1. Götz von Selle, Die Georg-August-Universität zu Göttingen, 1737-1937 (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1937); Charles E. McClelland, State, Society, and University in Germany, 1700-1914 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980); and R. Steven Turner, "University Reformers and Professorial Scholarship in Germany, 1760-1806," in L. Stone, ed., The University in Society , 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1974), 2 , 495-531. [BACK]

2. See Selle, pp. 261-281. [BACK]

3. Cited without reference by Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, 1840-1945 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969), p. 27. [BACK]

4. See Selle, p. 281. [BACK]

5. Charles E. McClelland, "Die deutschen Hochschullehrer als Elite, 1815-1850," in Klaus Schwabe, ed., Deutsche Hochschullehrer als Elite (Boppard: Boldt, 1988), pp. 27-53 (on p. 43-53). [BACK]

6. Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart , 2d ed., 4 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1930), 1123, s.v. "Pfarrer." [BACK]

7. G. W. Kolbe's name does not appear in Götz von Selle, ed., Die Matrikel der Georg-August-Universität zu Göttingen (Hildesheim: Lax, 1937). He

is briefly described in obituaries of Carl Kolbe: Vierteljährliche Nachrichten von Kirchen- und Schulsachen , 1870, pp. 154-155, and P. Meyer, ed., Die Pastoren der Landeskirchen Hannovers und Schaumburg-Lippes seit der Reformation , 2 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1941-1942), 1 , 250, and 2 , 116 and 414. His residence and profession in 1808, 1813, and 1816 are cited in brothers Carl, G. C. A., and F. Kolbe's matriculation entries at the University of Göttingen (Selle, Matrikel , 1 , 476, 575, and 766). Information on his situation in 1821 is contained in the dedication to Carl's book (see n. 14). I wish to thank Dr. Günther Beer, Göttinger Museum der Chemie, and Herr Karl-Heinz Bielefeld, director of the Kirchenkreisarchiv Göttingen, for helpful correspondence and for assistance during my visit to their institutions in 1990. [BACK]

8. See sources cited in the previous note. I thank Herr Leenders of the Landeskirchliches Archiv Hannover for a report on the content of Carl Kolbe's correspondence with his Konsistorium. The Göttingen Gymnasium has no records dating to the early nineteenth century, and the university has only a Matrikel of students. Auguste Hempel's full name is given in the marriage record (written by the pastor, her groom) in the Elliehäuser Kirchenbuch, held by the Kirchenkreisarchiv Göttingen; her precise birth and death dates are on her gravestone in Lutterhausen. [BACK]

9. On Hempel, see A. C. P. Callisen, ed., Medicinisches Schriftsteller-Lexicon , 28 (Copenhagen, 1840), 466-467; August Hirsch, ed., Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragendsten Aerzte , 3 (Vienna, 1886), 146; Selle, Göttingen , p. 223; Neuer Nekrolog der Deutschen , 12 (1834), pt. 1 (Weimar: Voigt, 1836), pp. 194-195. The marriage record of 1816 referred to in the previous note indicates that Louise Hempel was then deceased. [BACK]

10. Hermann Ost, HK, 118; Ernst von Meyer, HK, 418-420; Georg Lockemann, HK, 124. Ost and Meyer were students of Kolbe; moreover, Ost was his nephew and Meyer his son-in-law; they doubtless had good documentary and oral sources for their biographies. As for Lockemann (1871-1959), he grew up, died, and is buried in the neighboring village to Stöckheim, where Kolbe's family lived from 1826 to 1840. Although when Kolbe died Lockemann was but a Gymnasium student, their lives touched repeatedly even if indirectly: in the early 1890s Lockemann studied at the Hanover Technische Hochschule, where Ost taught chemistry; his father owned (and in the mid-1890s he worked as a chemist at) the same salt-brine works that Kolbe used to visit as a boy; and in 1898 he became assistant to Kolbe's former assistant Ernst Beckmann. Ost was still alive when Lockemann, a prolific historian of chemistry, was writing his biography of Kolbe, and Ost may have shared sources with him. Certainly he conferred with Kolbe's daughter Johanna von Meyer and used documents in her possession: Lockemann, "Aus dem Briefwechsel yon Hermann Kolbe," Zeitschrift für angewandte Chemie , 41 (1928), 623. In any case, subsequent biographies of Kolbe are all derivative from these three, as this one is in part. See also Grete Ronge, "Hermann Kolbe," Neue deutsche Biographie , 12 (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1980), 446-451, and Claus Priesner, "Georg Lockemann," Neue deutsche Biographie , 15 (1987), 6-7. [BACK]

11. Most of the information in this paragraph is derived from conversation

and correspondence with Karl Heinz Thiel, retired pastor of the Elliehausen congregation, to whom I offer my thanks. See also n. 6. [BACK]

12. Franz Dehme, Das Kirchspiel Stöckheim im Leinetal (Northeim: Röhrs, 1928), pp. 7, 34, and 46-47; Stöckheimer Kirchenbuch. I thank Pastor Peter Dortmund for his help, especially in directing me to these sources. [BACK]

13. The information in this paragraph comes from the Lutterhausen Kirchenbuch and from conversations with Pastor Hermann Charbonnier, for whose kind assistance I am grateful. [BACK]

14. Carl Kolbe, Handbuch zum sittlich-religiösen Jugendunterrichte über den Hannoverischen Landes-Katechismus (Göttingen, 1822). Relevant information on Lutheranism in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Hanover may be found in Johannes Meyer, Kirchengeschichte Niedersachsens (Göttingen, 1939), pp. 183-188 and 191-197, and in Die Religion , 3d ed., 3 , 67-72, and 5 , 271-306. [BACK]

15. Ost, HK, p. 119. [BACK]

16. Frankland, Sketches from the Life of Edward Frankland (London: Spottiswoode, 1902), pp. 44-50. [BACK]

17. C. A. Russell, Lancastrian Chemist: The Early Years of Sir Edward Frankland (Milton Keynes: Open Univ. Press, 1986). Professor Russell has emphasized this point to me in conversations and correspondence. [BACK]

18. HSA, 16. Rep. VI, Kl. 8, Nr. 25, first leaf written and dated in Kolbe's hand. Kolbe's initial problems with his future father-in-law were related in a letter to his friend and publisher Eduard Vieweg, 25 March 1853, VA 51. [BACK]

19. Lockemann, "Ernst Beckmann," Berichte , 61 (1928), 87-130A (on p. 92). Beckmann, former assistant to Kolbe, was Wislicenus' guide; he told the same story, without the religious commentary, in his biography of Wislicenus: ibid., 37 (1904), 4861-4946 (on pp. 4887-4888). [BACK]

20. Kolbe, Das chemische Laboratorium der Universität Leipzig (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1872), xxxix-lx; Kolbe, "Zur Erinnerung an Justus von Liebig," JpC , 116 (1873), 428-458 (on p. 441). [BACK]

21. Kolbe to Vieweg, 6 September 1853, VA 57. Zeller and Kolbe later had a falling-out. Zeller's book was published in 1854, but not by Vieweg. [BACK]

22. For a discussion of the status of the Bildungsbürgertum in Germany during the nineteenth century, with citations to the recent secondary literature, see R. Steven Turner, "The Bildungsbürgertum and the Learned Professions in Prussia, 1770-1830: The Origins of a Class," Histoire Sociale—Social History , 13 (1980), 105-135; and K. Jarausch, Students, Society, and Politics in Imperial Germany (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1982), pp. 81-89, 120-126. [BACK]

23. Fritz Ringer, "Das gesellschaftliche Profil der deutschen Hochschullehrerschaft 1871-1933," in Schwabe, ed., Deutsche Hochschullehrer , pp. 93-104; McClelland, State, Society, and University , p. 96. [BACK]

24. In an undated letter whose scientific content requires a date of 1850, Hofmann consoled Kolbe over an unstated familial death, which must have been Emma's (SSDM 3553); her birth and death dates are given on her headstone, positioned between those of her parents. On Georg Ost, see P. Meyer, Pastoren , 1 , 251; also Bertha Ost to Frankland, I April 1885,

Frankland Archive 01.04.1603, who informed Frankland that her husband died in 1875. [BACK]

25. On (Johann) Carl Friedrich Kolbe, see HSA, 305a A IV, b. 2, Nr. 65, and 305a II, Nr. 11, 13 November 1851; Kolbe to Bertha and Georg Ost, 4 and 17 October and 10 and 16 December 1870, SSDM 6792, 6793, 6794, and 6795. On Kolbe's renovation of the three graves, see his letter to Hermann Ost, 25 September 1878, SSDM 6801. [BACK]

26. See letters from Kolbe to Vieweg of 30 December 1851, 20 October 1855, 30 March 1861, and 31 August 1865, VA 35, 110, 167, and 234. In the first of these letters, Kolbe wrote, "My father is now, thank goodness, out of danger, but he is still so weak that he cannot yet read again, and therefore needs company to entertain him. He appears to appreciate it when I stay by him, and so I intend to hold out here as long as my time permits." [BACK]

27. Kolbe to Vieweg, 8 February 1865, VA 217. [BACK]

28. Meyer, HK, p. 418; Lockemann, HK, pp. 124-125; Ost, HK, pp. 118-119. The information on Kolbe's residences in Göttingen was kindly provided by Dr. Günther Beer, director of the Museum der Göttinger Chemie. The Knesebecks were a well-known family of the German nobility, with branches in Hanover and Prussia, but I have not been able to learn more about this particular Knesebeck. Selle (see n. 1, p. 262) reported that Knesebeck's father had written a panegyric on the Hanoverian nobility, which had made him highly unpopular in 1831, but the political climate was very different by 1837. [BACK]

29. Ost, HK, p. 119. [BACK]

30. Wilhelm Ebel, ed., Die Matrikel der Georg-August-Universität zu Göt-tingen (1837-1900) (Hildesheim: Lax, 1974), pp. 8 and 56; UAG, Abgangszeugnis Nr. 374 (for Hermann Kolbe, dated 22 October 1842). [BACK]

31. It was Berzelius who broached the subject of the "Göttinger Sieben" in their correspondence: Berzelius to Wöhler, 1 January 1838, in Wallach, BWB , 2 , 1. Berzelius agreed with the dissidents' sentiments but disapproved of their action; Wöhler's only concerns were the possible impact on attendance at the university and the difficulty of finding a worthy successor to Weber: Wöhler to Berzelius, 13 January 1838, ibid., 4-5. [BACK]

32. Wöhler, "Darstellung des Ameisenäthers," Annalen , 35 (1840), 238. [BACK]

33. Kolbe, "Über die Zusammensetzung des Getreidefuselöls," Annalen , 41 (1842), 53-56; Wöhler to Berzelius, 25 July 1841, in Wallach, BWB , 2 , 254; Berzelius, JB for 1842, 23 (1844), 456-457; Meyer, HK, p. 419. [BACK]

34. Lockemann, HK, pp. 125-126; 200 Hessian thalers were equivalent to about $150 in the United States at that time. [BACK]

35. John Tyndall, New Fragments (New York: Appleton, 1892), p. 238; Tyndall gives a fascinating description of his period of study in Marburg (pp. 232-243). [BACK]

36. Kolbe related the poisoning incident in a letter to Max von Pettenkofer, 27 January 1884, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Pettenkoferiana II 2. He had been assisting Bunsen in an hour-long combustion experiment over a charcoal fire, but fortunately had been more resistant to the effects of the carbon monoxide. Bunsen stressed what a " true friend " (Bunsen's emphasis) Kolbe had always been, in a letter to Hermann Ost, 14 January 1885, SSDM 3623. [BACK]

37. Heinrich Debus, Erinnerungen an Robert Wilhelm Bunsen (Kassel: Fisher, 1901), pp. 10-21; C. Glück, student notebook, UBM, Mscr. 501 and 502. The notes reveal a striking Berzelian orientation, although Bunsen also mentioned Gay-Lussac, Thenard, Liebig, Wöhler, and Dumas in the organic introduction. Bunsen also gave special emphasis to Kolbe's work on conjugated acids, carried out in his lab (ibid., esp. Mscr. 502, pp. 1-22 and 122-185). [BACK]

38. Mulder, trans. Kolbe, Versuch einer allgemeinen physiologischen Chemie , vol. 1 (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1844-1846). [BACK]

39. Many passages in his letters to Berzelius from 1832 to 1840 (Wallach, BWB , 1 , 381, 497, 520, and 604; and 2 , 71n., 113, and 164) suggest that Wöhler was indeed becoming uncomfortable with the theoretically labile field of organic chemistry. [BACK]

40. Wöhler to Berzelius, 26 July 1842, in Wallach, BWB , 2 , 304; Berzelius to Wöhler, 9 August 1842, Wallach, BWB , 2 , 317-318. In the second formula, Berzelius actually wrote double prime marks over the carbon to indicate the presence of two sulfur atoms, and used superscripts rather than subscripts. [BACK]

41. Wöhler to Liebig, 7 August 1842, in Hofmann, LWB , 1 , 203; Wöhler to Berzelius, 16 September 1842, in Wallach, BWB , 2 , 326. [BACK]

42. Berzelius to Wöhler, 7 October 1842, in Wallach, BWB , 2 , 333; Berzelius, JB for 1842, 23 (1844), 77-80. The + symbol here indicates combination of radicals in a compound; Berzelius later substituted a centered dot or period to avoid ambiguity (see examples below). [BACK]

43. Heinrich [sic] Kolbe, "Über die Einwirkung des Chlors auf Schwefelkohlenstoff," Annalen , 45 (1843), 41-46; Berzelius, JB for 1842, 23 (1844), 77-80. During this period when Liebig was feuding with Berzelius, he refused to obtain barred letters for Berzelius and Wöhler, and simply doubled the number of atoms for barred letters. [BACK]

44. In a letter to Wöhler of 25 August 1843, Berzelius mentioned a communication he had received from Kolbe (in Wallach, BWB , 2 , 428). [BACK]

45. Berzelius, JB for 1842, 23 (1844), 77-80 and 456-457; JB for 1844, 25 (1846), 90-96; JB for 1845, 26 (1847), 77-93 and 405-412; Berzelius to Wöhler, 21 January 1845 and 27 February 1846 (in Wallach, BWB , 2 , 520-521 and 574-575); Berzelius to Bunsen, 24 January 1845 and 13 February 1846 (transcriptions made in 1851 and preserved HSA, 16. Rep. VI, Kl. 8, Nr. 25, folio 19). [BACK]

46. The letter is quoted in Ost, HK , p. 120, and Kolbe expressed his veneration of it in JpC , 131 (1881), 309. [BACK]

47. For general background on the theoretical development of organic chemistry in the early nineteenth century, see A. J. Ihde, Development of Modern Chemistry (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), chaps. 4-8; J. R. Partington, A History of Chemistry , vol. 4 (London: Macmillan, 1964); C. A. Russell, The History of Valency (Leicester: Leicester Univ. Press, 1971); and A. J. Rocke, Chemical Atomism in the Nineteenth Century (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1984). The meanings and historical origins of "two-volume" and "four-volume" formulas, and other notational and conventional matters important for the following discussion, are described in the latter work. [BACK]

48. Johnston to Charles Daubeny, 1 June 1840, Daubeny Papers, Magdalen

College Oxford, cited in R. F. Bud, "The Discipline of Chemistry: The Origins and Early Years of the Chemical Society of London," Ph.D. dissertation (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1980), p. 124. [BACK]

49. S. C. H. Windler [F. Wöhler], "Über das Substitutionsgesetz und die Theorie der Typen," Annalen , 33 (1840), 308-310. [BACK]