Last Years

When Kolbe arrived in Leipzig in 1865, he brought with him his wife Charlotte, nine-year-old Carl, eight-year-old Johanna, and five-year-old Maria. (He also brought several members of his Praktikanten "family" from Marburg, including Drechsel, Finkelstein, Glutz, Wischin, Zaitsev, and Ziegler.) A third daughter, Elisabeth, was born in January 1868. The family lived in an apartment next to the old laboratory on Universitätsstrasse for three years, then in October 1868 moved into the spacious and elegant residence in the new institute on Waisenhausstrasse. At about this time, an unmarried sister of Kolbe's, "Tante Rutsch," moved in with the family permanently.

Kolbe's first decade in Leipzig was a time of great satisfaction. His research group was extremely productive, he had literally crowds of students (both auditors and Praktikanten), and after January 1870 he even had a journal at his disposal. He was regarded rightly as one of the preeminent chemists in Germany, and plenty of distinctions came his way. The Russian government granted him the Stanislaus Medal for his work with Russian students, and the Universities of Kazan and Moscow gave him honorary degrees. He was given the Davy Medal of

the Royal Society, Wöhler successfully nominated him Correspondent of the Göttingen Societät der Wissenschaften, and dearest to his heart, Liebig proposed him as Knight of the Bavarian Maximilians-Orden. That same month (December 1872) he was appointed a Saxon Geheimrat (privy councilor), the highest honorific a German state could confer on a university professor. He was also made Honorary Member of the new Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft at its creation, along with Liebig, Wöhler, and Bunsen. When the Prussian Akademie der Wissenschaften made him Corresponding Member in 1875, he declined and sent the certificate back—partially because the document read Heinrich Kolbe.^[94]

Then as now, the hard currency of reputation is the demand for services. The University of Bonn called Kolbe in 1867, but he declined, leaving this prize to Kekulé. It was known that Liebig always desired that Kolbe should be his successor at Munich. When Liebig died in April 1873, his junior colleague ausserordentlicher Professor Volhard wrote to Kolbe, delicately inquiring about his possible conditions for a possible call. Kolbe made it clear (or at least tried to) that he would be inclined to accept a call were the conditions sufficiently generous, and outlined his current emoluments and facilities. To Kolbe's disappointment, these expensive hints were enough to put the Bavarian authorities off the scent. Nonetheless, Kolbe was able to use the feeler at home to gain a raise in his laboratory budget (to 4500 thalers) and an expansion of his auditorium.^[95] (The Munich call actually went to Kekulé, who declined and used it for leverage in Bonn;^[96] finally, in 1875 Baeyer was called as Liebig's successor and he accepted.) The Liebig succession understandably excited the chemical rumor mills. In the middle of the negotiations, Adolf Lieben wrote Erlenmeyer, then at the Munich Technische Hochschule,

What's happening with Liebig's succession? You no doubt have heard that the mere thought of Kolbe (for an actual call is said not to have taken place) sufficed to make him privy councilor. I am glad of it, with not the slightest touch of envy. As long as the earth lasts, perhaps no man lives who is more appropriate, who is better equipped by nature, to be a privy councilor than Kolbe. God, who ordered all things by measure and number and weight, once created Hermann Kolbe, not in his own image, but rather after the type of the Geheimrat, and said that it was good!^[97]

It is because of Volhard's inquiry that we know that Kolbe was earning close to 8000 thalers in salary, honoraria, and fees, several times what he had been making in Marburg.^[98] Certainly his relatives were impressed. In a letter to his sister, he emphasized the various

financial obligations that were connected with his position, arguing that the income was not as magnificent as it might appear: 200 thalers annually for entertaining, 300 each year for a medically necessary spa "cure," 100 for school, 100 for piano lessons, 100 each for a gardener and a maid, 240 for utility bills, 600 for life insurance, 100 for taxes, and 100 for medical expenses, not to mention food and clothing for seven people.^[99] This enumeration alone suggests quite comfortable bourgeois domesticity, especially in light of the fact that his residence was gratis. Considering that he was not able (or in any case failed) to pay off the last of his personal debt to the Vieweg family until 1877,^[100] it is clear that he had learned how to spend money. This is especially true after 1874, when he was able to earn many thousands of thalers additional income from salicylic acid manufacture, as we saw in chapter 12.

All of this does not include income from writing and publishing, for which figures are not available, but which could not have been negligible. In addition to his journal, Kolbe had a number of writing projects. In the spring of 1868, he published a brochure describing his new (then not yet completed) laboratory, and four years later he edited a large volume containing reprints of all the articles he and his students had published since 1865. Both works were based on existing published models.^[101] In the meantime, Kolbe's detailed textbook of chemistry, begun about 1848(!), was still not finished. He continued to work away on the third volume until Heinrich Vieweg finally persuaded him in 1871 to give it over to others, at which time he lost all control over the project.

About the time the textbook was finally completed (1878), Kolbe put his son-in-law to work on a second edition. That this work was more an obligation than a free choice for Meyer is indicated by the fact that, upon Kolbe's death, Meyer put a halt to the project, at a time when only two parts of the work had appeared. This was not just an updating but an extensive rewrite of the first edition, and Meyer had full authority for its contents. Throughout this work, Meyer used linear structural formulas (e.g., leucine as CH(NH₂ )[CH₂ CH(CH₃ )₂ ]COOH) and propounded an aromatic theory that was neither Kolbe's nor Kekulé's. He did, however, use ortho/meta/para nomenclature, assert the chemical equivalence of all benzene hydrogen atoms, deny the existence of salylic acid, and affirm the need for three isomers for every diderivative of benzene. All of these were Kolbean heresies, which illustrates once more the extent to which committed members of Kolbe's school often proceeded in a very non-Kolbean fashion.^[102]

Meanwhile, a new project began to take up Kolbe's time and occupied him off and on the rest of his life: a short textbook of chemistry.

Begun in 1872, the first (inorganic) volume was finished by 1877 and the second (organic) volume was out by 1883. This work proved far more popular than his long textbook of organic chemistry. A second edition and an English translation had begun to appear before his death in 1884.^[103]

The last source of Kolbe's income that needs to be mentioned is a category that was gradually becoming more significant in the lives of scientists: connections with industry. Evidence from his correspondence suggests that from the late 1850s on, Kolbe was looking for possible applications from his scientific work. His investigation of salicylic acid in 1873 was at least partially motivated by his desire to find a route to indigo synthesis, and he always paid attention to novel compounds with potential as dyes. None of these ideas bore fruit until the salicylic acid work created an ideal entrepreneurial opportunity. Finally, it appears that in 1869-1870 he was financially involved in an American company that was attempting to apply Liebig's formula for extract of beef to Texas cattle (the company failed), and shortly thereafter he did consulting and quality control work for a similar concern in Montevideo.^[104]

In many respects, Kolbe's personal life hit apogee around 1875. His wife had never enjoyed robust health but was then doing acceptably, as might be judged by the fact that the Kolbes, who lived very quietly between 1857 and 1869, had rediscovered an active social life. The two oldest children were teenagers in the early 1870s, and their parents gave them occasional large parties and balls.^[105] The oldest child, Carl, graduated from the Leipzig Gymnasium in March 1875, then absolved his one-year military service before studying chemistry with his father. He made a successful career in the chemical industry.^[106] The next oldest, Johanna, was courted by Ernst von Meyer, and they were married in March 1876. Meyer eventually succeeded Rudolf Schmitt at the Dresden Technische Hochschule. The two youngest daughters, Maria and Elisabeth, were married within two months of each other in the fall of 1887.^[107] Unfortunately, Charlotte Kolbe barely lived to see Johanna married. She suffered from a variety of ailments, especially a severe lung infection in late 1875. Two months later, not yet recovered, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. A successful operation by Carl Thiersch failed to cure the disease; after a period of apparent recovery she declined rapidly in the fall of the year before succumbing on 26 December 1876.

About the same time, Kolbe's own health began to decline. He had always suffered from periodic severe colds and influenzas and at least annual bouts of painful rheumatism, sometimes lasting two weeks or more. He was overweight, suffered from atherosclerosis, and ate un-

healthily (by modern standards, at least).^[108] The death of his wife led to a month of serious mental and physical illness, which gradually abated, but he never quite recovered from the grief.^[109] As we have seen, several close friends had died in the early 1870s, and his war with the structuralists was not going well.

Then in early May 1879, a nearly fatal poisoning episode (breathing phosphorus pentachloride) precipitated severe bronchitis that developed into chronic asthma and emphysema. Kolbe had long become accustomed to semiannual "cures" at such resorts as Nauheim, Marienbad, Sassnitz on the Baltic, and Gersau or Brunnen on the Lake of Lucerne; now his holidays became even more frequent and extended. During the last six years of Kolbe's life, he constantly shuttled between Leipzig and these resorts. He was able to do a substantial amount of literary work (especially on the Kurzes Lehrbuch and his various polemical articles), but little actual laboratory supervision or research. After a bad winter of 1883-1884, Kolbe's health became better the following summer than it had been in years. On 25 November 1884, Meyer wrote to tell Ostwald that Kolbe was doing exceedingly well so far that winter. A hurriedly written postscript reported a massive heart attack suffered that evening by "my excellent father-in-law."^[110] The thunderer of Waisenhausstrasse was dead.