Acquiring a Journal
During the 1840s and 1850s, Liebig's monthly Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie dominated the field of academic chemistry in Germany. (Poggendorff accepted principally physical and physical-chemical papers for his Annalen der Physik und Chemie , and Erdmann's Journal für praktische Chemie was oriented toward technology and consisted mostly of reprinted articles.) When Liebig went to Munich, he gave over the effective editorship to Hermann Kopp (though Liebig's and Wöhler's names remained on the title page), and Kopp took those duties with him when he transferred to Heidelberg. Kopp was very conscientious, but his authors grew increasingly restive at his dilatory publication schedule. This was all the more galling to active researchers in the fast-moving and increasingly cutthroat field of organic chemistry, where notices could be published by French rivals in the biweekly Comptes rendus or by English rivals in the weekly Chemical Gazette in a fraction of the time. When Erlenmeyer took over Kekulé's Zeitschrift für Chemie in 1860, he reconstituted it as a fast publication outlet for original short papers, preliminary communications, foreign notices, and republished pieces, loosely patterned after the Comptes rendus .[73]
Erlenmeyer's Zeitschrift might well have given the Liebig-Kopp Annalen stiff competition were it not for Erlenmeyer's unwise editorial practices. For one thing, he used the journal indiscriminately as an outlet for his own profuse and often incautious theoretical speculations. As Beilstein later put it to Butlerov, Erlenmeyer's "occasional good thoughts were simply drowned in the great amount of sauce that he poured over everything. I finally just stopped reading his long essays..."[74]
More seriously as far as the commercial success of the endeavor was
concerned, Erlenmeyer increasingly began to write critical editorial notes, some of them lengthy and some quite sarcastic, and he occasionally used exclamation points and question marks inserted in parentheses into his authors' printed manuscripts. He did this even with his friends and theoretical comrades-in-arms; his hitherto close personal and professional relationship with Kekulé was nearly destroyed by these practices.[75] Ultimately they destroyed his journal.[76]
It should be noted that Erlenmeyer's critical style of editorship conformed to a well-established German tradition, in science as in other fields. As far as chemistry is concerned, Berzelius' Jahresberichte (a foreign product in origin but having its widest promulgation and greatest influence in Germany) and Liebig's Annalen of the 1830s might be mentioned as examples of periodicals having a principal goal of regular critical evaluation of the literature. Moreover, both Liebig and Berzelius could be quite sharp in their judgments. But both became worn out and worn down by the strain.[77]
In March 1864 Erlenmeyer told Kolbe, who was at that time a real friend, that he had nearly decided to quit his editorship. He complained that an editor's position was inherently delicate and awkward (misslich ) and really should be performed only by a real authority in the field. Kolbe agreed, only adding that the editor must be an elder authority. The forty-five-year-old chemist wrote,
Frankly, I would think that even I am too young to edit a critical journal. For years I have toyed with the idea of writing short annual reports on chemistry, more specifically of a critical character, for which those of Berzelius would serve as a model. But first I want to seek a firm foundation for myself. Perhaps in ten years, if I live to see it, I may seriously consider it.[78]
Kolbe also agreed that Erlenmeyer's critiques had hurt him and his journal and commented that the same reproach had often been made to him. He added that he had resolved to deal henceforth less with polemics, critiques, and theories and more with facts and observations, and he suggested the same course for Erlenmeyer.
Erlenmeyer did not want to give up without a fight. With Butlerov he explored the idea of transforming the Zeitschrift into a Russian journal—many of the subscribers were Russian, anyway—but Butlerov wanted none of that.[79] With Kolbe he explored the possibility of making the journal a weekly, analogous to the Chemical Gazette (now renamed, under William Crookes' editorship, the Chemical News ). Kolbe got Vieweg interested in this idea, and he even volunteered to be head editor for an interim period. However, it appears that Erlenmeyer's requested honorarium was more than Vieweg wanted to pay,
at least not before he could see what sales would be.[80] In any event, the journal was taken over, beginning in January 1865, by three younger associates of Wöhler in Göttingen: Ausserordentlicher Professor Friedrich Beilstein, Privatdozent Rudolf Fittig, and Assistent Hans Hübner, who ultimately became Wöhler's successor. Hübner became the chief editor and made a success of the second series of the Zeitschrift , more than tripling subscriptions in six years.
Kolbe was unhappy with the change. He advised Erlenmeyer to have nothing at all to do with what promised to be a "watery and colorless" journal. He was certain in 1864 that the editors would fail in a year or two, at which point Erlenmeyer could pick the enterprise up again; in the meantime they could all expect to see a good deal of "Göttinger Mist." He also advised Erlenmeyer to have nothing to do with Erdmann's Journal für praktische Chemie . This journal still had a respectable readership, which was mystifying to Kolbe, who thought the editing was extremely poor. "I hear that Erdmann has almost nothing to do with it himself, but rather leaves the editing to one of his assistants."[81]
In addition to the Annalen , the Zeitschrift , and the Journal , a fourth chemical periodical began in 1867—the Berichte of the new Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft (DCG). The DCG was founded in Berlin as a German analog of the Chemical Society or the Société Chimique, and its Berichte was at first merely a small and essentially local "proceedings of sessions" of the society. However, the deficiencies of the Annalen under Kopp's editorship as well as the explosive growth in the science of chemistry led to an explosive growth in subsequent annual volumes of the Berichte . By the early 1870s, it was beginning to serve as the periodical of choice among German chemists for rapid publication of short communications. The resulting competition forced the Zeitschrift out of business after December 1871.
Meanwhile, the general dissatisfaction with the Annalen was coming to a head. In the late 1860s, Kekulé conceived the notion of founding a companion journal for the Berichte , allowing the latter to specialize in short preliminary notes while the new periodical would publish the detailed versions of the same research at a later time—much like the relationship of the Comptes rendus to the Annales de chimie . Before Kekulé made his idea public, Kopp decided in March 1871 to retire as editor of the Annalen . Liebig asked his (and Kolbe's) former student Jacob Volhard if he would take on the day-to-day editorial work; Volhard accepted on the condition that Erlenmeyer be joint editor. This created a logistically favorable arrangement since all three men were working in Munich. Kekulé decided this was the propitious moment to let colleagues know of his plan for a new journal. The reac-
tion, however, was largely negative, since many had a sentimental attachment to the Annalen and it was thought that a new journal would kill Liebig's historic progeny. Consequently, Kekulé's project failed.[82] One of the most energetic protesters was Kolbe, who in the meantime had acquired a new journal himself, Erdmann's Journal für praktische Chemie .
Kolbe promised Erdmann on the latter's deathbed that he would complete the editing of the current volume of the journal. This placed Kolbe in an enviable position since he was the logical person for the publisher (Barth) to ask to take over in a permanent capacity. Moreover, Kolbe was aware that his friends Heinrich Vieweg and Franz Varrentrapp of Vieweg Verlag (Eduard Vieweg had suffered a stroke and was then terminally ill) were interested in principle in publishing a chemical periodical. For three weeks in October 1869, Kolbe negotiated between Barth and Vieweg for the best possible conditions. Regarding a possible new Vieweg journal, Kolbe promised the partners that he would employ "respectful criticism with as little polemics as possible." He also wanted a managing editor who would do essentially all the daily tasks (as Volhard and Erlenmeyer did for the Annalen ). He thought it likely that he could get Falkenstein to agree to Rudolf Schmitt as Erdmann's successor, who would be the perfect man for the role. He figured around 600 thalers per year for all editing honoraria sounded about right.[83]
Kolbe well knew the advantages of a personal journal, having in mind the models of Berzelius' Jahresberichte as well as Liebig's Annalen in its early years. We have seen that he had been thinking of a personal journal at least for several years before 1869. "What particularly attracts me about editing a journal," he wrote Varrentrapp,
. . . is the value it has for a large chemical laboratory to have a journal at its disposal at all times, and not to be dependent on the mercy or mood of another when it is a question of rapid publication and defense and advocacy of a viewpoint.... You know that it matters to me to have the Journal für pr. Chemie at my disposal, and that it would be very unfortunate were it to end up in the hands of another director of a large chemical institute, such as Hofmann.[84]
Negotiations with both Vieweg and Barth nearly collapsed in November, and Kolbe temporarily gave up all hopes; but in January 1870 he reached agreement with Barth to take over the Journal .[85] He was to retain the editorship until his death almost fifteen years later, and he certainly made the most of his permanent platform; but he did not, as he promised Vieweg, avoid polemics.