Chauvinism^[1]

Kekulé, Hofmann, and Kolbe, the three premier German chemists in the generation after Liebig, form interesting contrasts, in their personal lives as in their science. Kekulé was cosmopolitan and patrician in style, and much inclined toward internationalism. After Giessen, he enjoyed four and a half years' worth of three successive foreign Wanderjahre ; then a brief period in Heidelberg was but a prelude to nine years as a professor in French-speaking Belgium. By the time he was called to Bonn, he had spent thirteen of the previous sixteen years abroad; he could speak English and French almost without accent and fluent Italian as well. He was also principal organizer of the first international chemical congress. Hofmann, for his part, spent twenty happy and productive years in England. Like Kekulé a suave sophisticate, Hofmann's oral and written English was so masterly that he did not hesitate to correct the language of his English students. Armstrong's thumbnail sketches are apt:

Kekulé was a born aristocrat in manner. An intellectual of a high order, many-sided in his interests, he was too critical and cynical to be a leader of men in the way that Hofmann was, though even superior to him as an orator; he attracted through his clear-cut talent, his gift of precise speech and his great command of knowledge. . . . Kolbe was equally simple [as Frankland], never a man of the world, a good lecturer and a far better writer but not an orator: the best chemist of them all. Hofmann and Kekulé were cosmopolitans; . . . Kolbe—just the dear old German,

academic pedagogue of the highest class: there is no other way of describing him.^[2]

Indeed, Kolbe's was a very different character. With the single exception of Jacob Berzelius, whom he considered an honorary countryman, all of Kolbe's models were German, above all, the heroes of the classical period of the rise of German chemistry: Wöhler, Liebig, and Bunsen. Linguistically as well, Kolbe forms a contrast: although he learned a reasonable amount of English in the eighteen months he spent in London, he soon forgot most of it, at least as far as oral communication is concerned.^[3] There is no evidence he ever mastered or even seriously studied any other foreign language. Apparently he could read French, although certainly he avoided doing so as much as possible. As for foreign travel, aside from his one postdoctoral stint and a brief laboratory tour to England, a fishing vacation in Norway with Eduard Vieweg, and his semiannual "cures" taken often in Swiss resorts, he did not leave the German Confederation or Empire. He particularly avoided the Catholic countries of Austria and France.

Kolbe's first recorded derogation of the French dates from the period in 1848 just after the February revolution in Paris and the "March days" in Germany, but his language became much sharper when it appeared that the reformers might really carry the day. His concern and anger can be discerned in the first fascicle of his textbook, published in 1854. To Eduard Vieweg, he confessed his desire to continue Berzelius' critical tradition against the "extravagances" of foreigners, now that the heroic Swede was no longer alive.

But Berzelius was not Kolbe's only model for ferocious critiques; he also followed the pattern established by his other great hero, Liebig. Liebig's views of foreign chemistry are best exemplified by examining his relationship with his greatest rival, J. B. Dumas—as we have done at the beginning of chapter 4. In their worst period, the late 1830s and the 1840s, Liebig continually accused Dumas of the vilest motives and actions. Dumas and his friends returned the sentiments. J. B. Boussingault wrote Dumas, "I am never so good a Frenchman as when I am along the banks of the Rhine, it is truly shameful that an evil hole like Giessen is a focal point of science. . ."^[4] Despite the vehemence of these opinions, Liebig and Dumas eventually reestablished their friendship. However, this reconciliation was still in the future when Kolbe imbibed his extremely negative views of Dumas from Liebig, whose diatribes were often openly published in the scientific literature. Berzelius and Wöhler, two other major influences on Kolbe, also had opinions of Dumas and other French chemists which were not much more positive than Liebig's.

Kolbe's prejudices against foreigners, especially the French, were not necessarily tied to conservative political sentiments. We have seen in chapter 3 that Kolbe's general political orientation during his thirties was quite typical of his class and time period, namely, center to center-right liberalism. He had nothing but contempt for the reactionary Kurhessian regime, vaguely distrusted Prussia but despised Austria, feared republicans, extreme democrats, and socialists, and hoped for German unification, presumably under Prussian leadership but with constitutional guarantees. He looked with deep suspicion on Bismarck's and King Wilhelm's struggles of the 1860s with the Prussian Landtag . When in the spring of 1866 war with Austria threatened, Kolbe (with most fellow Germans) feared a catastrophe, for it was by no means clear that the Prussian army was sufficient to the task, and the Austrian yoke promised to be infinitely more onerous than that of Prussia. "Lieber Bismarckisch (so schlimm das auch ist)," commented Kolbe to Frankland about the alternative outcomes of the approaching war, "als österreichisch-jesuitisch!" Moreover, Saxony was sandwiched ominously between Prussia and Austria, and everyone expected the battle zone to be close to Leipzig.^[5]

In the event, the decisive battle occurred at Sadowa (Königgrätz), two hundred miles southeast of Leipzig, and was handily won by the Prussian army. Kolbe's sentiments, again like those of most of his countrymen, were profoundly altered by this military success and by the prospect of a unified German nation. "Say what you like against Bismarck," Kolbe wrote Frankland, "one cannot deny that he is a decisive, quietly reflective man, the premier statesman of Europe ."

The situation is perhaps the following. Had Austria won the upper hand and destroyed Prussia, Germany would be lost and we would have Austrian conditions: lies, Jesuitism, concordat, systematic corruption, general moral disintegration, destruction of material prosperity, abolition of free scientific research, etc. With the battle of Königgrätz a new star rose over Germany; from this day Germany is a unified nation. Further, our political, material, moral and scientific development will receive a new impetus.

In short, Kolbe was convinced that "Prussia's victory signifies freedom and free development in every direction."^[6]