 276.
35. Ibid., 183–187.
36. Ibid., 56.
37. Ibid., 164ff.
38. Ibid., 162–164.
39. Alfred Kelly, The Descent of Darwin: The Popularization of Darwinism in Germany, 1860–1914 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 72–73.
Chapter 3. The Astronomer: Berlin, 1901–1904
1. Herbert Schnädelbach, Philosophy in Germany, 1831–1933, trans. Eric Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 139.
2. Rüdiger Safranski, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil, trans. Ewald Osers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 49.
3. Robert Musil, The Man without Qualities, trans. Eithne Wilkens and Ernst Kaiser, 1st English ed., 3 vols., vol. 1 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1954), 59–60.
4. H. P. Rickman, “Dilthey, Wilhelm,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan, 1967), vol. 2, 403–406.
5. William Kluback and Martin Weinbaum, Dilthey’s Philosophy of Existence: Introduction to Weltanschauungslehre (New York: Bookman Associates, 1957), 21–27.
6. Schnädelbach, Philosophy in Germany, 1831–1933, 147.
7. Rickman, “Dilthey, Wilhelm,” 405. For a longer discussion of these ideas see H. P. Rickman, ed., Dilthey: Selected Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
8. Friedrich Paulsen, Einleitung in die Philosophie, 3rd revised and enlarged ed. (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1895).
9. L. E. Loemker, “Pauslen, Friedrich,” in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 6, 60.
10. Friedrich Paulsen, Introduction to Philosophy, trans. Frank Thilly, 2nd American from 3rd German ed. (New York: Henry Holt, 1895), vii.
11. Ibid., v–vi.
12. Ibid., 25.
13. Ibid., 27.
14. Ibid., 32.
15. Ibid., xiii.
16. Ibid., 19.
17. Loemker, “Pauslen, Friedrich,” vol. 6, 60–61.
18. Paulsen, Introduction to Philosophy, 182.
19. Ibid., 227.
20. Alfred Kelly, The Descent of Darwin: The Popularization of Darwinism in Germany, 1860–1914 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 83–84.
21. Paulsen, Einleitung in die Philosophie, 423: “Erkenntnis, auch Erfahrungserkenntnis, ist nicht ein passiv aus der außeren Wirklichkeit ausgenommener Inhalt, sondern ein Erzeugnis spontaner Tatigkeit der Seele” (Knowledge, even empirical knowledge, is not the passively received contents of the external world, but a spontaneous creation of the spirit). Seele (soul) also can mean “mind,” or “intellect,” or even “heart.” A translator in these situations is always left with the choice of keeping this rich German synonymy or making it sound more normal and less “lofty” to English speakers, whose habit it is to keep the mind, the soul, the spirit, and the heart anatomically and functionally distinct. A less lofty translation of the same phrase, just as exact and more prosaically Anglophone, would be “knowledge is a spontaneous activity of the mind.”
22. Wilhelm Förster, Sammlung populärer astronomischer Schriften (Berlin: F. Dümmlers, 1878); Wilhelm Förster, Sammlung von Vorträgen und Abhandlungen, vol. 3, Wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis und sittliche Freiheit (Berlin: F. Dümmlers, 1890).
23. Jürgen Hamel and Klaus-Harro Tiemann, “Der Vertretu
ng der Astronomie an der Berlin Universität in den Jahren 1810 bis 1914,” Vorträge und Schriften (Archenhold-Sternwarte Berlin-Treptow) 69 (1988): 11.
24. Wegener Journal entry, 8 Mar. 1907, Wegener Nachlass, DMH 1968 594/5.
25. Antonia Schlette, “Chamberlain, Houston Stewart,” in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 2, 72.
26. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, ed. and trans. John Lees, vol. 2 (London: John Lane, 1912), 272–273.
27. Ibid., 268–272.
28. Ibid., 272–273.
29. Ibid., 297.
30. Kelly, Descent of Darwin, 82–83.
31. Ibid., 86.
32. Wilhelm Bölsche, Die Naturwissenschaftlichen Grundlagen der Poesie: Prolegomena einer realistischen Ästhetik, trans. Johannes J. Braakenburg (1887; repr., Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1976), chap. 6 passim.
33. Ibid., 13.
34. Ibid., 117.
35. Ibid., 160.
36. Georg Uschmann, “Haeckel, Ernst,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Charles Coulston Gillispie (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1980), vol. 6, 6–10.
37. Ernst Haeckel, The Riddle of the Universe, trans. Joseph McCabe (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1900).
38. Schnädelbach, Philosophy in Germany, 1831–1933, 97.
39. Rollo Handy, “Haeckel, Ernst,” in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 3, 400.
40. Wilfried Schröder, “Wegener’s Work Included Studies of Noctilucent Clouds, Auroras,” EOS (Transactions of the American Geophysical Union) 80 (1999): 357, 361; Wilfried Schröder, “Wilhelm Foerster und die Entwicklung der solar-terrestrischen Physik,” Die Sterne 59, no. Heft 6 (1983): 348–352.
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