Biology between University and Proletariat: The Making of a Red Professor

Schaxel Julius , “Dringende Aufgaben des wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus”, Urania, ix (1932–33), 162–7, p. 166.

Stolz Rüdiger , “Geleitwort der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität”, in Krauße Erika (ed.), Julius Schaxel an Ernst Haeckel 1906–1917 (Leipzig, etc., 1987), 9–14, p. 9; see pp. 127–36 for a selective bibliography of Schaxel's writings assembled by Doris Posselt. The other most important (and politically rather diverse) works are Uschmann Georg , Geschichte der Zoologie und der zoologischenAnstalten in Jena 1779–1919 (Jena, 1959), 211–19; Fricke Dieter , Julius Schaxel (1887–1943): Leben und Kampf eines marxistischen deutschen Naturwissenschaftlers und Hochschullehrers (Jena, etc., 1964); Mocek Reinhard , Wilhelm Roux – Hans Driesch: Zur Geschichte der Entwicklungsphysiologie derTiere (“Entwicklungsmechanik”) (Jena, 1974), and the more extended discussion in idem, “Philosophische und wissenschaftshistorische Aspekte der Entwicklungsmechanik (Wilhelm Roux, Hans Driesch, Hans Spemann, Julius Schaxel)”, Dissertation, University of Leipzig, 1965, 168–74 (I thank Reinhard Mocek for giving me a copy of this unusually critical analysis); Penzlin Heinz , “Das wissenschaftliche Werk Julius Schaxels (24. März 1887 – 15. Juli 1943)”, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Universität Jena: Mathematisch-naturwissenschaftliche Reihe, xxvi (1977), 1017–37; Senglaub Konrad , “Begegnungen mit den Werken und dem Wirken Julius Schaxels”, Biologie in der Schule, xxxvi (1987), 220 and 244–9; Vetter Helmut , “Bildungsarbeit für die geistige Erweckung des Proletariats: Lebensweg des Mitbegründers des Urania-Verlags, Prof. Dr. Julius Schaxel. Teil 1”, Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel (Leipzig), cliv (1987), 160–4; idem, “Wissenschaftler und populärer Publizist: Lebensweg des Mitbegründers des Urania-Verlags, Prof. Dr. Julius Schaxel. Schluß”, ibid. , 197–200; and the contributions of Rüdiger Stolz, Heinz Penzlin and Dieter Fricke to Theoretische Grundlagen und Probleme der Biologie: Festveranstaltung und wissenschaftliche Vortragstagung am 20. und 21. März 1987 an der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena aus Anlaß des 100. Geburtstages von Julius Schaxel (Jena, 1988).

The Julius Schaxel Upper School in Jena has become the Ernst Haeckel Grammar School. In March 1994, however, Julius Schaxel Street and the plaque celebrating this “pioneer of our socialist people's university” on his house in Jena, Reichardtstieg 4, still survived. Jena's zoologists have also kept a significant place for Schaxel in the local history of their discipline. And it is now possible to suggest in print (even if evidence is still lacking) that he fell victim to Stalin's purges; see Penzlin Heinz (ed.), Geschichte der Zoologie in Jena nach Haeckel (1909–1974) (Jena and Stuttgart, 1994), 56–65, 162–6 (partial bibliography), pp. 61–62.

Letter to the author, 21 August 1994; see also his The heritage of experimental embryology: Hans Spemann and the organizer (New York and Oxford, 1988).

Fricke , op. cit. (ref. 2); Weindling Paul , Health, race and German politics between national unification and Nazism 1870–1945 (Cambridge, 1989), 47–48 and 327–8; Mehrtens Herbert , “Das ‘Dritte Reich’ in der Naturwissenschaftsgeschichte: Literaturbericht und Problemskizze”, in idem and Richter Steffen (eds), Naturwissenschaft, Technik und NS-Ideologie: Beiträge zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte des Dritten Reiches (Frankfurt am Main, 1980), 15–87, pp. 31–33, 53; Uschmann , op. cit. (ref. 2); Mocek , op. cit. (ref. 2); Harwood Jonathan , Styles of scientific thought: The German genetics community 1900–1933 (Chicago, 1993), 27–29; Vetter , op. cit. (ref. 2).

The autobiography has been preserved as a typed copy of a manuscript, most of which Schaxel wrote by hand in the Ljubjanka Prison in Moscow in May 1938; see Ernst-Haeckel-Haus , Jena: Schaxel papers (hereafter EHHS): “Autobiographie”. My approach is indebted to Herbert Mehrtens, “Irresponsible purity: The political and moral structure of mathematical sciences in the National Socialist state”, in Renneberg Monika Walker Mark (eds), Science, technology and National Socialism (Cambridge, 1994), 324–38, pp. 327, 337.

Nyhart Lynn K. , Biology takes form: Animal morphology and the German universities, 1800–1900 (Chicago, 1995), 12–13, 345–6; Rádl Em[manuel] , Geschichte der biologischen Theorien, Part II: Geschichte der Entwicklungstheorien in der Biologie des XIX. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1909), 158.

For reviews, see Beyerchen Alan , “On the stimulation of excellence in Wilhelmian science”, in Dukes Jack R. Remak Joachim (eds), Another Germany: A reconsideration of the Imperial era (Boulder, Col., 1988), 139–68; Harwood Jonathan , “Institutional innovation in fin de siècle Germany”, The British journal for the history of science, xxvii (1994), 197–211.

See Forman's Paul classic “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; the criticisms of Hendry John , “Weimar culture and quantum causality”, History of science, xviii (1980), 155–80; and especially the critical reworking of Forman's thesis by Wise M. Norton , “Forman reformed”, unpublished paper. See further idem, “Pascual Jordan: Quantum mechanics, psychology, National Socialism”, in Renneberg Walker (eds), op. cit. (ref. 6), 224–54; Sigurdsson Skúli , “Hermann Weyl, mathematics and physics, 1900–1927”, Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1991. On other aspects of Weimar science and technology, see Herf Jeffrey , Reactionary modernism: Technology, culture, and politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge, 1984); Harrington Anne , “Interwar ‘German’ psychobiology: Between nationalism and the irrational”, Science in context, iv (1991), 429–47; Ash Mitchell G. , “Gestalt psychology in Weimar culture”, History of the human sciences, iv (1991), 395–415; Harwood , Styles (ref. 5).

For example, on eugenics, see especially Weiss Sheila Faith , “The race hygiene movement in Germany”, Osiris, 2nd ser., iii (1987), 193–236; Weingart Peter Kroll Jürgen Bayertz Kurt , Rasse, Blut und Gene: Geschichte der Eugenik und Rassenhygiene in Deutschland (Frankfurt am Main, 1988); Weindling , op. cit. (ref. 5); on sociotechical engineering, see Hughes Thomas P. , Networks of power: Electrification in Western society, 1880–1930 (Baltimore, 1983); and on industrial rationalization, see Nolan Mary , Visions of modernity: American business and the modernization of Germany (New York and Oxford, 1994). The most interesting general historical survey is Peukert Detlev J. K. , The Weimar Republic: The crisis of classical modernity , transl. by Deveson Richard (London, 1991).

Cooter Roger Pumfrey Stephen , “Separate spheres and public places: Reflections on the history of science popularization and science in popular culture”, History of science, xxxii (1994), 237–67.

Contrast Alan Beyerchen's pioneering, but rather dated study, Scientists under Hitler: Politics and the physics community in the Third Reich (New Haven, 1977), with the recent reflections of Mehrtens Herbert , “Hochschule und Nationalsozialismus: Schlußbetrachtung zum Hochschultag 1993”, in Hochschule und Nationalsozialismus: Referate beim Workshop zur Geschichte der Carolo-Wilhelmina am 5. und 6. Juni 1993 (Braunschweig, 1994), 173–87. See also Deichmann Ute , Biologen unter Hitler: Vertreibung, Karrieren, Forschung (Frankfurt am Main, 1992).

Latour Bruno , “Give me a laboratory and I will raise the world”, in Knorr-Cetina Karin D. Mulkay Michael (eds), Science observed: Perspectives on the social study of science (London, 1983), 141–70, pp. 156–9.

Kelly Alfred , The descent of Darwin: The popularization of Darwinism in Germany, 1860–1914 (Chapel Hill, 1981). Historians of German eugenics have taken socialism unusually seriously; see Graham Loren R. , “Eugenics: Weimar Germany and Soviet Russia”, in his Between science and values (New York, 1981), 217–56 and 403–8; Weindling Paul J. , “Die Verbreitung rassenhygienischen/eugenischen Gedankengutes in bürgerlichen und sozialistischen Kreisen in der Weimarer Republik”, Medizinhistorisches Journal, xxii (1987), 352–68; Schwartz Michael , “Sozialismus und Eugenik: Zur falligen Revision eines Geschichtsbildes”, IWK, xxv (1989), 465–89; idem, “‘Proletarier’ und ‘Lumpen’: Sozialistische Ursprünge eugenischen Denkens”, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, xlii (1994), 537–70; idem, Sozialistische Eugenik: Eugenische Sozialtechnologien in Debatten und Politik der deutschen Sozialdemokratie 1890–1933 (Bonn, 1995); Mocek Reinhard , “‘Biologie der Befreiung’: Zur Geschichte der proletarischen Rassenhygiene”, Jahrbuch für Geschichte und Theorie der Biologie, ii (1995), 133–80.

Steinberg Hans-Josef , Sozialismus und deutsche Sozialdemokratie: Zur Ideologie der Partei vor dem 1. Weltkrieg , 4th edn (Berlin and Bonn-Bad Godesberg, 1976); Kelly , op. cit. (ref. 14), 123–41.

Gerber John , Anton Pannekoek and the socialism of workers' self-emancipation (Dordrecht and Amsterdam, 1989); Braunthal Julius , Victor und Friedrich Adler: Zwei Generationen Arbeiterbewegung (Vienna, 1965); Mommsen Hans , “Friedrich Adler und die Tradition der österreichischen sozialdemokratischen Gesamtpartei”, IWK, xx (1984), 3–16.

Bayertz Kurt , “Naturwissenschaft und Sozialismus: Tendenzen der Naturwissenschafts-Rezeption in der deutschenArbeiterbewegung des 19. Jahrhunderts”, Social studies of science, xiii (1983), 355–94; Hopwood Nick , “Producing a socialist popular science in the Weimar Republic”, History workshop journal, v (Spring 1996), 117–53.

On science professors' political inactivity, see Burchardt Lothar , “Naturwissenschaftliche Universitätslehrer im Kaiserreich”, in Schwabe Klaus (ed.), Deutsche Hochschullehrer als Elite 1815–1945 (Boppard, 1988), 151–214.

Fleck Ludwik , Genesis and development of a scientific fact, ed. by Trenn Thaddeus J. Merton Robert K. , transl. by Bradley Fred Trenn Thaddeus J. (Chicago, 1979).

Quoted by Walter Franz , Sozialistische Akademiker- und Intellektuellenorganisationen in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn, 1990), 31. On the problematic position of intellectuals in the German labour movement, see further Gustav Auernheimer, “Genosse Herr Doktor”: Zur Rolle von Akademikern in der deutschen Sozialdemokratie 1890 bis 1933 (Giessen, 1985); van der Will Wilfried Burns Rob , “The politics of cultural struggle: Intellectuals and the labour movement”, in Phelan Anthony (ed.), The Weimar dilemma: Intellectuals in the Weimar Republic (Manchester, 1985), 162–201; Pierson Stanley , Marxist intellectuals and the working-class mentality in Germany, 1887–1912 (Cambridge, Mass., 1993).

Werskey Gary , The Visible College: A collective biography of British scientists and socialists of the 1930s (London, 1988 [1978]).

Bernal J. D. , The social function of science (London, 1939), 307. On the mountain of public distrust that American scientists had made for themselves to climb by the early 1930s, see Kuznick Peter J. , Beyond the laboratory: Scientists as political activists in 1930s America (Chicago, 1987). Most perceptive on the relations between autodidact workers, the parties of the left and “universitarian” learning is Jonathan Rée, Proletarian philosophers: Problems in socialist culture in Britain, 1900–1940 (Oxford, 1984).

Biographical information on Schaxel can be found in the works cited in ref. 2. On Haeckel, see especially Mann Gunter , “Ernst Haeckel und der Darwinismus: Popularisierung, Propaganda und Ideologisierung”, Medizinhistorisches Journal, xv (1980), 269–83; von Engelhardt Dietrich , “Polemik und Kontroversen um Haeckel”, Medizinhistorisches Journal, xv (1980), 284–304; Gursch Reinhard , Die Illustrationen Ernst Haeckels zur Abstammungs- und Entwicklungsgeschichte: Diskussion im wissenschaftlichen und nichtwissenschaftlichen Schrifttum (Frankfurt am Main, 1981); Krauße Erika , Ernst Haeckel , 2nd edn (Leipzig, 1987); Weindling Paul , “Ernst Haeckel and the secularization of nature”, in Moore James R. (ed.), History, humanity and evolution: Essays for John C. Greene (Cambridge, 1989), 311–27. On monism and the Monist League which was founded to promote it, see further Teumer Elfriede , “Aus dem Kampf des ‘Deutschen Monistenbundes’ um eine wissenschaftliche Weltanschauung”, in Hörz Herbert Löther Rolf Wollgast Siegfried (eds), Naturphilosophie: Von der Spekulation zur Wissenschaft (Berlin [O], 1969), 357–76; Gasman Daniel , The scientific origins of National Socialism: Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist League (London and New York, 1971).

Driesch and Spemann spoke of Entwicklungsphysiologie (“developmental physiology”) rather than Entwicklungsmechanik, but Schaxel used Roux's term. For a recent overview, see Nyhart , op. cit. (ref. 7). On Roux, Driesch and Entwicklungsmechanik, see further Oppenheimer Jane M. , Essays in the history of embryology and biology (Cambridge, Mass., 1967); Churchill Frederick B. , “Wilhelm Roux and a Program for Embryology”, Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1966; idem, “From machine-theory to entelechy: Two studies in developmental teleology”, Journal of the history of biology (hereafter JHB), ii (1969), 165–85; Mocek , Roux (ref. 2); Allen Garland E. , Life science in the twentieth century (Cambridge, 1978 [1975]), 21–39, 114–26; Gould Stephen Jay , Ontogeny and phylogeny (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 186–202; Maienschein Jane , “The origins of Entwicklungsmechanik”, in Gilbert Scott F. (ed.), A conceptual history of modern embryology (Baltimore, 1994 [1991]), 43–61.

Driesch Hans , “Gibt es harmonisch-äquipotentielle Systeme? Eine Erwiderung”, Biologisches Centralblatt, xxxv (1915), 545–55; Schaxel Julius , “Namen und Wesen des harmonisch-äquipotentiellen Systems”, ibid., xxxvi (1916), 374–83; Driesch Hans , “Noch einmal das ‘Harmonisch-äquipotentielle System’”, ibid., xxxvi (1916), 472–5; Schaxel Julius , “Mechanismus, Vitalismus und kritische Biologie”, ibid., xxxvii (1917), 188–96. On the polemic, see Uschmann Georg , “Julius Schaxel und seine Auseinandersetzung mit dem Neovitalismus”, NTM Beiheft, 1963, 228–33.

“Diskussion” following Schaxel J. , “Rückbildung und Wiederauffrischung tierischer Gewebe”, Verhandlungen der Deutschen Zoologischen Gesellschaft, xxiv (1914), 122–45, p. 145; quoted in Driesch , “Systeme” (ref. 25), 553. On Spemann, see Horder T. J. Weindling P. J. , “Hans Spemann and the organiser”, in Horder T. J. Witkowski J. A. Wylie C. C. (eds), A history of embryology (Cambridge, 1985), 183–242; Hamburger , op. cit. (ref. 4); Fäßler Peter E. , “Hans Spemann (1869–1941): Experimentelle Forschung im Spannungsfeld von Empirie und Theorie”, Dissertation, University of Freiburg i. Br., 1995.

Schaxel Julius , Die Leistungen der Zellen bei der Entwicklung der Metazoen (Jena, 1915), 130; idem, “Mechanismus” (ref. 25), 189. Penzlin , op. cit. (ref. 2), 1027, agreed with Spemann that Schaxel was wrong; Mocek , Roux (ref. 2), 173, considered Spemann's presentation of the dialectical relationship of determination and regulation superior to Schaxel's denial of regulation. My point is that Spemann was able to force Schaxel himself to no such conclusion.

Schaxel , “Mechanismus” (ref. 25), 195.

On Schaxel's university career, see Uschmann , op. cit. (ref. 2); on Zeiss, see most recently Stolz Rüdiger Wittig Joachim (eds), Carl Zeiss und Ernst Abbe: Leben, Wirken und Bedeutung (Jena, 1993); on Jena more generally, see Koch Herbert , Geschichte der Stadt Jena (Stuttgart, 1966); John Jürgen (ed.), Jenaer stadtgeschichtliche Beïträge (Jena, 1993).

Kükenthal to Haeckel, 17 June 1918, EHH: Haeckel papers; quoted in Uschmann , op. cit. (ref. 2), 219.

Schaxel made a few statements in which he insisted that in addition to theoretical reform, biology urgently needed more facts; see, for example, his “Über die Natur der Formvorgänge in der tierischen Entwicklung”, Archiv für Entwicklungsmechanik der Organismen, 1 (1922), 498–525, p. 525. His position was flexible enough that he could emphasize either conceptual clarification or empirical accumulation depending on his immediate purpose and audience.

Schaxel to Driesch, 29 July 1918, Universitätsbibliothek, Leipzig: Driesch papers.

On the “crisis of learning”, see Ringer Fritz K. , The decline of the German mandarins (Cambridge, Mass., 1969); Forman , op. cit. (ref. 9).

Schaxel Julius , Grundzüge der Theorienbildung in der Biologie (Jena, 1919), 1, hereafter GTB; 2nd edn (Jena, 1922), hereafter GTB2.

GTB, 13, 18. For Haeckel and his circle, Schaxel's attack on him was the most important fact about the Grundzüge; see his note of 1 February 1919 in Krauße (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), 84–85; Breitenbach Wilhelm to Haeckel , 31 March 1919, EHH: Haeckel papers; B[reitenbach] W. , Neue Weltanschauung, viii (1919), 22–24.

GTB2, 5–7.

GTB, 85. Pace Mocek , “Entwicklungsmechanik” (ref. 2), 170, Schaxel did not confine himself to critiques of positions that were unrepresented in the specialist literature or textbooks. He certainly spent a good deal of time on these, but his main concern was that the boundaries between “intuitive vitalism” and everyday science were being breached routinely.

GTB2, p. iv.

Schaxel used Haeckel's metaphor of not being able to see the wood for the trees; see GTB , 76; Haeckel Ernst , Die Welträthsel: Gemeinverständliche Studien über monistische Philosophie (Bonn, 1899), p. iv.

GTB, 65.

Bessel Richard , Germany after the First World War (Oxford, 1993), 220–53.

GTB2, 214 and e.g. 224.

Fleck , op. cit. (ref. 19).

GTB, 12–13; GTB2, 19. Other retrospectively ironic élitisms, such as disparagement of “intellectual proletarians” and opposition to the threat of science as planned industry destroying every individuality (Eigenart), may be found in his “Ernst Haeckel und seine Studenten”, in Schmidt Heinrich (ed.), Was wir Ernst Haeckel verdanken: Ein Buch der Verehrung und Dankbarkeit (2 vols, Leipzig, 1914), ii, 269–71.

For the print-run, see Verlagsarchiv Gustav Fischer , Jena: Kalkulationsbuch, 11 December 1918, for a copy of which I thank Bernd Rolle. On the reception, see Harwood , op. cit. (ref. 5), 27–29. Reviews of the first edition: Koelsch Adolf , Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 7 February 1919; Lubosch W. , Anatomischer Anzeiger, lii (1919), 268–71; [ Nachtsheim Hans] , Naturwissenschaftliche Wochenschrift, xix (1920), 127–8; Schultz Julius , Annalen der Philosophie, ii (1920–21), 293–9; Hase Albrecht , Naturwissenschaftliche Monatshefte, ii (1920), 117; Alverdes F[riedrich] , Deutsche Literaturzeitung, xlii (1921), 757–60; of the second edition: Karsch Fritz , Kant-Studien, xxviii (1923), 467–8; Lubosch W. , Anatomischer Anzeiger, lvi (1923), 254–6; Lewin Kurt , Die Naturwissenschaften, xxii (1924), 461–2; Blum , Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, xi (1925), 97–99; Kallius E. , Zeitschrift für Anatomie und Entwicklungsgeschichte, lxxviii (1926), 774–7; Reinig W. F. , Journal für Psychologie und Neurologie, xxxiv (1927), 259. The reviews of Schultz and Karsch locate Schaxel's Neo-Kantianism.

Abhandlungen zur theoretischen Biologie (30 vols, Berlin, 1919–31).

Schaxel Julius , Über die Darstellung allgemeiner Biologie”, Abhandlungen zur theoretischen Biologie, i (1919). See also his intervention in the debate over reform of the medical curriculum, Die allgemeine und experimentelle Biologie bei der Neuordnung des medizinischen Studiums (Jena, 1921).

Driesch Hans , The science and philosophy of the organism: The Gifford Lectures delivered before the University of Aberdeen in the year 1907 (2 vols, London, 1908), i, 4 and ii, 3. He became full professor of philosophy in Cologne in 1919. Driesch shared Schaxel's interest in university reform, and the two men became relatively close politically and socially in the first years of the Republic, in spite of their earlier polemic (see Schaxel's letters to Driesch: Driesch papers).

Reinke , in his Einleitung in die theoretische Biologie (Berlin, 1901; 2nd edn, 1911), is the only author I know to have put the term ‘theoretical biology’ in a book title before Schaxel's Abhandlungen, but Schaxel did not cite him in the first edition of the Grundzüge. For a sketch of Haeckel-opponent Reinke's position that the evolving world was the “deed” of a divine intelligence, see Eisler Rudolf , Philosophen-Lexikon: Leben, Werke und Lehren der Denker (Berlin, 1912), 371. On the comparative outsider Uexküll, see Harrington , op. cit. (ref. 9).

E.g. GTB, 37 and 163–4.

Sapper Karl , Biologia generalis, ii (1926), 338–41, even reckoned Schaxel secretly sympathetic to the “organismic tendency”, which Schaxel himself considered vitalistic. Haeckel had been told by Maurer and Heinrich Schmidt that the “‘brilliantly’ written” work was “decked out with dualist metaphysics“; see Krauße (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), 85.

Driesch was carefully solicited for an early contribution; see Schaxel to Driesch, 13 December 1918: Driesch papers. Reinke also wrote an Abhandlung, but Uexküll did not.

v. Bertalanffy Ludwig , Kritische Theorie der Formbildung, Abhandlungen zur theoretischen Biologie, xxvii (1928). For the commissioning, see von Bertalanffy Maria , “Reminiscences”, in Gray William Rizzo Nicholas D. (eds), Unity through diversity: A Festschrift for Ludwig von Bertalanffy (2 vols, New York, 1973), i, 31–52, pp. 35–36. On Bertalanffy, see also Rochhausen Rudolf , “Die organische Lehre Ludwig v. Bertalanffys: Ein Ausdruck spontan dialektisch-materialistischen Denkens”, NTM Beiheft, 1963, 234–41; Nierhaus Gerhard , “Ludwig von Bertalanffy 1901–1972”, Sudhoffs Archiv, lxv (1981), 144–72.

The translation was von Bertalanffy Ludwig , Modern theories of development: An introduction to theoretical biology , translated and adapted by Woodger J. H. (London, 1933). On Woodger, see Floyd W. F. Harris F. T. C. , “Joseph Henry Woodger, curriculum vitae”, in Gregg John R. Harris F. T. C. (eds), Form and strategy in science: Studies dedicated to Joseph Henry Woodger on the occasion of his seventieth birthday (Dordrecht, 1964), 1–6; Roll-Hansen Nils , “E. S. Russell and J. H. Woodger: The failure of two twentieth-century opponents of mechanistic biology”, JHB, xvii (1984), 399–428. On Woodger, Needham and the Theoretical Biology Club, see Abir-Am P. G. , “The philosophical background of Joseph Needham's work in chemical embryology”, in Gilbert (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 24), 159–80; idem, “The Biotheoretical Gathering, trans-disciplinary authority and the incipient legitimation of molecular biology in the 1930s: New perspective on the historical sociology of science”, History of science, xxv (1987), 1–69.

Woodger J. H. , “The ‘concept of organism’ and the relation between embryology and genetics: Part I”, The quarterly review of biology, v (1930), 1–22, p. 5. Only Woodger himself is cited more often than Schaxel in Bertalanffy–Woodger's Modern theories of development, and Bertalanffy still referred extensively to Schaxel's “standard work” in his second monograph, because so much “cannot be justified better than with Schaxel's words”. But he dismissed Reinke and Uexküll. See his Theoretische Biologie, Erster Band: Allgemeine Theorie, Physikochemie, Aufbau und Entwicklung des Organismus (Berlin, 1932), 3, 35.

Haraway Donna Jeanne , Crystals, fabrics, and fields: Metaphors of organicism in twentieth-century developmental biology (New Haven, 1976); Abir-Am , op. cit. (ref. 54); and also Smocovitis V. B. , “Unifying biology: The evolutionary synthesis and evolutionary biology”, JHB, xxv (1992), 1–65.

Jungnickel Christa MacCormmach Russell , Intellectual mastery of nature: Theoretical physics from Ohm to Einstein (2 vols, Chicago, 1986), ii, 254.

GTB, 4; Schaxel , “Darstellung” (ref. 47), 1.

This was, however, probably in late 1918, after Schaxel had finished the Grundzüge. He sent Hilbert, with whom he had “several times” discussed the “uncertainty of biological conceptions”, a circular about the Abhandlungen, to which he claimed Hilbert's (increasingly wayward) student, Hermann Weyl, now in Zurich, had said he would contribute (he did not); see Schaxel to Hilbert, 27 December 1918, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen: Hilbert papers; and further Schaxel to Driesch, 27 December 1918: Driesch papers. On Hilbert and modern mathematics, see Mehrtens Herbert , Moderne Sprache Mathematik: Eine Geschichte des Streits um die Grundlagen der Disziplin und des Subjekts formaler Systeme (Frankfurt am Main, 1990).

Harwood , op. cit. (ref. 5), 28–29.

Schaxel , “Darstellung” (ref. 47), 36; GTB2, 69. Biologists and historians of science have spent more time discussing their views of Spemann's psycho-Lamarckian and allegedly crypto-vitalist tendencies than investigating the more historically relevant question, how contemporaries interpreted his work. Schaxel's quite differentiated criticism is particularly useful because it was published relatively early; he continued to comment on the work of Spemann's school until the end of his life.

Schaxel , “Darstellung” (ref. 47), 1; Spemann H. , “Die Zoologie im medizinischen Studium”, Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift, xlvi (1920), 834–5, p. 834. Schaxel noted these “warm words”, doubtless spoken “from the soul”; see Biologie (ref. 47), 11. Spemann expressed hostility to “general biology” again in his autobiography, Forschung und Leben, ed. by Spemann Friedrich Wilhelm (Stuttgart, 1943), 206–9.

McClelland Charles E. , State, society, and university in Germany 1700–1914 (Cambridge, 1980), 328. On mandarins, see Ringer , op. cit. (ref. 33); on professorial politics in War and Republic, see Schwabe Klaus , Wissenschaft und Kriegsmoral: Die deutschen Hochschullehrer und die politischen Grundfragen des Ersten Weltkrieges (Göttingen, 1969); Töpner Kurt , Gelehrte Politiker und politisierende Gelehrte: Die Revolution von 1918 im Urteil deutscher Hochschullehrer (Göttingen, 1970) (p. 54 for Semon's suicide); Weindling Paul , “Theories of the Cell State in Imperial Germany”, in Webster Charles (ed.), Biology, medicine and society 1840–1940 (Cambridge, 1981), 99–155; and especially Döring Herbert , Der Weimarer Kreis: Studien zum politischen Bewußtsein verfassungstreuer Hochschullehrer in der Weimarer Republik (Meisenheim, 1975).

Harwood , op. cit. (ref. 5); for socialists and pacifists as “outsiders”, see e.g. Döring , op. cit. (ref. 63), 8, 58.

Fricke Dieter , “Zur Militarisierung des deutschen Geisteslebens im wilhelminischen Kaiserreich: Der Fall Leo Arons”, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, viii (1960), 1069–107, p. 1099; it made no difference that the Kaiser had confused Arons with somebody else. See further vom Brocke Bernhard , “Hochschul- und Wissenschaftspolitik in Preußen und im Deutschen Kaiserreich 1882–1907: Das ‘System Althoff’”, in Baumgart Peter (ed.), Bildungspolitik in Preußen zur Zeit des Kaiserreichs (Stuttgart, 1980), 9–118, pp. 95–99.

Heinig Karl , Carl Schorlemmer: Chemiker und Kommunist ersten Ranges , 4th edn (Leipzig, 1986); Beyl Werner , Arnold Dodel (1843–1908) und die Popularisierung des Darwinismus (Frankfurt am Main, 1984); “Tschulok, Sinai”, in Bruckner A. (ed.), Neue Schweizer Biographie (Basel, 1938), 315.

Schaxel claimed he had first joined the SPD before 1914, but had appropriately left in disgust at the party's approval of war credits, so that in 1918 he was re-joining (why not the anti-war USPD?). But he reckoned he did nothing before the Revolution; membership began to matter only when it was open. See EHHS: “Autobiographie”, 10–11 and 26–27.

Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar (THStAW): Thür. Volksbildungsministerium (Abt. C), Personalakte Schaxel 376, Bl. 139RS. On the Nichtordinarien movement, see Busch Alexander , Die Geschichte des Privatdozenten: Eine soziologische Studie zur großbetrieblichen Entwicklung der deutschen Universitäten (Stuttgart, 1959), 109–13; vom Bruch Rüdiger , “Universitätsreform als soziale Bewegung: Zur Nicht-Ordinarienfrage im späten deutschen Kaiserreich”, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, x (1984), 72–91.

“Politische Professoren”, Vossische Zeitung , 25 April 1922, cited by Döring , op. cit. (ref. 63), 73–75. In Jena, Schaxel counted, out of 180 teaching officers, four full- and two part-timers who were social democrats, of whom four were appointed by the Greil ministry, which also quite exceptionally promoted Karl Korsch to professor; see Schaxel's “Die thüringische Landesuniversität unter dem Ministerium Greil”, Leipziger Lehrerzeitung , xxxi, Sondernummer “Schulreform in Thüringen”, February 1924, 20–21. Korsch was sacked after he had briefly become justice minister as one of three communists to join the government in September 1923; he eventually won back his professorship on condition he held no lectures; see Jürgen John's contribution to Schmidt Siegfried (ed.), Alma Mater Jenensis: Geschichte der Universität Jena (Weimar, 1983), 250–97, pp. 275–6.

On the persecution at Heidelberg of E. J. Gumbel, the radical mathematical statistician who documented the political murders of the post-war years, see Benz Wolfgang , “Emil J. Gumbel: Die Karriere eines deutschen Pazifisten”, in Walberer Ulrich (ed.), 10. Mai 1933: Bücherverbrennung in Deutschland und die Folgen (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), 160–98; Emil Gumbel Julius , Auf der Suche nach Wahrheit: Ausgewählte Schriften, versehen mit einem Essay von Annette Vogt (Berlin, 1991); Jansen Christian , Emil Julius Gumbel: Portrait eines Zivilisten (Heidelberg, 1991). On the right-wing campaign against the much more secure Einstein, see Goenner Hubert , “The reaction to relativity theory, I: The anti-Einstein campaign in Germany in 1920”, Science in context, vi (1993), 107–33.

Steinmetz Max (ed.), Geschichte der Universität Jena 1548/58–1958 (2 vols, Jena, 1958 and 1962), i, 542–6; Schmidt (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 69), 258–87; Weindling , op. cit. (ref. 5), 327–8.

Gay Peter , Weimar culture: The outsider as insider (Harmondsworth, 1974 [1969]). On industrial scientists, see Johnson Jeffrey A. , “Academic, proletarian, … professional? Shaping professionalization for German industrial chemists, 1887–1920”, in Cocks Geoffrey Jarausch Konrad H. (eds), German professions, 1800–1950 (New York and Oxford, 1990), 123–42.

On the political history of the labour movement in the Weimar Republic, Heinrich August Winkler's Monumentalwerk is indispensable: Von der Revolution zur Stabilisierung: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1918–1924, 2nd edn (Bonn, 1985); Der Schein der Normalität: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1924–1930 , 2nd edn (Bonn, 1988); Der Weg in die Katastrophe: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1930–1933, 2nd edn (Bonn, 1990).

On the SPD-left, see Klenke Dietmar , Die SPD-Linke in der Weimarer Republik: Eine Untersuchung zu den regionalen organisatorischen Grundlagen und zur politischen Praxis und Theoriebildung des linken Flügels der SPD in den Jahren 1922–1932 (2 vols, Münster, 1983); Walter Franz Dürr Tobias Schmidtke Klaus , Die SPD in Sachsen und Thüringen zwischen Hochburg und Diaspora: Untersuchungen auf lokaler Ebene vom Kaiserreich zur Gegenwart (Bonn, 1993).

On the reforms of the Greil ministry and the “Thuringian University Conflict”, see Steinmetz (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 71), i, 571–5; Mitzenheim Paul , Die Greilsche Schulreform in Thüringen: Die Aktionseinheit der Arbeiterparteien im Kampf um eine demokratische Einheitsschule in den Jahren der revolutionären Nachkriegskrise 1921–1923 (Jena, 1965); Schmidt (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 69). Schaxel is mentioned by Buchwald Reinhard , Miterlebte Geschichte: Lebenserinnerungen 1884–1930 , ed. by Herrmann Ulrich (Cologne, 1992), 330–1. On social-democratic school policy more generally, see Wittwer Wolfgang W. , Die sozialdemokratische Schulpolitik in der Weimarer Republik (Berlin [W], 1980).

For the phone-call, see Friedrich Stier to Ministerialdirektor, 16 May 1924, THStAW: Personalakte Schaxel 376, Bl. 144. For the offending article, the relatively liberal Jena law professor Rudolf Hübner's triumphalist retrospect at the Association of German Universities conference in Jena, see “Der Kampf der Universität Jena mit dem Ministerium Greil”, Mitteilungen des Verbandes der Deutschen Hochschulen, iv (1924), 26–33, p. 32; see also “Dokumente zum Konflikt der Universität Jena”, ibid., 2–7. For Schaxel's side of the story, see his “Landesuniversität” (ref. 69).

For negotiations over the Zoologischer Bericht, see the correspondence between Schaxel and Fischer; THStAW: Bestand Gustav Fischer, 1921 and 1922, for permission to consult which I thank Johanna Schlüter. See also Verhandlungen der Deutschen Zoologischen Gesellschaft, 1921, 41–42; 1922, 34–35; 1923, 29.

Ibid., 1924, 7, 63–64.

Quoted from Geus Armin Querner Hans , Deutsche Zoologische Gesellschaft 1890–1990: Dokumentation und Geschichte (Stuttgart, 1990), 107 (I did not have access to the Society's archive).

Verhandlungen der Deutschen Zoologischen Gesellschaft, 1936, 15.

E.g. GTB, 51, 68, 124; on arbitration, see e.g. Winkler , op. cit. (ref. 73), passim.

For the promise and his faculty's rejection of it, see THStAW: Personalakte Schaxel 376, Bl. 42, 121.

Entwicklung der Wissenschaft vom Leben (Jena, 1924), 9–10. Throughout, emphasis is in the originals. The German term ‘Wissenschaft’ referred more widely to ‘scholarship’ than the English ‘science’, but the authors I cite were principally concerned with natural science, or at least took it to be the model of Wissenschaftlichkeit.

Ibid., 81.

Ibid., 83.

Schaxel Julius , “Die vitalistischen Irrungen der gegenwärtigen Biologie”, Unter dem Banner des Marxismus, i (1925–26), 291–301, pp. 293–4.

Academic reviews not referred to elsewhere: Annalen der Philosophie, v (1925–26), 129*–130*; [ Zaunick Rudolph ], Mitteilungen zur Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften, xxiv (1925), 174; [ Fenichel Otto ], Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, xi (1925), 490–1.

[ Péterfi Tibor ], Zoologischer Bericht, vi (1925), 427; also in Anatomischer Bericht, iv (1925), 561; Schaxel Julius , “Darwinismus und Marxismus: Ein Beitrag zur wissenschaftlichen Voraussetzung des Sozialismus”, in Jenssen Otto (ed.), Der lebendige Marxismus: Festgabe zum 70. Geburtstage von Karl Kautsky (Jena, 1924; reprinted Glashütten im Taunus, 1973), 485–500; and idem, “Politische Zoologie: Eine Richtigstellung”, Der Freidenker, vi (1930), Nr. 8.

Compared to the first five years, the rate of publication of the Abhandlungen and the seniority of the contributors were lower after 1924, but I have no evidence that political discrimination was the reason. Schaxel was still able to publish monographs by Bertalanffy and Weiss.

Stier to Stiftungskommissar Erbsen, 31 July 1928, Firmenarchiv Carl Zeiss Jena G.m.b.H: BA CZ 1491, Bl. 258.

Döring , op. cit. (ref. 63), 146–7; Schaxel Julius , “Universität und Proletariat”, Vorwärts , 10 October 1929. Together with Siemsen, Schaxel opposed Hendrik de Man and the unsuccessful Bund sozialistischer Akademiker; see his “Die Intellektuellen und der Sozialismus”, Das Volk (Jena-Weimar; hereafter DV), 29 May 1926. On the Bund, see Walter , op. cit. (ref. 20), 89–130.

Bourdieu Pierre , Homo academicus, transl. by Collier Peter (Cambridge, 1988).

Wittfogel Karl August , Die Wissenschaft der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft: Eine marxistische Untersuchung (Berlin, 1922), 78. Schaxel used the book in preparing Entwicklung der Wissenschaft vom Leben, an extract containing this passage was published in Urania, i (1924–25), 153–6, and Wittfogel was personally involved in the Urania project. On Wittfogel, see Ulmen G. L. , The science of society: Toward an understanding of the life and work of Karl August Wittfogel (The Hague, 1978).

On the literati, see Deak Istvan , Weimar Germany's left-wing intellectuals: A political history of the Weltbühne and its circle (Berkeley, 1968).

Schaxel , Entwicklung (ref. 83), 9.

On Urania, see Hopwood , op. cit. (ref. 17).

On labour-movement culture, see especially Wunderer Hartmann , Arbeitervereine und Arbeiterparteien: Kultur- und Massenorganisationen in der Arbeiterbewegung (1890–1933) (Frankfurt am Main, 1980); Langewiesche Dieter , “Politik — Gesellschaft — Kultur: Zur Problematik von Arbeiterkultur und kulturellen Arbeiterorganisationen in Deutschland nach dem 1. Weltkrieg”, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, xxii (1982), 359–402; van der Will Wilfried Burns Rob , Arbeiterkulturbewegung in der Weimarer Republik: Eine historisch-theoretische Analyse der kulturellen Bestrebungen der sozialdemokratisch organisierten Arbeiterschaft (Frankfurt am Main, 1982); Guttsman W. L. , Workers' culture in Weimar Germany: Between tradition and commitment (Oxford, 1990).

On the Naturfreunde, see Zimmer Jochen (ed.), Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit: Die Naturfreunde. Zur Geschichte eines alternativen Verbandes in der Arbeiterkulturbewegung (Cologne, 1984); Wunderer Hartmann , “Der Touristenverein ‘Die Naturfreunde’: Eine sozialdemokratische Arbeiterkulturorganisation (1895–1933)”, IWK, xiii (1977), 506–20; Erdmann Wulf Zimmer Jochen (eds), Hundert Jahre Kampf um die freie Natur: Illustrierte Geschichte der Naturfreunde (Essen, 1991); Denecke Viola , “Der Touristenverein 'Die Naturfreunde'”, in Walter Franz Denecke Viola Regin Cornelia , Sozialistische Gesundheits- und Lebensreformverbände (Bonn, 1991), 241–91; and on the proletarian freethinkers, see Wunderer , op. cit. (ref. 97), 55–67 and 142–60; Kaiser Jochen-Christoph , Arbeiterbewegung und organisierte Religionskritik: Proletarische Freidenkerverbände in Kaiserreich und Weimarer Republik (Stuttgart, 1981). “Proletarian” and “bourgeois” were the left's terms for labour-movement and non-labour-movement institutions; they do not, of course, refer strictly to members' class origin.

Hopwood , op. cit. (ref. 17). Schwartz , Eugenik (ref. 14), shows that medical and social policy experts were able to anchor eugenic policies in the social-democratic parliamentary parties of the Reich and key Länder, but only because they bypassed party conferences and other fora in which heated opposition was expressed.

Eckensteher Der (“The Loafer”), “Politik und Vererbung”, Monistische Monatshefte, xiii (1928), 24–30, p. 24.

Bernstein Eduard , Wie ist wissenschaftlicher Socialismus möglich? (Berlin, 1901), 32; see also Proctor Robert N. , Value-free science? Purity and power in modern knowledge (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 128–9.

Schaxel , Entwicklung (ref. 83), 80. Schaxel's architectural metaphor was borrowed from the one Kautsky used against Bernstein, for which see Bayertz , op. cit. (ref. 17), 377.

Schaxel , Entwicklung (ref. 83), 79–80.

Schaxel Julius , “Rückblick und Ausblick”, Urania, iii (1926–27), 1–3.

For “sifters and filters”, see ibid., 2. Writing in a scientific news magazine, Schaxel denied with reference to the Soviet Union that there was “a communist astronomy or biochemistry”; see “Wissenschaft im Dienste der Gesellschaft: Eindrücke aus Sowjet-Russland”, Die Umschau, xxx (1926), 145–7. He could consistently deny that the content of particular sciences was already different in the first socialist state. Schwartz , Eugenik (ref. 14), 37, has argued that socialist experts restricted themselves to critical reception or application of eugenic science because they were generally not engaged in scientific research. Schaxel's case shows that a biology professor could consider critical work the top scientific priority. More generally, even the most productive researcher could make synthetic claims only by reviewing fields in which s/he was not a specialist.

Schaxel , Entwicklung (ref. 83), 7–8.

Kelly , op. cit. (ref. 14), 54. There are some parallels with the British biologist Lancelot Hogben's work in the Plebs League, but Schaxel insisted that experts were needed not so much because their science had the answers as because of the severe, unresolved problems in biology; see Rée , op. cit. (ref. 22), 37–45.

Schaxel , Entwicklung (ref. 83), 26–27; the reference is to Haeckel's defence of Darwinism as “aristocratic” against RudolfVirchow's charge that it was socialist. On the ‘vulgar’ materialists, see Gregory Frederick , Scientific materialism in nineteenth century Germany (Dordrecht, 1977).

See, for example, Klenke , op. cit. (ref. 74); and, relentlessly, Gruber Helmut , Red Vienna: Experiment in working-class culture 1919–1934 (New York and Oxford, 1991).

Der neue Rundfunk, i (1926), 868.

Urania, i/4 (1925), p. I.

Reviews: Der Naturfreund, xxix/7–8 (1925), cover; Die Naturfreunde, iv (1925), 77; Solinger Volksblatt, quoted in Urania, ii/3 (1925), p. IV; an extract, “Wissen und Handeln”, was reprinted in Der Aufstieg , v/4 (1925), 4–7; the book was commended by Schäfer K. , “Darwinismus, Lamarckismus und Sozialismus”, Urania, i (1924–25), 257–9, p. 259, and Mühlbach Ernst , “Was jeder von der Abstammungslehre wissen sollte”, Urania, ii (1925–26), 13–15, p. 13; it was also translated into Russian.

Goldschmidt Richard , Ascaris: Eine Einführung in die Wissenschaft vom Leben für Jedermann (Leipzig, 1922). Goldschmidt's book was more than three times as long as Schaxel's, highly illustrated, and this Thomas edition was probably priced outside most workers' reach.

Anatomischer Bericht, i (1923–24), 176.

[ Wilke Rudolf ], writing in a “bourgeois” library journal. He reckoned that, “How little the tight association of socialism and biological science, in which Schaxel believes, actually exists, appears even in the way his biological exposition basically stands unconnected next to the socialist one”. He was perplexed by Schaxel's combination of “unclear and internally long overcome scientism [Szientifismus]” with a “no less unclear relativism and — sit venia verbo — Antiscientism”. See Hefte für Büchereiwesen, x (1926), 352–3.

The left-radical SPD literary intellectual Dr Karl Schröder considered the book important in spite of its difficulty and less than unified construction; see Bücherwarte, i (1926), 17.

Plate Ludwig , Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Biologie, xviii (1926), 223. Schaxel had himself written book reviews for the Archiv in its more pluralist days under the Empire.

Anon., “Allerlei Wissenswertes”, Urania, ii (1925–26), 379.

Bourdieu , op. cit. (ref. 92), 11.

Schaxel Julius , “Paul Kammerer”, Urania, iii (1926–27), 74–75. Herbert Richter, commenting in the magazine of the Saxon Naturfreunde after reading what Schaxel had written, reckoned that “[a]nyone who had believed till now that science and its teaching was free, will be taught otherwise by the obituary for the revolutionary among scholars, Paul Kammerer”; see Der Wanderer, ix/6 (1927). On Kammerer, see Koestler Arthur , The case of the midwife toad (London, 1971); Hirschmüller Albrecht , “Paul Kammerer und die Vererbung erworbener Eigenschaften”, Medizinhistorisches Journal, xxvi (1991), 26–77.

“Paul Kammerers Bedeutung für die Biologie”, 7 December 1926, EHHS: “MS von Vorträgen, die von J. Schaxel gehalten wurden”.

Lämmel Rudolf (ed.), Urania-Kalender für das Jahr 1927 (Jena), 77.

Schaxel , Entwicklung (ref. 83), 8.

Compare Richard Goldschmidt's view: “Of course there are professional popularizers…. Not having first-hand information, they usually cannot discern what is important or unimportant, essential or nonessential, certain or controversial. In addition they tend to exaggerate, to be sensational, to promise future developments, to cater to the taste of the lower class of readers. It is therefore the duty of the man with the first-hand information to disseminate it….” See In and out of the ivory tower: The autobiography of Richard B. Goldschmidt (Seattle, 1960), 69. For monists in general demanding that scientists should address the public directly, see Holt Niles R. , “Monists and Nazis: A question of scientific responsibility”, Hastings Center Report, v (issue of April 1975), 37–43, p. 42.

Lau Adolf , Fahrtgenoβ (Zentrale Wien), vi (1925), 6–8. The social democrat Lau had been the Reich leadership's main local supporter in their expulsion of communists from the Brandenburg district at the end of the previous year; see Bagger Wolfgang , “Die fraktionelle Spaltung des Touristen-Vereins ‘Die Naturfreunde’ im Gau Brandenburg und in Berlin 1924/1925”, Grüner Weg 31a, x (issue of January 1996), 3–15. I am very indebted to Dr Bagger for the following biographical information: Born in Rostock, Lau (1897–1974) left elementary school to train as a carpenter; he launched himself on an active career in the socialist cultural organizations by attending the Workers' Educational School of the USPD in Berlin in 1917.

Thalheimer August , “Die Auflösung des Austromarxismus”, Unter dem Banner des Marxismus, i (1925–26), 474–557, a review of Jenssen (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 88).

On Urania readers' interpretive competence, see further Hopwood , op. cit. (ref. 17).

Anon., op. cit. (ref. 118). The book was actually published as Das Geschlecht: Seine Erscheinungen, seine Bestimmung, sein Wesen bei Tier und Mensch (Jena, 1926).

Richter Herbert , Der Wanderer (Sachsen), xiv/7 (1932). The programme is described in Hopwood , op. cit. (ref. 17).

Interview (Jena, 22 March 1994) with Gerda Groll (née Lötzsch, b. 1915).

Interview (Weimar, 29 March 1994) with Karl Brundig (1909–96), a Zeiss worker from 1929, later unemployed and re-employed, who was active in the KPD (Opposition); for his illegal political activity and imprisonment after 1933, see “Niederschrift über die Einheitsbestrebungen und die illegale Tätigkeit der KPDO in Thüringen”, unpublished 1956 typescript copy of 1948 statement (kindly supplied by Rüdiger Stutz). For testimony from an older generation of functionaries on their relationship with Schaxel, see Fricke , op. cit. (ref. 2), 35–36.

Thalheimer , op. cit. (ref. 126), 509. In Fricke's biography, op. cit. (ref. 2), contact with the Soviet Union is made theoretically decisive for Schaxel, rather than, as I describe it, secondary to the crucial shift of Entwicklung der Wissenschaft vom Leben.

“Generalversammlung der ‘Naturfreunde’”, Neue Zeitung , 16 January 1926; on workers' chess, see Petzold Joachim , “Klassenbewußtsein und Parteipolitik in den Arbeiterschachvereinen”, Mitteilungen aus der kulturwissenschaftlichen Forschung, xv (1992) 30, issue “Arbeiterkultur und Massenkultur”, 165–71.

Brundig interview, op. cit. (ref. 131).

Report on the Gaukonferenz of 3–4 April 1927 in Erfurt, Fahrtgenoβ, viii (1927), 23. At the 1931 conference too, Schaxel's “clear comments spiced with humour and intelligible to all went down very well with everyone”; see Lamousé E. , “Unsere Gauversammlung”, Am Wege, xii (1931), 63.

“Kulturpolitik im NR”, Bl. 1a, EHHS: “MS von Vorträgen”; Schaxel Julius , “Wissenschaft” (ref. 105), 146; idem, “Von der Wissenschaft in Sowjet-Rußland”, Urania, ii (1925–26), 161–4. On Schaxel's relations with the Soviet Union, see further Schimke Heike Roth Dagmar , “Julius Schaxels Eintreten für die Sowjetunion in den Jahren der Weimarer Republik und sein Kampf gegen die faschistische Ideologie”, Diplomarbeit, Sektion Biologie, University of Jena, 1988; Andruschek Ines Wiegand Frank , “Mekka der Proletarier aller Länder oder bolschewistisch-stalinistische Terrorherrschaft? Zu den Aufenthalten Jenaer Arbeiter und Intellektueller in der Sowjetunion zwischen 1921 und 1933”, Staatsexamensarbeit, Historisches Institut, University of Jena, 1991.

Schaxel Julius , “Leben und Form”, Urania, i (1924–25), 9–14; idem, “Wiedererzeugung oder Ersatzbildung?”, Urania, iv (1927–28), 134–9, p. 139.

“Wie die moderne Biologie arbeiter”, in Lämmel (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 122), 77–78.

Schaxel Compare , “Natur” (ref. 31). In 1933 the international circulation of the Archiv was 249, of which 71 copies went to subscribers in Germany; see Romeis B. to Spemann H. , 15 January 1934, Senckenbergische Bibliothek, Frankfurt am Main: Spemann papers. I discuss further what made Urania's science socialist in Hopwood , op. cit. (ref. 17).

Schaxel Julius , “Anschauliche Entwicklungsgeschichte”, Urania, iv (1927–28), 193–7; reprinted in the magazine of the Naturfreunde in Brandenburg, Fahrtgenoβ, ix (1928), 28–29.

Schaxel J. , “Ernst Haeckel”, Kulturwille, vi (1929), 160.

On Jugendweihen, see Klenke , op. cit. (ref. 74), 880–918; Isemeyer Manfred Sühl Klaus (eds), Feste der Arbeiterbewegung: 100 Jahre Jugendweihe (Berlin [W], 1989); Guttsman , op. cit. (ref. 97), 294–7. In Jena, the “proletarian” freethinkers co-operated in organizing the Jugendweihen with the Monist League.

Schaxel Julius , Menschen der Zukunft (Jena, 1929), 5.

For positive reviews, see Bildungsarbeit (Wien), xvi (1929), p. xxiv; Der Atheist , iii/6 (1929), 15; Der Freidenker, v/2 (1929); Der Naturfreund (Niedersachsen), viii/5 (1929), 75–76; Am Wege, x/3 (1929); Berg Frei, viii/2 (1929), 8; Der sozialistische Freidenker, iv (1929), 47; Der Wanderer, ii/9 (1930), 155; Volksgesundheit, xxxix/4 (1929), 84. Praise was not unanimous: Precisely the vanguardism and invocation of the freethinkers that Hartwig Theodor , Urania author and chairman of the Proletarian Freethinkers International, welcomed in Der Atheist earned Schaxel a ticking off in the main daily of the SPD-left; see Leipziger Volkszeitung, 18 March 1929. This is explicable in terms of the freethinkers' greater integration into the SPD in Leipzig than in Thuringia; see Klenke , op. cit. (ref. 74), 893–905. The national daily Vorwärts and the left's cultural monthly Kulturwille — Which had a commercial interest in other Jugendweihe books — Disliked his style; see “Drei Jugendweihe-Bücher”, Kulturwille, vi (1929), 122–3. Probably precisely because of this the book was more-or-less acceptable to both socialists and communists, by whom it was given to two girls at a Jugendweihe in Steinheid in the district of Sonneberg in Thuringia; see “Unsere Freidenker-Jugendweihe ein glänzender Erfolg”, Neue Zeitung, 30 March 1929.

“Jugendweihe 1929”, DV, 17 January 1929; “Konfirmation oder Jugendweihe”, DV, 18 January 1929; “Jugendweihe 1929”, DV, 13 February 1929; “Jugendweihe 1929”, DV, 6 March 1929; “Jugendweihe 1929”, DV, 16 March 1929.

“Jugendweihe 1929 in Jena”, DV, 23 March 1929.

“Die Jahreshauptversammlung der Freidenker: Kommunistische Demagogie — Eine notwendige Erklärung”, DV , 14 March 1929. The organization split later in the year; see Kaiser , op. cit. (ref. 98), 269.

Report, including of the speech, from “Jugendweihe”, DV, 25 March 1929 (note how the sentimental language contrasts with Schaxel's); inscription from a similarly presented copy of ed. Erkes , Wie Gott erschaffen wurde (Jena, 1925), in the archive of the former Thüringer Verlagsanstalt und Druckerei (currently the Druck- und Verlagshaus Jena G.m.b.H.), which Günter Hörnig kindly showed me; interview with Groll , op. cit. (ref. 130), who worked later in life to promote Jugendweihen in the GDR.

Schaxel Julius , “Haeckels Naturgeschichte des Lebens”, Urania, vii (1930–31), 258–62, p. 262.

Idem, “Naturdialektik”, in Gegen die Spalter der I. P. F. Vorwärts trotz alledem! (Protokoll d. IV. Kongresses d. IPF in Bodenbach a. d. Elbe, 15–17 November 1930, Vienna, 1931), 93–116, p. 95. Schaxel helped revise the German text and compiled extracts from the works of the authors Engels cited; see Rjazanov D. , “Einleitung des Herausgebers”, in idem (ed.), Marx-Engels-Archiv, ii (Frankfurt am Main, 1927), 117–50, p. 150.

Schaxel Julius , “Das biologische Individuum”, Erkenntnis, i (1931), 467–92; August Siemsen , Anna Siemsen: Leben und Werk (Hamburg and Frankfurt am Main, 1951), passim. The relationship between Haeckel, for whom individuality was a keen interest, Schaxel and Engels needs further investigation. Scientists who became Marxists in the 1930s not uncommonly discovered a sort of “pre-established harmony” between their previous practice and the new philosophy. J. B. S. Haldane, for example, notoriously produced “testimonials” to the “patent medicine” of a dialectical materialism that bore a striking resemblance to his father's “scientific deism”; see Rée , op. cit. (ref. 22), 101–5. Since Schaxel claimed deliberately to have been working towards his “dialectical biology” for his entire career, and especially because Haeckel was a major resource not just for him but for Marxists generally, it is likely that in his case the debts were deeper.

EHHS: “Soziale Eugenik und erotisches Kollektiv”, 12 February 1931; for the liaisons, see EHHS: “Autobiographie”, quote from p. 31.

Schaxel , “Individuum” (ref. 151), 492.

For a list of the university lectures that Schaxel announced, see Penzlin , op. cit. (ref. 2), 1029–32, and on their non-disruption, see EHHS: “Autobiographie”, 29.

Julia Feinberg, review of “Das biologische Individuum”, Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, i (1932), 234–5. Schaxel had had contact with the Institute as long ago as 1924: He acknowledged their help in the preface to Entwicklung der Wissenschaft vom Leben, and brought their work to the attention of Urania readers in “Gesellschaftswissenschaftliche Forschungsstätten, 1: Das Institut für Sozialforschung an der Universität Frankfurt a. M.”, Urania, i (1924–25), 97–99. Theoretically and in his activism Schaxel was distant from the critical theory of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, and closer to those like Wittfogel who had more influence in the Institute's early years; see Jay Martin , The dialectical imagination: A history of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research 1923–1950 (London, 1973).

Schaxel , “Individuum” (ref. 151), 475–6.

It remains even today to some small degree open: Red biology professors at Harvard have comparatively recently considered dialectics worth reanimating after the dogmatic ossification of its Stalinist phase. See Levins Richard Lewontin Richard , The dialectical biologist (Cambridge, Mass., 1985); and also Peter Taylor's review of this book, “Dialectical biology as political practice: Looking for more than contradictions”, in Levidow Les (ed.), Science as politics (Radical Science series, no. 20; London, 1986), 81–111.

On the important role of the socially reforming, left-liberal and Marxist network of “Red Vienna” in the philosophy of the Vienna Circle before 1934, see D'Acconti Alessandra , “The genealogies of logical positivism”, Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1995; and also Stadler Friedrich , Vom Positivismus zur “Wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung”: Am Beispiel der Wirkungsgeschichte von E. Mach in Österreich 1895–1934 (Vienna and Munich, 1982).

Schaxel , “Individuum” (ref. 151), 469.

For an example of his writing against religion and going back to nature, see Schaxel , Menschen (ref. 143), 42, 46; for the conflictedness of the socialist culture of science in which Schaxel participated, see further Hopwood , op. cit. (ref. 17); and on the general viability of social-democratic culture at the end of the Republic, compare Lösche Peter Walter Franz , “Zur Organisationskultur der sozialdemokratischen Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik: Niedergang der Klassenkultur oder solidargemeinschaftlicher Höhepunkt?”, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, xv (1989), 511–36, and Wunderer Hartmann , “Noch einmal: Niedergang der Klassenkultur oder solidargemeinschaftlicher Höhepunkt?”, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, xviii (1992), 88–93.

These ceremonies are usually associated with the right, and Gasman , op. cit. (ref. 23), 67–70, described them as a specifically völkisch feature of the monist movement. In fact, as the following description will show, left-wing monists worshipped the sun too. On monist science as religion, see further Hakfoort C. , “Science deified: Wilhelm Ostwald's energeticist world view and the history of scientism”, Annals of science, xlix (1992), 525–44; and for a stimulating resource for deeper investigation of the cultural meaning of such festivals than I have attempted here, see Ozouf Mona , Festivals and the French Revolution, transl. by Sheridan Alan (Cambridge, Mass., 1988).

DV, 22 June 1929; Neue Zeitung, 22 June 1929.

“Sonnwendfeier”, DV, 20 June 1931, from which all quotations describing the events are taken; see also DV, 19 June 1931; “Johannistag”, DV, 24 June 1931; and Jenaer Volksblatt, 20 June 1931.

This and the following extracts are from Schaxel's notes, “Sommersonnenwende 1929/31 Jena”, EHHS: “MS von Vorträgen”.

Knickerbocker H. R. , The German crisis (New York, 1932), 59, 68 (thanks to Jürgen John for drawing this book to my attention); for the election result, see Klenke , op. cit. (ref. 74), 729.

Weingart , op. cit. (ref. 10), 445–55; Weindling Paul , “‘Mustergau’ Thüringen: Rassenhygiene zwischen Ideologie und Machtpolitik”, in Frei Norbert (ed.), Medizin und Gesundheitspolitk in der NS-Zeit (Munich, 1991), 81–97; Jensen Brigitte , “Karl Astel — ‘Ein Kämpfer für die Volksgesundheit’”, in Danckwortt Barbara Querg Thorsten Schöningh Claudia (eds), Historische Rassismusforschung: Ideologen — Täter — Opfer (Hamburg, 1995), 152–78 (thanks to Paul Weindling for a copy of this article).

“Lodernde Flammen”, Jenaische Zeitung, 25 June 1931.

“Jenaer Freidenker-Generalversammlung”, Arbeiterpolitik, 30 January 1932.

Meister W. , “Sonnenwende”, Am Wege, ix (1928), 81.

EHHS: Note added to “Sommersonnenwende”, op. cit. (ref. 164), dated “19/6/31 Jena; 20/6/31 Eisenberg”.

EHHS: “Autobiographie”, 27.

Just before his mysterious death Schaxel was closely associated with the German communist leadership in exile; see Krauße (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 2), 123. Had he lived he would probably have occupied a very senior position in the GDR; his unexceptional student Georg Schneider was professor of theoretical biology and director of the Ernst-Haeckel-Haus in Jena from 1947 to 1959; see Steinmetz (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 71), ii, 808; Aust Gabriele , “Georg Schneider (1909–1970)”, in Jena-Information (ed.), Jenaer Straßennahmen erzählen … (Jena, 1983), 73–74; Penzlin (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 3), 112.