Weimar Culture and Biological Theory: A Study of Richard Woltereck (1877–1944)

Laqueur Walter , Weimar: A cultural history, 1918–1933 (London, 1974), 217.

Forman Paul , “Weimar culture, causality and quantum theory, 1918–1927: Adaptation by German physicists and mathematicians to a hostile intellectual environment”, Historical studies in the physical sciences, iii (1971), 1–115.

Hendry John , “Weimar culture and quantum causality”, History of science, xviii (1980), 155–80; Wise Norton , “Forman reformulated” (typescript), paper given to Dibner conference, Cambridge, Mass., June 1988.

Forman , “Weimar culture”, 18–19, 40. I know of several historians of biology (myself included) who were prompted to work on twentieth-century German problems, partly as a result of reading Forman's paper.

Horder T. J. Weindling Paul , “Hans Spemann and the organiser”, in Horder T. J. Witkowski J. A. Wylie C. C. (eds), A history of embryology (Cambridge, 1985), 183–242; Weindling Paul , Darwinism and Social Darwinism in Imperial Germany: The contribution of the cell biologist Oscar Hertwig (1849–1922) (Stuttgart and New York, 1991), esp. pp. 265ff and 296–7; and Harwood Jonathan , Styles of scientific thought: The German genetics community, 1900–1933 (Chicago, 1993). I am grateful to Anne Harrington for allowing me to see a manuscript copy of her book, Reenchanted science: Holism in German culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler (Princeton, in press). For a foretaste of Mitchell Ash's forthcoming book on the Gestalt school, see his “Gestalt psychology in Weimar culture”, History of the human sciences, iv (1991), 395–415.

Of five general histories of genetics, only Dunn's L. C. Short history of genetics (New York, 1965), 95–97 refers to Woltereck; see also Mayr Ernst , The growth of biological thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 782–3. The only article devoted to him is Zirnstein Gottfried , “Aus dem Leben und Wirken des Leipziger Zoologen R. Woltereck (1877–1944)”, NTM: Naturwissenschaft, Technik, Medizin, xxiv (1987), 113–20.

The following sketch of Woltereck's career draws upon Zirnstein (op. cit., ref. 6); Brehm V. , “Zum Geleit”, Internationale Revue der gesamten Hydrobiologie und Hydrographie, xxxv (1937), 1–6; Ruttner F. , “Richard Woltereck”, Archiv für Hydrobiologie, xxxxi (1947), 597–608; and Brehm V. , “In memoriam Prof. Dr. Richard Woltereck”, Internationale Revue der gesamten Hydrobiologie und Hydrographie, xxxxiv (1959), 1–9.

Woltereck R. , Variation und Artbildung (Teil I) (Bern, 1919), 8. In 1911 he described Mendelism as “the newest and most successful area of biology” ( Woltereck R. , “Beitrag zur Analyse der Vererbung erworbenen Eigenschaften: Transmutation und Praeinduktion bei Daphniden”, Verhandlungen der Deutschen Zoologischen Gesellschaft , 1911, 141–72, p. 159). After the First World War he was one of 29 founding members of the German Genetics Society (“Deutsche Gesellschaft für Vererbungswissenschaft”, Zeitschrift für induktive Abstammungs- und Vererbungslehre (hereafter: ZIAV), xxvii (1921), 229–31). From 1906 until 1914 he gave a lecture-course on evolution nearly every year (Vorlesungen der Universität Leipzig (Leipzig)).

Kofoid Charles , The biological stations of Europe (Washington, D.C., 1910), 266–72. I thank Eric Mills for this source.

Woltereck , Variation und Artbildung (ref. 8), 8.

Woltereck R. , “Mitteilungen aus der Biologischen Station in Lunz (N.-O.)”, Biologisches Zentralblatt, xxvi (1906), 463–80.

Schwoerbel Jürgen , “Weismann und die Erforschung des limnischen Zooplanktons”, Freiburger Universitätsblätter, lxxxvii/lxxxviii (1985), 53–60.

For example, the ‘helmet’ (a kind of head-fin whose variations of size and shape were the focus of many of Woltereck's experiments) consisted of about one-hundred cells.

Woltereck R. , “Artdifferenzierung (insbes. Gestaltänderung) bei Cladozeren”, ZIAV, lxvii (1934), 173–96.

Woltereck R. , “Weitere experimentelle Untersuchungen über Artveränderung, speziell über das Wesen quant. Artunterschiede bei Daphniden”, Verhandlungen der Deutschen Zoologischen Gesellschaft, 1909, 110–73, pp. 112–13.

Woltereck R. , “Über natürliche u. künstliche Varietätenbildung b. Daphniden”, Verhandlungen der Deutschen Zoologischen Gesellschaft, 1908, 234–9.

Johannsen Wilhelm , Elemente der exakten Erblichkeitslehre (2nd edn, Jena, 1913), passim; Schaxel Julius , Grundzüge der Theorienbildung in der Biologie (2nd edn, Jena, 1922), 94–95, 107; Goldschmidt Richard , Einführungen in die Vererbungswissenschaft (4th edn, Leipzig and Berlin, 1923), 107.

Woltereck , op. cit. (ref. 16).

Woltereck , op. cit. (ref. 15), 165.

Harwood J. , “Genetics and the evolutionary synthesis in inter-war Germany”, Annals of science, xxxxii (1985), 279–301; Sapp Jan , Beyond the gene: Cytoplasmic inheritance and the struggle for authority in genetics (Oxford and New York, 1987), 60–65.

Woltereck , op. cit. (ref. 8, 1911).

Johannsen , op. cit. (ref. 17), 438–9.

Woltereck's request that a separate “Division of Hydrobiology” be established under his direction, however, was not granted. Moreover because of his low salary as associate professor (2700 Marks to support a family of four), he had to remain as assistant to Professor Carl Chun for another four years. Finally a call to the chair of zoology at a forestry college in 1914 allowed him to negotiate a salary increase at Leipzig so that he could resign his assistantship (“Zoologisches Institut der Universität Leipzig, 1900–1918”, Sign = 10145/98; and “Personalakte Woltereck, 1905–1943”, Sign = 10281/319, both Staatsarchiv Dresden).

R. Hertwig to “Herr Geheimrath” [Dr Krüss], 28 Feb. 1919, Merseburg Rep 76, Vc, Sekt 2, tit 23, Litt A, Nr 112, Bd II. In the event, no appointment was made until 1923 (due to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Society's financial straits). Whether Woltereck was ever offered the job is not clear.

Woltereck , Variation und Artbildung (ref. 8). Because of the high cost of printing the numerous graphs and tables in which the genetic data were presented, the publisher was only prepared to publish in 1919 the smaller part of the manuscript which contained largely descriptive material. Publication of the second part, containing details of Woltereck's experimental attempts to alter the genotype and their evolutionary significance, was deferred until the economic climate had improved. In the event, Part II was never published.

Gruber K. , [rev. of Woltereck, Variation und Artbildung], ZIAV, xxix (1922), 83–87, p. 83. Other reviewers expressed similar views: Kuttner O. , [rev of Woltereck, Variation und Artbildung], ZIAV, xxiv (1921), 179–82; Hirsch , [rev. of Woltereck , Variation und Artbildung], Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, xiv (1920), 179–80.

Prospectus for the Internationale Revue…, cited in Ruttner , op. cit. (ref. 7), 602. The uniqueness of the journal's broad scope is claimed by Max Wolff in his review of the first volume: Biologisches Zentralblatt, xxix (1909), 544–54.

Personalakten for Woltereck at the Universitätsarchiv Leipzig (Nr 1077) and the Staatsarchiv Dresden (Sign = 10281/319). Freedman Ralph , Hermann Hesse: Pilgrim of crisis, a biography (New York, 1978), 170–1. Mileck Joseph , Hermann Hesse: Life and art (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, 1978), 70.

Woltereck's private laboratory was opened in 1926 at Seeon near Munich and attracted funding from the state of Saxony and the new German research council (Notgemeinschaft Deutscher Wissenschaft) [Personalakte Woltereck, Nr. 1077, Universitätsarchiv, Leipzig].

Woltereck offered a similar course on “Mechanism and vitalism (Problems of a biological worldview)” in 1910–11, 1912–13, and 1914–15 (Vorlesungen der Universität Leipzig, Leipzig).

Cassirer Ernst , The problem of knowledge (New Haven, 1950), chap. 11. If one peruses a journal like Biologisches Zentralblatt (est. 1881), for example, one finds virtually nothing on ‘mechanism’, ‘vitalism’ or other foundational issues until the mid-1890s. Evidently prompted by Hans Driesch's critique of mechanistic explanations for development, the intensity of this discussion then grew rapidly after 1900. Each year until 1940 the journal published one or two articles on this subject, in addition to about three book reviews per year during the 1930s.

Woltereck , op. cit. (ref. 15), 126. The two quotes are from his 1911 “Beitrag” (p. 143) and his Variation und Artbildung (p. 127), both cited in ref. 8.

Cf. Woltereck's R. Grundzüge einer allgemeinen Biologie: Die Organismen als Gefüge/Getriebe, als Normen und als erlebende Subjekte (Stuttgart, 1932), p. xiv, with his 1909 paper (ref. 15) or his Variation und Artbildung (ref. 8). In 1909 he summarized his findings saying, “Our discussion so far was primarily concerned with the analysis of existing quantitative differences between races. These differences were broken down into their constituent elements … whose separate causes we examined” (p. 162, emphasis added).

“So it would seem” because I have failed to find any evidence of Woltereck's pre-war political or cultural views. Those materials that survive in his family's possession have not been made available to me. And in none of his later works, nor in obituaries of him or bibliographies of his work, is there any reference to pre-war writings on non-scientific matters. His engagement with such matters appears, therefore, to have developed after the war, an event which he perceived (see below) as marking a rupture in his life.

Woltereck to Hesse Hermann , 19 Sept. 1929 (Hesse letters, Schiller-Nationalmuseum/Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach am Neckar), referring to a book manuscript (originally) entitled Organismus und Wirklichkeit. The point is reiterated in the preface to Woltereck , Grundzüge (ref. 33), pp. xiv–xvi.

Wohl Robert , The generation of 1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979); Eksteins Modris , Rites of spring: The Great War and the birth of the modern age (New York, 1990), chap. 8.

Woltereck to Hesse , 2 May 1920 (Hesse papers).

Woltereck , Variation und Artbildung (ref. 8), 2–3. One aim of this book was evidently to attract new collaborators to his research programme (cf. pp. 2, 16–17).

E.g., Woltereck to Hesse , 17 Dec. 1919, 7 June 1920, 13 June 1921 (Hesse papers). There are also indications that he considered converting to Roman Catholicism (Woltereck to Hesse, 22 March 1922).

In addition he seems to have continued working occasionally on behalf of the German prisoners' welfare organization until at least 1921 (Woltereck to Hesse, 4 July 1920, 21 Aug. 1921, Hesse papers).

Woltereck R. , “Werkland: Bericht über Ziel und Weg unserer Arbeit seit 1919”, Vivos Voco, iii (1923), 367–78. One of these journals (edited by Woltereck) was Die Naturwissenschaftliche Korrespondenz of which only two volumes were published between 1923 and 1925. Appearing fortnightly, its aim was to provide newspapers with intelligible reports of recent scientific discoveries.

Freedman , Hermann Hesse (ref. 28), 187–93.

Woltereck wrote Hesse that he had read Demian five times ( Woltereck to Hesse , 2 May 1920, Hesse papers).

Hesse Hermann , Demian , transl. by Strachan W. J. (London, 1969), 152; cf. pp. 128, 135–8.

Vivos Voco was published in Leipzig by a student cooperative and ran through five volumes between 1919 and 1926. Many of Woltereck's articles were published under the pseudonym “Attentus” (Vivos Voco, iii (1923), 367).

Woltereck R. , “Wirkliche Hochschulreform”, Vivos Voco , iii (1923), 85–92. For Woltereck's suspicions of the city, see among others his articles, “Kultur-Siedlungen”, Vivos Voco , i (1919), 101–5; “Das kommende Reich”, ibid., ii (1921/22), 3–31; or “Werkland” (ref. 41).

Hesse's internationalist and anti-war articles in Vivos Voco attracted abuse from right-wing students ( Mileck , Hesse (ref. 28), 134, 136; Freedman , Hesse (ref. 28), 214).

See, for example, the following of Woltereck's essays in Vivos Voco: “Die neue Jugend und die Führerschaft Deutschlands”, i (1919/20), 8–15; “Das kommende Reich”, ii (1921/22), 3–31; “Krise der freien Jugendbewegung”, ii (1921/22), 179–93; and “Das alte und das neue Prisma”, ii (1921/22), 441–52.

Woltereck R. , “Gedanken zur kommenden Religion”, Vivos Voco, ii (1921/22), 597–606, pp. 599–600.

Die Erde: Illustrierte Monatsrundschau… (Braunschweig).

“Zur Einführung”, Die Erde , iii (1925), 1 (emphasis in original). Eventually Woltereck regarded not only individual organisms and non-living objects (atoms, solar systems, machines), but also the more general “life-process” and the entire “cosmic process”, as integrated wholes (Ontologie des Lebendigen (Stuttgart, 1940), 31, 451)).

Woltereck R. , “Biologie als Ganzheitsforschung”, Die Erde, iii (1925), 3–10.

Grundzüge (ref. 33) was originally conceived as the second book in a trilogy, which was to begin with “a biological report” (presumably Variation und Artbildung (ref. 8)) and end with an epistemological work ( Woltereck , “Vorwort”, Grundzüge). During the 1930s, however, Woltereck evidently decided to write a further philosophical book. When Ontologie des Lebendigen (ref. 51) was published in 1940, he was working on a fourth volume entitled Der WERT-wille in der Lebendigen Natur und im Menschen (title page, Ontologie).

E.g. Grundzüge (ref. 33), pp. xii–xvi, 67–68, 71, 76, 511–13; cf. Ontologie (ref. 51), 451–2. This double-sidedness of the organism is expressed in the title of chap. 17: “The limits of materialist and causal analysis; The second approach to researching life”. Although, as we have seen above, Woltereck granted holistic properties to atoms and molecules, he denied them this subjective/intentional character (Ontologie, 464).

The term he coined to designate both evolution and ontogeny, Ganz-werdung [the process of becoming whole], neatly conveys his holist ontology as well as his progressivist and developmental ist view of evolution (Ontologie, 452).

Grundzüge (ref. 33), 80, 550–3, 559. While noting the common ground between his own holistic views and those of Smuts J. C. Haldane J. S. Meyer Adolf , Woltereck rejected their assumption that all systems in nature were wholes in favour of the view that holistic structures only exist as the products of a perfecting and complexifying process (Ontologie (ref. 51), 10–11).

A brief and relatively accessible account of this method appeared as Woltereck R. , “Biologie als Grundwissenschaft vom Leben und Erleben”, Der Biologe, ii (1933). For his criticisms of phenomenology see Woltereck , Grundzüge (ref. 33), 524–5.

Grundzüge (ref. 33), 531–2; Ontologie (ref. 51), 234–7. Woltereck's respect for Hans Driesch's pioneering critique of materialism and reductionism is reflected in the fact that Grundzüge was dedicated to him (as well as to Spemann Hans Goebel Karl ). Nevertheless, Woltereck remained dissatisfied with the dualist character of Driesch's position ( Grundzüge , 331; Ontologie , 10, 21). Similarly, although he acknowledged that Eddington and Jeans were among the few physicists who sought to find a consistent and visualiseable alternative to the wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics, he found their invocation of a guiding “mind” unsatisfactory because transcendental and ultimately religious in character. It looked beyond, rather than within, our experiential world in search of unity (Ontologie, 28–29).

Preface and introduction to Woltereck, Ontologie (ref. 51).

Warren Weaver congratulated Woltereck, having heard “extremely high praise” for the book (Weaver to Woltereck, 16 Feb. 1933, folder 138, box 16, ser 242, RG 1.2, Rockefeller Foundation papers). Those reviewers who noted Grundzüge's departure from biological orthodoxy were: Landauer W. , Journal of heredity, xxiv (1933), 248; Süffert F. , Berichte über die wissenschaftliche Biologie, xxv (1933), 595–7; Bertalanffy L. , Biologisches Zentralblatt, liv (1934), 668–9; Oehlkers F. , Zeitschift für Botanik, xxvi (1933–34), 27–28; and Seidel F. , Die Naturwissenschaften, xxiv (1936), 378–9. That even German-speaking readers had difficulties with Woltereck's prose is unsurprising, given Grundzüge's countless neologisms. Most of the reviews of Ontologie which I have found were non-committal, though the majority complained that it was difficult to read. One reviewer rejected Woltereck's critique of mechanism as speculative and unconvincing ( Feuerborn , Berichte über die Wissenschaftliche Biologie, lvii (1941), 385–7) while another praised the book as “pioneering” in its search for a consistent theoretical framework for the life sciences ( Ludwig Wilhelm , “Zwei Bücher zur Philosophie des Lebendigen”, Die Naturwissenschaften, xxx (1942), 221–3).

Personalakte Woltereck 1905–1943, Sign = 10281/319, Staatsarchiv Dresden. It was evidently about this time that he began to work on Grundzüge (ref. 33) (Woltereck to Ross Harrison, 5 May 1932, Harrison papers, Yale University Library).

“Personalakte Woltereck, 1905–1943” (Sign = 10281/319) and “Institut für Zoologie d. Univ. Leipzig, 1918–1938” (Sign= 10145/99), both at Staatsarchiv Woltereck Dresden; R. , “Beobachtungen u. Versuche z. Fragenkomplex d. Artbildung: 1. Wie entsteht e. endemische Rasse oder Art?”, Biologisches Zentralblatt, li (1931), 231–53, pp. 245–6; Woltereck R. , “Üb. d. Entstehung endemischer Arten u. Rassen”, Internationale Revue der gesamten Hydrobiologie und Hydrographie, xxv (1931), 272–83; Woltereck , “Artdifferenzierung” (ref. 14), 184.

Woltereck R. , “Meine Forschungsreise nach Amerika u. Oceanien z. Studium insularer u. lakustrischer Endemismen”, Internationale Revue der gesamten Hydrobiologie und Hydrographie, xxviii (1932–33), 338–49.

Woltereck R. , “Üb. Reaktionskonstanten u. Artänderung”, ZIAV, xxxiii (1924), 297–301, p. 301, and Grundzüge (ref. 33), 568.

Harwood , op. cit. (ref. 5), chap. 3.

This paragraph is based upon Woltereck “Beobachtungen” (ref. 61) and Grundzüge (ref. 33), 402–3, 569–81, 597–602.

While Darwinism relied upon the randomness of mutation with respect to the environment, neo-Lamarckism treated the organism as responding to random shifts in environmental stimuli (Ontologie (ref. 51), 459–65).

Woltereck , Grundzüge (ref. 33), 584, 597, 600, 602. A decade later he found support for his orthogenetic stance in works by the paleontologist Karl Beurlen and the ecologist P. Büchner (Ontologie (ref. 51), 218–21, 470).

Woltereck , op. cit. (ref. 63, 1924).

Here as elsewhere, there are indications that Woltereck held a typological view of the species. In Grundzüge (ref. 33), for example, he defined a species as “that group of individuals who react identically to the same external and internal conditions” (p. 625, cf. p. 413).

E.g. Grundzüge (ref. 33), 598–600; Woltereck , op. cit. (ref. 61, 1931), 240.

Woltereck op. cit. (ref. 14, 1934).

Woltereck , op. cit. (ref. 63, 1924); Woltereck R. , “Vererbung u. Erbänderung” in Driesch H. Woltereck H. (eds), Das Lebensproblem: Im Lichte der modernen Forschung (Leipzig, 1931), 225–310, p. 295; Woltereck , op. cit. (ref. 14, 1934), 190.

Woltereck , op. cit. (ref. 63, 1924); “Vererbung und Erbänderung” (ref. 72); Grundzüge (ref. 33), esp. pp. 351–4, 393–5, 423–5.

Woltereck , op. cit. (ref. 14, 1934), 190–1; Ontologie (ref. 51), 163. The “organizing centre” of the germ cells was located in species-protoplasm ( Woltereck , op. cit. (ref. 61, Biologisches Zentralblatt), 247).

Woltereck , Grundzüge (ref. 33), 413.

See the comments by Hämmerling J. Koehler O. in the discussion appended to Woltereck , op. cit. (ref. 14, 1934); Victor Jollos objected to Woltereck's invoking “an altogether unanalyseable … matrix” (Jollos, “Studien z. Evolutionsproblem II: Dauermodifikationen u. ‘plasmatische Vererbung’ u. ihre Bedeutung f. d. Entstehung d. Arten”, Biologisches Zentralblatt, lv (1935), 390–436, p. 420). That the paper was invited emerges from Woltereck to Warren Weaver, 12 Jan. 1933, RG 1.2, ser 242, box 16, folder 138, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.

The mathematical population geneticist, Wilhelm Ludwig, paid tribute to Woltereck as a worthy opponent ( Ludwig , “Die Selektionstheorie”, in Heberer Gerhard (ed), Die Evolution der Organismen (Jena, 1943), 479–520, pp. 512–13 and 517–18). Ernst Caspari recalled Woltereck as a “very important vitalist” during the 1930s (interview, 23 Sept. 1981).

Announcement in Der Biologe, iii (1934), 30.

On his Rockefeller grant, see folder 138 (ref. 76). On his invited lectures at the Linnean Society (London) and at Cambridge, see the announcement cited in ref. 78. On his election to the Linnean Society, see Woltereck to Kultusminister , 22 Jan. 1938, Staatsarchiv Dresden, Sign = 10281/320 (Personalakte Woltereck, 1943–44).

Mayr Ernst , Systematics and the origin of species (New York, 1942), 213–15.

Rensch Bernhard , Neuere Probleme der Abstammungslehre: Die transspezifische Evolution (Stuttgart, 1947), 55, 306, 371.

Woltereck , op. cit. (ref. 61, Biologisches Zentralblatt ), 231–2; Woltereck R. , “Einige Tatsachen und ein Vorschlag zum Streit um die sogenannte ‘Mikro- und Makrophylogenese’”, Zoologischer Anzeiger, cxlii (1943), 105–21. Cf. Harwood J. , “Metaphysical foundations of the evolutionary synthesis: A historiographical note”, Journal of the history of biology, xxvii (1994), 1–20.

Woltereck's commitment to Ankara was noticeably short-term. He initially intended to stay for just one year, but then requested a series of one- and two-year extensions, perhaps expecting — Like so many émigrés — That the Nazis would not be able to retain power for long. On his sojourn in Ankara, see Personalakte Woltereck 1905–1943, Sign = 10281/319, Staatsarchiv Dresden. This file also contains correspondence concerning his promotion, as does Personalakte Woltereck, Nr. 1077, Universitätsarchiv Leipzig.

These included the American zoologist, Coker R. E. , and the British biologist, W. Trotter. Obviously the debates over evolutionary theory and over mechanism were not entirely separate. Woltereck sought to lend weight to his evolutionary theory by citing many other authors who rejected the theory of natural selection because of its mechanistic, utilitarian, and probabilistic features (e.g., Ontologie (ref. 51), 407).

Woltereck's interest in Hermann Weyl seems to have been reciprocated. In his Philosophy of mathematics and natural science (Princeton, 1949), Weyl cited Woltereck as a holist and accepted that wholeness was essential in understanding biological phenomena (pp. 214–15). He also noted the latter's argument for an empathic method in biology but suspected it would not prove as successful as conventional analysis (pp. 283–4). I thank Catherine Chevalley for drawing my attention to this reference.

Lenoir Timothy , Strategy of life: Teleology and mechanics in nineteenth century German biology (Dordrecht/Boston/London, 1982).

Ibid., 20–22 and 69.

Woltereck , Ontologie (ref. 51), 466 (emphases in original).

Pflaum Michael , “Die Kultur-Zivilisations-Antithese im Deutschen” in Kultur und Zivilisation (Europäische Schlüsselwörter, iii), 288–427. I thank Christoph Meinel for this source.

Trommler Frank , “The rise and fall of Americanism in Germany” in Trommler Frank McVeigh Joseph (eds), American and the Germans: An assessment of a three-hundred-year history (Philadelphia, 1985), 332–42. Woltereck's own culture-critique was sometimes couched in similar language. Distinguishing his conception of evolution from conventional notions of progress, he wrote: “Talk about the ‘general progress’ of humanity is based on a superficial technical optimism, which proclaims an automatic increase in ‘knowledge and skill’, a growth in the domination of nature, comfort and the level of civilisation [Zivilisation]…. That is ‘American’ with its emphasis upon progress and prosperity as the meaning of life…. [We cannot agree with those writers who see this as the highest stage of life. The decisive criteria are] the spiritual [geistige] values and perfection which human beings bring about. This viewpoint is far closer to idealism … than to the materialism and pragmatism which dominated western nations around the turn of the century” (Ontologie (ref. 51), 359–60).

Pflaum , op. cit. (ref. 89), 367 and 351, respectively; for similar usages from the period see pp. 313–70. For Spengler Kultur was an “organism which emerged in the countryside”; once dead and rigid, it became a mechanism: Zivilisation. Democracy belonged to a “mechanistic, urban existence”; city-dwellers were an “inorganic mass”. Following the disappearance of the aristocracy and the priesthood, the peasantry was the only “organic” human group left, a remnant of the former Kultur ( Spengler O. , Der Untergang des Abendlandes, i (Munich, 1920), 488–90; in a similar vein see pp. 500–1, 507–8, 154).

Stern Fritz , The politics of cultural despair: A study in the rise of the Germanic ideology (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, 1961); Mosse George , The crisis of German ideology: Intellectual origins of the Third Reich (New York, 1981; 1st edn, 1964).

Another book in this genre is probably George Lukacs's The destruction of reason (London, 1980; German edn, 1962). While disavowing any attempt to offer a comprehensive history of German philosophy, acknowledging that his subject — Irrationalist philosophy from Schelling to Hitler — Was just one strand of “bourgeois philosophy”, Lukacs nonetheless manages to damn a large number of writers as “irrationalist” by deploying a very broad definition of that domain. For example, though conceding that Karl Mannheim was no reactionary and that the politically liberal Max Weber consciously opposed irrationalism, Lukacs still categorizes them as “irrationalist” thinkers on the grounds that their relativism denied an objective reality (pp. 632–41 and 601–19). William James's pragmatism gets the same treatment (pp. 20–24). There is no justification in trying to distinguish these positions from National Socialist ideology, Lukacs insists, for irrationalist philosophy is a unitary body of thought (pp. 8–9). This is probably the kind of reasoning that prompted David Blackbourn to complain that the political ambiguity of Germany's Romantic legacy “has been sawn off by Nazi pedigree-hunters concerned to demonstrate that the shortest distance between Novalis and Hitler is a straight line” ( Blackbourn David Eley Geof , The peculiarities of German history (Oxford, 1984), 239).

Gay Peter , Weimar culture: The outsider as insider (Harmondsworth, 1974; 1st edn, 1969); Laqueur , op. cit. (ref. 1).

Poor Harold , Kurt Tucholsky and the ordeal of Germany, 1914–1935 (New York, 1968); Deak Istvan , Weimar Germany's left-wing intellectuals (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, 1968).

It is interesting that while acknowledging this diversity, both Laqueur and Gay (unlike Stern and Mosse) tend to associate Weimar culture primarily with the left. Laqueur, for example, regards the modernist avant-garde as the essence of Weimar culture (op. cit. (ref. 1), 72–78). And Gay insists that “the Weimar style” was cosmopolitan rather than chauvinist and that its “true home” after 1933 was in exile (op. cit. (ref. 94), 6–8, 152).

Peukert Detlev , The Weimar Republic: The crisis of classical modernity (New York, 1993), esp. chap. 9. The general features of Peukert's account are prefigured in Blackbourn and Eley's better known and more wide-ranging book (op. cit. (ref. 93)), but the latter's discussion of the cultural concomitants of modernization is too brief to serve my purposes here.

Gerald Feldman's review of the evidence shows that it was not so much pre-industrial traditions which placed a brake upon Weimar Germany's modernization as a variety of difficult post-war circumstances, among them the terms of the Versailles Treaty, dependence upon short-term loans from the United States, and the economic crises of 1923–24 and 1930–32 which led to a roll-back of welfare measures. These severely constrained social and economic policy-formation, thus undermining the legitimacy of the Republic among substantial sections of the electorate ( Feldman , “The Weimar Republic: A problem of modernization?”, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, xxvi(1986), 1–26).

Peukert (op. cit. (ref. 97)), 83.

Stern (op. cit. (ref. 92)), preface. Though Mosse's book (op. cit. (ref. 92)) was written with similar intent, its argument is more differentiated and analytical. Mosse makes clear that anti-modernist thought was one among many German intellectual traditions, and that it included many variants, including non-racist and politically progressive ones. Furthermore he attempts to explain why anti-modernist ideas proved especially attractive to particular social groups.

It is no accident, Kenneth Barkin suggests, that the portrayal of German intellectual history as deviating from the Western pattern was especially common among émigré historians, such as Stern and Mosse. These historians were so disturbed by the support given National Socialism by German intellectuals that they did not look carefully at comparable movements elsewhere in Europe ( Barkin , “German émigré historians in America: The fifties, sixties and seventies”, in Lehmann Hartmut Sheehan James (eds), An interrupted past: German-speaking historians in the United States after 1933 (Washington, D.C. and Cambridge, 1991), 149–69).

See also Blackbourn Eley (op. cit. (ref. 93)), 217–21. Weber displayed this ambivalence in particularly striking form ( Peukert Detlev , “Die ‘letzten Menschen’: Beobachtungen zur Kulturkritik im Geschichtsbild Max Webers”, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, xii (1986), 425–42).

Lees Andrew , “Critics of urban society in Germany, 1854–1914”, Journal of the history of ideas, xxxx (1979), 61–83.

Herf Jeffrey , Reactionary modernism: Technology, culture and politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge, 1984). In the arts the aesthetic of modernism, a movement which was particularly strong in Germany, was a similar hybrid of the old and the new ( Eksteins , op. cit. (ref. 36)).

Ringer Fritz K. , Decline of the German mandarins: The German academic community, 1890–1933 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969).

Ash (op. cit. (ref. 5)).

Forman (op. cit. (ref. 2)), 112–14.

For example, Forman seems to overlook Ringer's demonstration that a substantial minority of the professoriate was basically sympathetic toward modernization (e.g., Forman , op. cit. (ref. 2), 16). Wise (op. cit. (ref. 3)) has also made the point that Forman's characterization of Weimar culture is too monolithic.

Cultural historians have frequently pointed out that all of the much-discussed cultural concerns of the Weimar period can also be found in pre-1914 Germany, such that the term ‘Weimar culture’ is rather misleading. It seems likely that a similar continuity obtained for German biology before and after this war (though the intensity with which certain themes were debated may well have increased after 1918). For the most part, my methodological reflections in this paper are meant to apply to the entire period, but I occasionally use the terms ‘Weimar biology’ or ‘Weimar culture’ as a convenient shorthand.

On the humanities and social sciences, see Ringer , op. cit. (ref. 104). On physics, see Forman , op. cit. (ref. 2). On mathematics, see Mehrtens Herbert , Moderne, Sprache, Mathematik: Eine Geschichte des Streits um die Grundlagen der Disziplin und des Subjekts formaler Systeme (Frankfurt, 1990), 289–99 and passim.

Schaxel Julius , Grundzüge der Theorienbildung in d. Biologie (Jena, 1919).

Bertalanffy Ludwig , “Studien über theoretische Biologie”, Biologisches Zentralblatt, xxxxvii (1927), 210–42; idem, Kritische Theorie der Formbildung (Berlin 1928), chap. 1. For the more general claim of a post-war decline of mechanism, a rebirth of vitalism, and a consequent crisis in science, see Bertalanffy , “Über die neue Lebensauffassung”, Annalen der Philosophie, 1927, 250–264.

Woltereck , Ontotogie (ref. 51), 27–28 (emphasis in original).

For brief accounts of the solutions preferred by Bertalanffy, Adolf Meyer and Emil Ungerer, see Cassirer Ernst , The problem of knowledge: Philosophy, science and history since Hegel (New Haven, 1950), chap. 11.

Bertalanffy , op. cit. (ref. 111, 1927), 212. Among the forty-odd geneticists whom I studied, I found no one hostile to materialism in biology and only a few whose research displayed holistic sympathies ( Harwood , op. cit. (ref. 5), chap. 7). Similarly, Anne Harrington (personal communication) finds holists to have constituted a minority among “mind-scientists” at this time. The holist, Jakob von Uexküll, for example felt alienated from the German academic mainstream in physiology and zoology between the wars and did not acquire a university chair until the age of 62 ( Harrington , op. cit. (ref. 5), 73, 75).

As one of the referees for this paper observed, the fact that Bertalanffy and Woltereck perceived mechanism to be the majority view is not in itself conclusive since there are rhetorical advantages to be gained by portraying oneself as a member of an embattled minority. But it is interesting in this respect that Hartmann seems not to have adopted this rhetorical strategy. In 1936, for example, he felt obliged to attack what he regarded as a growing wave — Thus implicitly still a minority position — Of “anti-mechanistic… speculative theorizing” (whether vitalist or holist) which, however explicable as a reaction against the superficial materialism of a bygone era, had completely overshot its goal ( Hartmann Max , “Wesen und Wege der biologischen Erkenntnis”, Die Naturwissenschaften, xxiv (1936), 705–13). Woltereck had earlier been a target of Hartmann's disapproval. Following an enthusiastic review of Woltereck's Grundzüge (ref. 33) by Heberer E. , Hartmann — Then on the editorial board of the journal — Appended his own mini-review, taking Woltereck to task for “extensive metaphysical speculations” ( Hartmann , [no title], Der Biologie, ii (1932–33), 271). Woltereck took seriously Hartmann's criticisms, for example in his Ontologie (ref. 51), 156–8, 166–9, 475.

Hopwood Nick (Wellcome Unit, Cambridge University) is working on a full-scale study of Schaxel's life and work. His “Biology between university and proletariat: The making of a red professor” will appear in a forthcoming issue of this journal.

Inspired by logical positivism and the new physics, Bertalanffy sought to incorporate both the holistic and the physico-chemical properties of living systems into a unified set of descriptive laws, without resorting to either vitalism or mechanism ( Bertalanffy , op. cit. (ref. 111, 1927)). On Hertwig see Weindling , op. cit. (ref. 5), 130–7. On the geneticists Kühn Alfred von Wettstein Fritz Oehlkers Friedrich Goldschmidt Richard as holists, see Harwood , op. cit. (ref. 5), chap. 7.

On Monakow and Goldstein, see Harrington , op. cit. (ref. 5), chaps 3 and 5.

On Driesch see Mocek Reinhard , Wilhelm Roux — Hans Driesch: Zur Geschichte der Entwicklungsphysiologie der Tiere (Jena, 1974). On Uexküll see Harrington , op. cit. (ref. 5), chap. 2. For von Uexküll's rejection of mechanism, materialism and the sufficiency of causal analysis, see von Uexküll J. , Theoretische Biologie (Berlin, 1928).

E.g., the Baur school within the genetics community ( Harwood , op. cit. (ref. 5), chap. 6).

The conservatives include the geneticists Goldschmidt Richard von Wettstein Fritz ; the liberals include the geneticists Alfred Kühn and Friedrich Oehlkers; and Kurt Goldstein was a member of the Social Democratic Party ( Harrington , op. cit. (ref. 5), chap. 5).

On Driesch see Mocek , op. cit. (ref. 119), 131–9; on Uexküll see Harrington , op. cit. (ref. 5), chap. 2.

Bertalanffy concludes his discussion of embryological theory with the remark that “it appears that the necessary reorientation in biology is not just a disciplinary but a general cultural matter. In our view the numerous attempts of late to establish a theoretical biology indicate that a fundamental transformation of worldview is underway … a transformation that we believe in and are hoping for” ( Bertalanffy , op. cit. (ref. 111, 1928), 229–30).