Freiberg is a rather old city. When the lead ores were found, the count Otto the Rich had miners from the Hartz brought in, who established a settlement which was already called Freiberg in 1218. The count's memory is honed by a monument that stands in the middle of the main market. It includes two bronze lions that were often ridden by tipsy students even though it was illegal. They could be easily arrested, since the police was right across the street in the ground floor of the city hall built in 1410. Mining continued until 1913, when it was found unprofitable, though supposedly Hitler started it again.

Freiberg lies 413 meters above sea level, which already at that latitude leads to a pretty raw climate. When one went down to Dresden, near Tharan and Edle Krone the climate got much milder with marvelous areas of beech forest. [229] The base rock of Freiberg is hard gneiss. This strongest of rock was criss-crossed with innumerable tunnels, whose location was mostly unknown, since over the centuries fires had often destroyed the mine plans. The Freiberg mountain area is drained through the Rothschonberger tunnel, which is almost 14 Km long. It took 33 years and 7,200,000 Mark to build. Only because mining was a state operation could such sums be obtained. During the 30 year war Freiberg was a fortress. In 1642/43 it was put under siege by Sweden. Only a few towers and wall fragments are still left from the fortress ring. At my time the old Tortensson linden tree, from under which the old Swedish general directed the siege, was still standing. The Swedes were unable to starve Freiberg and had to leave, because the miners used tunnels known only to them to supply the city with food and water. [230]

The closer surroundings of Freiberg could not be compared to those of Heidelberg, however there were plenty of places for excursions and walks; Dresden was easy to reach, also the sandstone mountains, so I felt quite well the three years in Freiberg. The people there were Saxons from the ore mountains, often with a strong dialect, but we got along well. The Bergacademie was founded in 1766. There always were some prominent scholars among the teachers, though naturally not all were prominent. Many of its students became prominent later. Accounting for all of them would not be interesting, but at my time the best known were Werner Weisbach in mineralogy, Richter and Winkler in chemistry, Ledebur in iron smelting. While I was there I thought most highly of Kolbeck in Mineralogy. At that time Freiberg was a university good in mine construction, analytical chemistry, iron smelting, mineralogy, assaying [probierkunde], metallography and [231] geology. It was less good, or outright bad, in the engineering arts. Mechanics, machine design, electro-technology, structural engineering, were hardly nurtured.

The student body was an odd collection. It was the only university in Germany where foreigners were in the majority and Germans in the minority. Most foreigners were from Russia, the rest from various countries of the whole world; Japanese, Chileans, Australians, Canadians, were all represented. On the old building plaques were attached with the names of famous great who had been students. Among them were Korner, Humboldt, though I could not find Lomonosow, the Russian poet and polymath. The german students were organized in fraternities or student associations. The informal student associations were not very significant. Most of the Balts were with the north-landers, Swedes, Finns, [232] in the North club. Russians and English made their own unions. There was a lot of heavy drinking and fighting, but on the whole people worked hard since there was no other way at a technical university. The professors had simple salaries, no lecture fees, the salaries were meager enough. These were improved from two sources. First, every foreigner had to pay a special fee of 200 mark; with 250 foreigners that added 50,000 mark to the treasury. Second, there was a mineral warehouse in the school with a mineral business, originally founded to provide students with minerals, ore samples, rocks and fossils for their studies. It had become a large international business that obtained specimens from all over the world, and supplied all museums in the world with specimens or even complete collections. The business realized a net annual profit of 40,000 marks that also went into the academy treasury. [233] The school was very interested in the attendance of foreigners, and caused them no difficulties in admission. It was said jokingly that a luggage ticket would get you admission. The examinations were also easy, and some graduated who could not put a german sentence together, and when it came to other knowledge various eyes were closed. They got their record [dreierattest] marked as passed. What they did with their diplomas in the Australian bush did not concern the school. I know of some friends who, after passing the diploma exam, went to Tomsk in Siberia to get a Russian diploma. There was such astonishment at their ignorance that their diplomas were assumed to be counterfeit. [234]

When I came to Freiberg I had no idea that Freiberg would determine the direction of the rest of my life. Had I graduated from the chemistry department in Riga, I would have ended up somewhere in Russia in a factory, involved with dyes, sugar, cement, etc. Freiberg pointed me in the direction of my inner inclination to science: chemical mineralogy, and to the world - I wanted out of Europe. Easter 1906 was the first time I was far from the family Seder table at passover, and I wrote home with longing and homesickness. I could see clearly that my life would take me much further from home. I had no idea whether it would be south America or china, or that it would take another twenty years, or that in the meantime I would experience the first world war, my mother's death, and so many other things.

When I left Riga I received two letters of recommendation from my mineralogy teacher, Prof. Doss, one for Kolbeck the mineralogist, and Beck, the Geologist at Freiberg. [235] I did not deliver the letters, but Kolbeck and Beck heard from Doss about my arrival, and I was requested by friends to present the letters. So I came into a close relationship, especially with Kolbeck to whom I have been bound with deep friendship ever since.

None of us could have predicted that I would name the first new mineral I discovered Kolbeckite, and that Rhamdor, with the cooperation of Kolbeck, would rename it Herzenbergite. At any rate, on page 336 of the 11th edition of Klockmann"s textbook of mineralogy, is found sulfur-tin, Herzenbergite, Kolbeckite. I know of no other case where a teacher and a student were simultaneously honored through the same mineral.

The lectures in mineralogy were not required for me [mir geschenkt]. and the practicum I made up, and that was always a feast, a high, a contest. Determinative mineralogy became a sport in Freiberg, and I came into the front rank with very little effort. The same conditions that made us Jews into good Physicians for centuries [236] made the ability to observe quickly and sharply, and just as quickly to diagnose what was observed, and to unite them to a completed picture, must also have made for good mineralogists. But it turns out that few Jews have dedicated themselves to mineralogy, in comparison to chemistry, medicine, and science.

I developed a very lively interest in mineralogy in Freiberg, and with an equally lively interest started collecting, with a
passion without which I could not have made the purchases I made with a monthly budget of 100 mark, such as [Rotgultigerz] and Argyrodite, which fitted in a match-box, but used up my funds for a month. One could afford it in Freiberg, because as a student there one had unlimited credit. There was lots of borrowing at the tailor, book-dealer, and mineral dealer. People let one have anything on credit, and suffered hardly any losses, because the engineer diploma was not delivered until debts had been settled. Since examination dates were fixed, [237] the creditors would turn in their bills beforehand, and since one could not get far without a diploma one had to pay everything before one could leave. I worked hard in all subjects. I did not think of mineralogy as an end in itself. After a year I completed the preliminary exams, then the pressure started towards the final exams. A prerequisite for the final exam was proof of 150 work days in mill, mine, or factory. One used every opportunity to visit a workplace, since every day was counted. Vacations were preferred for this activity. I only had the vacations of 1907 and 1908 left, and the latter would be short since one had to do the diploma work then. In 1907 mother came to Marienbad for the cure; I went to her for a brief visit. She lived and ate in the hotel, and gave me two crowns every day for lunch. In Marienbad (also Karlsbad) the gem polishers C. W. Kessler were holding an exhibition of polished precious and half-precious stones for the season. A giant show window glinted in all colors. Every year [238] there were enough rich, exotic cure guests who could afford this splendor. I admired the window, then would go in to buy some small amethysts with my two crowns of lunch money, for which I could thoroughly examine everything in the inner room. Out of this two-crown business a friendship with Kesslers developed that lasted for 40 years, and would only now be interrupted by Hitler and the war. The summer of 1907 came closer, and I still had no practical work experience. The Germans got their positions without difficulty. Also, the mining and smelting students were easily placed; these fields knew no secrets. In contrast, for foreign students in metallurgy there were hardly any opportunities to find placement. Only students who belonged to fraternities would be placed by their alumni. Finally I received permission from the copper smelter in Sulitjelma, Norway, to do my practice there.

That was a happy accomplishment. Father [239] gave permission and the travel money. A student friend, Ivan Bredichin from Nishnetagilsk in the Urals, had gotten a place at Sulitjelma also, and so we left at the end of July. We thought ourselves well supplied with travel money, and went through Copenhagen, Helsingborg, then Roros to visit a copper smelter there, on to Trondheim, where a ship was to take us to Bodo. I had lots of photo equipment with me, and for some incomprehensible reason my violin, which I could not play. Neither of us knew the land or the people, I had studied Norwegian for three months, and could read fluently, but whenever I opened my mouth people promptly answered in german. Unacquainted with land and customs, we stopped in a modern hotel in Trondheim, instead of a Norwegian pension. We needed to wait several days for the ship taking us north, with the result that when we got on board our travel money was almost gone. The trip to Bodo took two days, [240] and due to lack of money we could not afford the ships meals, but only a butter and bread platter and some packs of cigarettes. So we made what is usually a marvelous trip through the north landscape with very mixed feelings. Then we arrived in Bodo. The hand luggage stood next to us on the quay in the rain. We were hungry and frozen, had no money, and no idea how to get to our copper smelter in Sulitjelma, which was supposed to be rather inland towards Sweden.

Rescue came in a strange way. There were many people standing on the quay, seamen and city dwellers. Then I noticed a seaman in a yellow oil-coat on whose cap there was the usual blue pennant, and within a circle with a cross underneath in gold. This was the ancient symbol for the planet Venus, and also the metallurgical symbol for the element copper. I figured [241] that blue-yellow meant Sweden, and the Venus symbol meant copper, so the man must have some connection with Sulitjelma, and I asked him how to get there. These words worked like magic, and we did not know what to make of the resulting events. Sailors hurried to pick up our luggage and bought us on board a wonderful steam yacht "Orion". We were settled in the salon and provided with refreshments and cigarettes. We did not quite know why it was happening to us, but we let it happen. The puzzle would soon be cleared up, but the magic would remain. It did not take long and an elderly couple was brought into the salon. We introduced ourselves, he was a german mining engineer, director of the Siemens copper mines and smelters in Kedabeg in the Caucasus, his wife a born Russian. We were happy to have found such pleasant travel company. We chatted, enjoyed [242] a princely mid-day dinner, and had a wonderful trip to Sulitjelma. The yacht and the reception were intended for the director, but the seaman thought we were expected guests. We did not take offense, and when we arrived in Sulitjelma we were not the poor beggar students with empty purses, but belonged with the Russian director, and automatically participated in all festivities in his honor. We lived in the engineer house at the eastern end of the long wall [langwand] where the smelter stood.

The director Knudsen, called the king of Sulitjelma, had invented a new smelting process for converting sulfur containing copper ores directly from raw ore into copper, which was done nowhere else. It also did not work in Sulitjelma. Instead of obtaining the copper in the Knudsen furnace, the molten charge was poured out onto an iron platform, [243] the cooled mass was smelted in a blast furnace into copper stone [Kupferstein], and the latter was then blown [verblasen] into black copper [schwartzkupfer] in a converter. It was a costly process, and all in all a big game by a great insane fool. In the summer of 1907 the great copper crash happened in USA. The copper price fell so much that the playing in Fineidet had to stop. The copper recovery was discontinued [eingestellt] and only the copper ore was recovered and shipped to Helsingborg. But while we were up there we did not notice anything of the crisis. The smelter interested me very little. I diligently took photos, read and studied Norwegian, so that when I left I could speak Norwegian fluently. We spent a lot of time with the two Norwegian engineers and their families, went on excursions - once to a Lap settlement with thousands of reindeer. Nowhere else in the world have I met people as friendly and hospitable as the Norwegian. It was a very nice time, and in October [244] the departure was difficult. I would not have wanted to spend the winter there. Sulitjelma lies north of the Arctic circle, at first we lived under the midnight sun, but in winter one used artificial light for three uninterrupted months, and the snow started in September. Since then I have often tried to write, but never got a reply, except for the smelter chief Westly, who once looked me up in Hamburg after the 1st world war.

Back in Freiberg my studies went along in the accustomed way. For us metallurgists the most important subjects were analytical chemistry and metallurgy. The former interested me more, due to my earlier studies in Konigsberg, Riga and Heidelberg I knew some areas better than my colleagues. In the lab, in the old rooms where Clemens Winkler taught and worked, old vaulted halls, with low ceilings, without ventilation but pregnant with tradition, since there it was that Indium [245] was discovered by Richter, and the Germanium predicted by Mendeleev was discovered by Winkler, we worked the whole afternoon, and in the last year also mornings.

Brunck, Winckler's son-in-law, a Bavarian artillery officer, dominated everything inconsiderately with his gruff manner. I had three collisions with him. I was the advising center [beratende mittelpunkt] , especially among my Russian colleagues. We usually spoke Russian among ourselves, to which Limmer, the assistant, took offense. He complained to Brunk, who shouted at me "At home you can speak Russian or Hebrew, here you have to speak german!" I had gotten used to anti-Semitic barbs from my german teachers in the Realschule in Libau, Russian teachers could never be accused of such tactlessness, at most they would take one aside and try to convert them to Greek orthodox belief. So I was not very offended and we continued speaking Russian, though more carefully. The deeper meaning did not come to me until later, during the first world war, where I realized that every german is at heart an anti-Semite, and enemy of Jews, [246], which is not surprising since the people, in their fairy-tales and ways of speaking, were guided into anti-Semitism, probably since the meddle ages; typically the most extreme were those who never in their lives had contact with a Jew.

The second collision with Brunck concerned reproduction of lecture notes [vorlesungs-notizen]. Brunck did not hand out a textbook. We were required to work according to his instructions. Some friends stenographed the lectures, and then we had a manual typed with five carbons. Errors were naturally abundant, but it still provided support. The typing costs were transferred to the 6 copies. Brunck found out about it and was furious; he tried to make a big thing out of it, first we had stolen his copyright, second, it was full of errors that embarrassed him. I succeeded in calming him down, and get the issue back into the trifle that it was all along. I had the third fight [247] shortly before the analytical lab examination. In Freiberg I was always wearing a miner's smock [kittel], the centuries old traditional german miner's uniform. First it was comfortable, second it was cheap. Professors Kolbeck, Beck, and some of my friends also wore them. In the lab we were not allowed to wear white coats, another whim of Brunck's. When Professor Gohring once spilled some sulfuric acid on my suit coat, I had had enough, and wore my miner's smock to work in the lab. During my work there I had analyzed around a dozen substances. These analyses mostly turned out very badly, since such an analysis dragged on for about a month, and I was more occupied with the work of my friends than my own. Then, just before the end of the course, Brunck came to me and declared that my analyses were worthless, that he thought I was a miner (a dig at my uniform), he would give me another analysis, a coal analysis, and if this one also turned out bad, he would not allow me into the exam. However it turned out very well, my exam analysis also turned out well, and finally, having forgotten the old resentments, in 1938 I described the zinc sulfide gel from Cercapuquio in Peru and named it Brunckite in his honor. Brunck, who was emeritus in Freiberg at the time, was very pleased, and only then gave out [published] his textbook on weight analysis. Among his whims was the rule that one could only smoke cigars in the lab - he claimed that cigarettes would cause incorrect alkali amounts, and pipes made one look too much like hand workers.

I had less luck with my diploma work. I was the only one who was assigned not a pure metallurgical task, but a more chemical one. An ore that first was to be roasted into sulfuric acid, then the remainder was to be leached to recover its copper and silver content. I solved the assignment to the best of my knowledge and ability. The main thing was the sulfuric acid factory, therefore [249] the evaluation was not done by the metallurgy professor, Schiffner, who was present as a formality, but by associate professor of chemistry Goring, who would have preferred that I had copied several hundred more pages from Lunge"s "Sulfuric acid manufacture". So I did not get the highest grade for my diploma work, only good instead of excellent, but it never did me any harm. So, in September 1908 I became Diplomate Metallurgical Engineer.

In Freiberg I always lived on the nun street [Nonnengasse]. After the first few months I moved with my friend Jaque Chose, from a Libau Jewish patrician family, to Frau Anna Liebscher. We lived there until the final exam. The entrance was on nun street, but the three windows of our living room looked out on the upper market [obermarkt]; each of us also had a bedroom. Many friends, especially Russians, but also some English circulated [verkehrten] at our place. We were the closest of friends, sharing all joys and sorrows, especially the food packages which would occasionally bring us tidbits from our homes in Libau. [249]

We took our exams at the same time. Then Chose went to Russia where he got a position in Donjez-Becken. During the first world war we naturally became separated. After the war we met in Berlin a few times, but the old friendship was not [kiltete nicht] there any more. Even earlier I lost touch with my earlier Russian colleagues. Of all the friendships of that time, the only ones still left are with "the little prince" - Server Bey Atabecow Koblianski, a mohammedan from Georgia (Gruzinskaya Republica) [grusier]; Ernst Zimmer, a german left socialist, and Willy Hirsch, a Jew from Augsburg. We all took our exams in 1908, all three of them as mining engineers.

Server Bey Atabekow came from an old Georgian [grusinischen] family. His father was a general in the Russian service, and was one of the largest, richest, landowners in the Caucasus, in the area of Achalzych. Server was the [251] only son, the rest only daughters. On his estate lived, and died of tuberculosis, the younger brother of Nicholas II, Georgi Alexandrowitz, who, before the birth of Alexei was the successor to the Russian throne. At the funeral of the successor, Servers's father caught cold, and soon died of pneumonia. Server was now prince and heir, rich in lands as large as the kingdom of saxony, but always short of ready cash. He finished Freiberg, went on studying in Germany and Switzerland; he wanted to be versed in several fields in hope that he could do most of the management of his estates by himself. Then the first world war came, Georgia, the home of Josef Stalin became a Soviet republic, Server lost several estates, and fled with his mother and sisters to Turkey, where he held a low paying position as an engineer with which he just managed to make ends meet [sich schlecht und recht durchschlug]. Of Zimmer and Hirsch I will say more later.

All others, Germans, English, Norwegian, disappeared from my horizon within the first few years after Freiberg. [252] There we were, in almost daily contact with people for three years, had worked together, and yet it was no different from an acquaintance on a short ship voyage - one has barely landed and all is forgotten and vanished [verschollen]. So long as one was in Freiberg one was invited to homes of professors, but one always remained the outsider. I was a frequent visitor with one family, where my friend Chose had introduced me. This was an engineer, Armand Leroux, who died in 1941 at the age of 80. His father was Belgian, who had enrolled in the Royal Bavarian service as a mining engineer. Leroux then married in Bavaria, and came to Freiberg. He had five sons and one daughter. He was a good elderly friend to us, and enthusiastic mineral collector. They were strict Catholics, thus in arch-Lutheran Freiberg they did not have much social contact. The children grew up under my eyes, and the friendship lasted for a long time. Now the young ones are all nazified [vernazit], and since Hitler the death announcement of the father was the only news. [253]

Of all colleagues [comilitonen] of my Freiberg time, one whom I hardly knew at the time because I arrived when he was in final exams, was to have the greatest influence on my later life. I saw him frequently, but heard even more about him, since already in his student time legends about him were developing among the students and professors. That was Moritz Hochschild, my present boss, Dr. Mauricio Hochschild. He came from small Jewish cattle merchants in Biblis on the Rhein. He studied at the expense of his uncle, the banker Hirsch in London. He impressed the mining academy with the strength of his personality and his nature. Tall and good looking, generous, he traveled to Italy, Spain, Russia on vacations, and brought back valuable collections that he donated to the school. During the great inflation time he helped the school very generously, as well as his professor Dr. Ing. Tifel.

So now Freiberg was over. I had a small part of the inheritance from my mother, [254] with which I was able to pay my debts at the tailor, bookseller, and mineral dealer. Since I needed the money immediately, Uncle Jacob in Lodz advanced the amount to me in cash [wechsel], which father was not to see but came across anyway, for which he bitterly reproached me about lack of trust. But father could never stay angry at me. It was usual in Freiberg that the best graduates would remain as assistants for a couple of years as a basis for a scientific career before entering into practice. I had counted on such a position, but was disappointed not to get it. However, the geologist Beck asked me to see him, and told me that Privy Counselor Rinne in Kiel was wishing for a mineralogical assistant, did I want the job? It would pay 100 Mk a month, but I would have the opportunity to get my Doctorate in a short time. I had nothing else [255] in prospect, father agreed, since one could not live in Kiel on 100 Mk per month, and so I packed my books, minerals, and other belongings and moved to Kiel in January 1909.
 
In such an odd way the Bergacademie in Freiberg would become my alma mater.
 
[Freiberg Diploma]
 
Back to Top        Back to content             Next page: Kiel