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RECOLLECTIONS OF WILLIAM OSTWALD, MY FATHER WALTER OSTWALD Heppenheim a n der Bergstrasse, Germany (Translated a n d a n n o t a t e d by R a l p h E. Oesper, University of Cincinnati)
INJULY 1914 I was driving my father to his country home, Haus Energie,' from Miltitz where he had been visiting my brother-in-law, Eberbardt Brauer, who had been his assistant for many years and chief associate in the study of the catalytic oxidation of ammonia to nitric acid.2 As we passed through Leipsic the newsboys were calling out an extra. I bought a paper and read that the Kaiser had announced that war was imminent. I a t once told my father that since I was liable to military service I would report a t once. I had never seen him so angry. "We are now living in an enlightened world. War is utter nonsense and can never come." He obviously was greatly mistaken. That same winter I was a t the front in Russian Poland in the same six-passenger Hansa in which he and I were then riding. This error in his appraisal of the actual ethical level of civilized mankind had a tremendous impact on him. As an antidote, he spent the war period in the creation of his color theory. Today I can look hack and truthfully say that it was well that he did not live to see the even greater second war and its awful consequences. As a matter of fact, Wilhelm Ostwald was frequently mistaken. This made my life far more pleasant because i t can be a great handicap to be the son of an outstanding man. You are always expected not only to be intimately acquainted with his achievements but many also expect you to be his intellectual equal. My father was an idealist and frequently became involved with men who were decidedly the contrary. I was his secretary for many years and as such I had to extricate him from unpleasant situations. For example, I had to clear away the rubble of the "Briicke zur Organization der geistigen Arbeit" in Munich on which he frittered away a considerable part of his Nobel prize money. Likewise I had to settle the affairs of the monistic monastery "Unesma." These were two beautifully situated farms in Thnringia which he had bought with another portion of his award. This was not designed to be an anti-church center but it was rather to provide a place where men who believed in science and little else could work in peace. As usual, the unfit far outnumbered the fit, and constant irritation was my father's chief recompense for his i n ~ e s t m e n t . ~During the inflation period, which ' J. CHEM.EDUC.,31, 398 (1954). ' Ibid., 30, 604 (1953).
"or an account of these social-philosophical projects see "Wilhelm Ostwdd Lebenslinien," Vol. 11, Berlin, 1927; WALL, F.,J. CHEM.EDUC.,25, 2 (1948).
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followed the war, he disregarded my advice and sold these holding for 500,000 marks, largely to escape from the worry they involved. This sum, which seemed quite large a t the time, soon turned out to be too little to buy even a simple household item. To me, my father was and remains a personality worthy of boundless honor. My respect for him was not lessened in any way because of these and other mistakes, of which I became aware later. However, they served to bring him much closer as a human being. Many eminent scientists and philosophers came to our borne. Perhaps one of the most painful realizations of my youth was the recognition that on& standing mental abilities are not always associated with equally lofty ethical standards. I came to feel that men like my father and such friends as van't Hoff, Arrhenius (my godfather), Guldberg and Waage," the physicist Th. Des Coudres, Beckmann? Landolt,' Ernst Haeckel, Ernst Mach, E. Beckmann' are striking exceptions. I was privileged to spend most of my youth a t Leipsic and had the full run of his department (Institut).' The students and assistants came from all countries of the civilized world and it was a wonderful atmospherp in which to grow up. One of them (Th. Paul) made me very happy by giving me two discarded officer's shoulder straps. I learned much a t the knee, so to speak, of Alwin M i t t a ~ c h who , ~ was then working on nickel carbonyl, and who remained a close friend until his death a few years ago. I was privileged to see in my father's private laboratory two extraordinary researches by Georg Bredig,lo namely: the preparation of metal sols by the immersed arc method and the pulsating solution of chromium in acids. While still quite young I learned to make fireworks and also to turn out passable photographs, which was then still a rather primitive and mysterious art. The plates had to be coated as needed and I went through the various stages of the evolution of the film beginning with the treatment of transparent paper with a suitable emulsion. We also had to prepare our own copying paper and we blithely used uranium salts as an intensifier for our necatives and as toner for the positives. The chief attraction to me hf the Institut was the
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CEEM.EDUC., 30, 193 (1953). Ibid., 21, 470 (1944). Ibid., 22, 158 (1945). H., J. CHEM.EDUC.,29, 298 (1952). THTRRINO, W. D., Ibid., 10, 539, 609 (1933). BANCROFT, 8 Ibid., 25, 5% (1948). lo Ibid., 14, 284 (1937). 6
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student workshop in which I was permitted to work. Next to it was the workshop of the Institnt's mechanic, Fritz Kohler, and a t times I was allowed to wat,ch him carry on his varied and delicate operations. I well remember the day I saw Professor Y. Osaka of Kyoto come into the student workshop to bore a hole in a piece of brass. He, however, could not find the three-jaw chuck for the footdriven lathe. So he merely wrapped some rice paper around the shank of the drill and fitted it into the opening of the lathe. I was amazed to see that this simple artifice actually worked; the drill not only stayed in place but ran true so that the hole was bored satisfactorily. This purposeful bit of Oriental ingenuity made a lasting impression on me. We five Ostwald children knew and appreciated that our father was a great man. But we also were aware that he could be a touchingly affectionate father when the circnmstances warranted. On Sundays, the six of us explored the surrounding region and he permitted himself to be "milked," i.e., he would answer our host of questions. At mealtime, there was always an argument to determine who would sit next to him. We all were indebted to him for his patience and pedagogical wisdom. Punishments vere seldom needed. I was spanked only once by him and that was because I had unduly worried my mother by coming home from school very late. I had not been able to resist the attraction of a great military parade. Cats played a big role a t our house. We children all liked these creatures and so did my father, but Mother was less enthusiastic. M u t i , the old black and white house cat, had her own high bamboo stool at the table, her own dish and oilcloth place mat. She ate so daintily that she was a very model of propriety. Of course such a table companion did not meet with the approval of a good many of our guests. One eminent chemistry professor did not hesitate t o make pointed disapproving remarks during the meal after he discovered Mutzi among us children a t the other end of the long table. However, one of the other guests, Des Coudres, who was a bachelor, nodded his approval to us. When the customary coffee was served in the drawing room, by the maid in black with a white cap, we were delighted to see Des Coudres in an armchair, the cat in his lap, and as we gathered around he fed Mutzi cream from a gilt coffee spoon which he replenished from a gold-plated creamer. Opposite sat the glaring professor. One of our mother's friends was not very popular with us because she never hesitated to correct us. We had taken in a stray kitten and had named it Laura because she had sung so beautifully outside our closed windows. When we showed the new acquisition to the lady and proudly told her how we had selected the name, she scornfully said, "You children are just too stupid. That is no Laura but a Laums." From then on we always referred to the lady by a disrespectful name and she lost all influence over us. I well remember the occasions when the students were invited to our home for special occasions, and the Christmas parties in the laboratory were memorable." We children were permitted to take part as a matter of course. Once three students were in our home preFOULK,C. W., J. CEEM.EDUC.,11,355 (1934).
VOLUME 34. NO. 7, JULY, 1957
Wilhelm Ostwald a n d "Mia" IAcound 19331
paring for the Easter party: an American, a German, and a Russian Jew. They did their assignments well and were rewarded by permission to hide eggs for each other. The first two found their prizes with lit,t,le trouble hut the third, who was quite short, had no success. Finally he went into the kitchen and came out with the stepladder. He had reasoned correctly that his fellow students had hidden his eggs in high places and without the ladder he c,ould never discover them. This little incident shows clearly the lack of any trace of antisemitism in our circle. We often did not know, and cared less, if a man was Jewish, halfJewish, or not. In such matters we jokingly preferred to rely on our black spitz I5ps, who was an outspoken antimilit.arist and allegedly antisemitist. He went for t,he calves of every one in uniform, including the postman, and every "den-". Accordingly, a t our parties. when the dog was around,surh endangeredstudentswere hilariously fitted with "anti-fips" which were aluminuni calf guards. No one, least of all the Jews, found any offense when a t a student masquerade ball, the short Russian Jew was persuaded t,o appear as a baby on a pillow and with the inevitable result that during t,he course of the eveniug he \?as frequently christened (seldom with water). The high jinks at the Christmas parties were never allowed to get out of hand. My father alwaysprovided a special treat in the form of a short talk by Arrhenius, van't Hoff, Ramsay, etc., or lacking a suitable not,able guest, he made an appropriate talk himself.12
This Chamher Music Group W a s Made u p of O ~ t w a i dend Ciassmate. at Dorpat in 1878. He is th. Central Figure. To Emsh of H i s Children He Sent a Copy of This Photomaph at C h ~ i s t r n a s1929
A special feature of the Leipsio Institut in those days was the colloqia a t which t,he doctoral candidates reported on the state of their research projects. Heated discussions often arose. I remember an occasion at, which the student complained that all of his findings were precisely contrary to what had been anticipated. My father rose a t once and cougratulated the young man. "If everything turned out according to expectation the research would have been superfluous. It. is only when such studies yield the unexpected do they really become interesting." -4s a matter of fact,, this doctorate study later proved of special value. Sir William Ramsay w m often a guest in our home. He made it a habit to sit in an easy chair and rest his head against the wall whilr listening to my father and
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sister Grete (violins) and my brother Wolfgang" perform trios. However, the distinguished Rritislier used a profusion of pomade and left a grease spot on the wallpaper. My mother simply hung a gilt wreath over the stain. Ramsay was a gifted whistler and we were entranced when he rendered English folk songs playing his own accompaniment on the piano. I studied under Ramsay for some time in London. I thus had a chance to discover the bias which the "demorratic" English can exhibit under circumstances. My sister Grete, who is now in charge of the Ostwald Arrhiv at Haus Energie, found in my father's files a letter from Ramsay in which he declared himself satisfied with my academic progress but at the samr time he regretted my social actions. I had made a friend of his (Ramsay's) laboratory mechanic and had even gone to the automobile show, etc., with him. "Such company is not suitable for the son of Wilheln~ Ostwald." My father never told me the contents of this letter. Once, a t some occasion a t the Deutsches Museum ill Munich, I sat next to Max Bodeustein14 who had been an assistant at the Institut. In his customarv frank manner, he told me that he had still had some dislike for me dating from the old days. To my surprised inquiry as to how I had incurred this longstanding ill will, he said: "As a boy you rode an infernal motorcycle for hours at a time on the path behind the room where I worked and the racket disturbed me seriously." However, he could not remember why he had not reprimanded me at the time or why he had not spoken about it to my father. Obviously, big men can sometimes be very small. I can recall many more incidents involving my father and his circle, but enough has been given to demonstrate what sort of a man he actually was and what a privilege and pleasure it was to live near him.
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