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Letter to Stephen Jay Gould
from Henry P. Kramer
July 8, 1997
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Stephen Jay Gould
Professor of Geology
Museum of Comparative Zoology
Harvard University
26 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Dear Professor Gould:
Thank you for your
kindness in taking the time to acknowledge my letter to you.
I would be very pleased
if you were to write an essay on my grandfather. I shall be happy to
supply as much information about him as I am aware of and, if desired,
will try to find out more. Here is a very brief synopsis of what I remember
about him.
He was born in Berlin
in 1860 and died in Berlin of cancer in 1933 after Hitler had been in
power for a few months. It was considered a blessing that he did not
have to experience much of the deterioration of Germany that occurred
after 1933.
The family was of considerable
antiquity in Kyrits, a small town (pop. in 1924 ca. 5000) in the Havel
area of Brandenburg. My grandfather displayed in his living room a family
tree of silver - it was an oak that traced the ancestry back to the
seventeenth century. I saw it once as a child and have no idea what
happened to it. The original name of the family was Cohen. But when
the first member of the family that was allowed to move to Berlin became
a citizen in 183 1, his citizenship certificate listed his name as Oppenheim.
This first Berlin citizen
of the family ran a silken goods store and became prosperous. His two
sons, one of whom was my great grandfather Julius, parlayed this prosperity
into riches in Berlin real estate. My grandfather was independently
wealthy and lived in a large house in the suburb of Berlin-Lichterfelde.
My grandmother came from a prosperous family of bankers in the Rhineland
named Philip. The couple had three children, two sons, and a daughter
who was my mother. My grandmother supervised a staff of servants who
cooked and cleaned the house.
On graduating from Gymnasium,
my grandfather was chosen to give the valedictory address in Latin.
He was a talented man who prided himself on singing operatic arias in
their original languages. He became a paleontologist with a specialty
in the Gosau strata of the Miocene and the strata of the Bassin de Paris.
He also loved Botany and had two hot houses full of orchids in a very
large garden around his house maintained by his gardener and a helper.
Every day at a regular
time he went on inspection around the garden and the hot houses. In
discussions with the gardener about the various plants none but the
proper Latin names were allowed. Grandfather's garden was of particular
interest to me as a child. Every fall we Kramers, in Duesseldorf, would
receive in the mail several large wooden crates of apples and pears
carefully wrapped in newspaper. The garden was also a source of fresh
eggs. I remember being of assistance to my grandmother in feeding her
flock of chicken with mash that was cooked in a pot on the big stove
in the massive tiled kitchen of her house. A very impressive feature
of the kitchen to me as a child was the dumb-waiter that communicated
with the upstairs dining room. I had the urge but never summoned the
defiance to ride upstairs on the dumbwaiter. After the Christmas goose
was consumed, a visit to the kitchen would merit a piece of bread spread
with delicious "Gaense Schmalz / goose grease".
Prior to the first World
War, my grandfather was in close correspondence with several scientific
friends in France. It seemed a personal treachery to him that shortly
after receiving a warm letter from France he found himself at war with
his former friends.
Grandfather was called
Professor Dr. Paul Oppenheim. The title of professor was nominal. He
had applied for a position on the faculty of the University of Berlin.
According to one report, he received a letter indicating that the application
for the position of an "ordentlicher Professor" was an example
of the "pushiness of his race" and was therewith rejected.
Another report on the same matter had it that he might aspire to this
position if he were willing to abandon his Jewish identity and become
a Christian. While I think that he was a believer - I remember his kneeling
by the side of his bed in his night gown and saying a silent prayer
- I don't recall his attending or referring to any Jewish ritual. However,
his sense of honor, coupled with his financial independence, caused
him to reject vigorously any suggestion that he change allegiance for
the sake of personal advancement.
As a child, I remember
visiting my grandfather's house in Berlin and being put to bed in the
top floor, under the roof, waking up at night, and stealing down the
stairs to sit quietly and observe grandfather in his study while he
examined fossilized shells with his loupe. Grandfather finally looked
up and discovered me and sent me scurrying back to bed with a stem look
and a severely pronounced "Lausbub/rascal". He would work
much of the night and get up at a leisurely hour for his breakfast.
The morning hours were spent attending to the management of the family's
property which kept him on the telephone a lot although my uncle Julius
had memories of going along with his father as a child to inspect and
collect rents. The afternoon and evening were spent on paleontology.
My grandfather's tastes
in the visual esthetic area were not well developed. The heavy furnishings
of the house were interspersed with objects of archeological interest.
On the wall of the impressive entrance hall of the house there was a
collection of weapons, bows and arrows and spears from the South Seas.
At the foot of the landing of the stairs stood the life sized replica
of a Chinese palace guard with sword and spear and frightening ruby
glass eyes. An upstairs room was very attractive to me as a child because
even in the middle of the day it was maintained in semi-darkness through
thick drapes on the windows, thick rugs on the floor, and dark furnishings
so that it provided a wonderful hideaway for reading and dreaming. The
mysteries of this room were enhanced by stringed instruments on the
walls that would sound when a slight wind stirred clappers against the
strings. Another room was furnished in the French Rococo style, Louis
XVI th., and everyday meals were taken in the "winter garden",
a room with many windows and house plants. The house was conventional
and reflected the predilections of class, time, and place.
Grandfather traveled
a great deal and undertook many trips to collect specimens. In addition,
he was sent specimens for classification from many parts of the world.
He was adept at languages and was, of course, fluent in French and Italian,
and I believe, Russian. He was short, and somewhat overweight when I
knew him. However, he was vigorous and walked a great deal. He never
owned a vehicle of any sort. I remember the sight of him on a cold winter
day, dressed in a black Persian lamb fur coat, and stomping forward
at a fast pace with his cane rhythmically hitting the pavement.
After my grandfather
died in 1933 my mother worked hard to settle his estate. She undertook
to send his collection and library to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem
where I saw it when I visited Jerusalem in 1972. In the early years
of our living in the United States my mother was in correspondence with
various paleontologists to place copies of his book on the Gosauschichten.
Prior to our coming to the US I remember visiting with my mother at
the Department of Paleontology (or Geology) of the University in Genoa,
built in a sequence of terraces with steps leading from courtyard to
courtyard each higher up on the hill.
My knowledge of my grandfather's
scientific standing is restricted to what I learned from my mother who
adored him. According to her he was a world leader in his specialty.
I also remember seeing some highly complementary articles written at
the time of his death, and also after the war, on the occasion of a
birthday commemoration. The article after the war referred to him as
a patrician of Berlin. I shall be happy to try to find those and if
I do I'll gladly send copies to you.
At the time that grandfather
was a young man, Darwin's writings were totally new and paleontology
was a wondrous science at the very frontier of scientific excitement.
Another pioneering work at the time was the attempt to understand the
human mind and psyche. From remarks by my mother I know that my grandfather
was friends with Sigmund Freud. My parents were friends with Freud's
children and I remember playing a game of Chinese pick-up sticks with
Freud's granddaughter at her parents' apartment in Berlin. But I have
never had any contact with the Freud family since.
My grandfather's interest
in paleontology was so intense that he infected a nephew with the love
of collecting fossils. My father, a lawyer in Germany and merchant in
the US, was similarly taken and I remember expeditions to collect fossils
with him. A client of his gave us access to a desolate property near
the Dutch frontier containing an abandoned coal mine where we found
hundreds of fossilized shark teeth along with fossils of sea shells.
We took them home, cleaned them, and then my father identified and labeled
them and incorporated them in the collection kept in a cabinet in a
room under the roof of our house.
On every walk or drive
through the landscape that we took as a family my father would regale
us with geological explanations as to how the landscape came to look
as it does. There was much reference to water erosion and to pushing
up of strata and their folding. Cuts at the side of the road frequently
gave the impetus to a lecture. Even my non-scientific mother could participate
in this game by dredging up memories of her father's dissertations of
that nature. I am not sure that many of the explanations were anything
more than speculations and that much would withstand careful scientific
scrutiny. However, without conjecture, there is nothing to prove. And
it is fun to conjecture, even though complete satisfaction is absent
when conjectures are not confirmed or rejected by further investigation.
If it is of interest
for me to try to find articles referring to my grandfather in my mother's
effects, please let me know.
In a last look at your
letter I found that you asked some specific questions that I may not
have answered in the above.
The decision to transfer
the collection and library to Jerusalem seemed natural because my two
uncles, my mother's brothers, were at that time living in the British
mandate of Palestine. They were there because they were strong adherents
to Zionism. One had bought a piece of land near a settlement on the
coastal plane named Kfar Sava in the middle twenties and put it into
oranges. The other, a physician, had left Berlin with his family of
a wife and three sons in 1932, a year before Hitler came to power, in
order to practice medicine under the aegis of the general labor union
called the Histadruth. Their convictions were motivated by the ingrained
and lingering anti-Semitism in Germany which regarded Jews as intrinsically
alien to the "German spirit", regarded their contributions
to German intellectual life as a subtle poison, and expressed these
sophistries in insults and crude hate. I know of two incidents in the
family to illustrate this.
The suburb of Berlin-Lichterfelde
where my grandfather lived was the seat of a school for cadets. All
of the officials of this school were officers of the Imperial Army,
most were aristocrats, and many were neighbors. My uncle Hans, who became
the physician, had a friend at the gymnasium, his best pal, who had
invited most of the class to his birthday party. Next day, after Hans
found out and asked why after all he, the best friend, had not been
invited, was told that an invitation home was quite out of the question
and he must understand that.
Another uncle was told
by a class mate when he was whistling the Lorelei song, that that was
not, after all, a proper song for him to whistle. To which my uncle
replied that the words were written by Heinrich Heine and the music
composed by Felix Mendelsohn, both of Jewish origin.
The general practice
in Germany was for Gymnasium boys to enter the army and quickly become
officers. Jews were excluded from this practice. My father entered as
a private and, having been wounded at the Marne and kept as a prisoner
of war by the French, was given an iron cross and dismissed as a corporal.
His youngest brother, however, who entered the army in the middle of
NVWI was made a lieutenant because, by that time, the losses in this
most vulnerable rank had to be made up somehow.
At any rate, because
the members of my family in Germany considered that they were as good
as anyone else, they chafed under the ever present expressions of inequality,
and some of them saw as a solution to the Jewish dilemma to leave Germany
for a Jewish country where they would be judged only as individuals
and on their merits. Unfortunately, the Jewish nationalism of my family
was largely a reaction to German anti-Semitism and an imitation of German
romantic nationalism rather than a positive affirmation of Jewish values.
Ironically, my grandfather was not in sympathy with the Zionist fervor
of his children. However, had his beloved scientific collection and
library not been sent out of Germany, they probably would have been
destroyed.
My parents were attuned
to these ideas and when the rise of the right in Germany after the defeat
during MFWI was accompanied by increasingly strident lawlessness and
anti-Semitism culminating in the accession to power of the National
Socialists, they decided very soon after to leave. They clearly saw
that the laws the Nazis enacted made it impossible for them to live
in Germany. I have written on the details of our leaving Germany in
an essay entitled "How Mother led us out of Germany". If you
have time for it, I'll be happy to send it to you.
If you feel that the
above material and any additions that I can provide would lend themselves
to an essay by you I would feel very flattered if you were to undertake
one. I have great admiration for your writing, both in style and substance,
and am confident that whatever task you undertake will be superbly done
in every way.
Sincerely yours,
Henry P. Kramer
