In the meantime Miss Mess had moved from Grindellalle 80 to Bornstrasse 14. I took off my uniform permanently, and reported to the Mineralogical institute. First I was given a vacation, and when I was ready to return to work I caught the grippe (influenza) which at that time took the lives of millions in Europe, but I withstood it without consequences, and resumed what I had interrupted in 1915. None of my friends at the institute had fallen and we continued to muddle along in Hamburg. The movement for a university in Hamburg was still active.The leader of the movement was the senator from Melle, who, until the end of the war, just as earlier, was unable to obtain a majority of the both chambers, the senate and the lower house, for his plan. [320] But both of the new chambers had a social democrat majority, and along with the left parties a decision was passed to establish the Hamburg university at the institute, and the wonderful lecture building donated by Edward Siemens. Thus was built Hamburg University, with medieval robes and faculty colors. It was even more like the middle-ages in that many professors were furiously anti-Semitic in spite of (or because) of the many professors who were Jewish. In the house of my chief, professor Gurich, it stank of Jew-hate already before the war. The four children indulged in clear anti Jewish remarks when I was invited to their house. The simple, Silesian, sexton-child-soul [Kustersohnseele] of Gurig was presumably in agreement - the children were not reprimanded. As Hamburg University was founded, there also was to be a chair of mineralogy. [321] Since 1912 I essentially led the mineralogy section, and though I was not qualified for the chair, I hoped to continue working there until I could achieve it. In the summer semester I substituted for the professor of the entire course of general and specialized chemistry. At that time the faculty election for the chair of mineralogy were held, although the faculty could vote whenever they wanted. The mineralogical institute submitted many [eine terz] names. However, open or abandoned [verwaisten] positions were reserved by the directors of the Universities of Berlin, Gottingen, and Leipzig. Gurich wrote to them and received recommendations for candidates from each, in first place a Dr. Gross whom Berlin, Gottingen and Leipzig had already agreed on.

Gross came over with glowing reports and was placed first in the line of candidates. Gurich promised that I would be third in line. That was reasonable. When the actual election came it turned out that Gurich had maliciously not placed my name on the list. [322] Many faculty members would have voted for me, in spite of my being third in line, since they knew my work for many years and appreciated me. So this opportunity was taken from me, and Gross was elected to the chair of mineralogy. I found out about it while reading the morning paper during breakfast and was naturally very upset. It could not be changed. I finished my lectures, remaining on the most friendly terms with my students. Gross was not originally a mineralogist. He got his doctorate in geology, from Rostock about the geology of the Warne valley. I found his thesis in the library of the institute and read it. The epochal summary of the work included the memorable phrase "the Warne valley is composed of an upper, middle, and lower part."  Since Gross knew no mineralogy and found no applications of geology, he was sent as assistant to Professor Rinne in Leipzig. Rinne was called there from Kiel after much horse-trading and bidding between the ministries of culture of Saxony and Prussia. [323] Saxony bid more and got Rinne, and he got funds to renovate the institute.

In 1912 Von Laue succeeded in confirming the atomic structure of crystals with X-ray diffraction. Chemists and mineralogists had been firmly convinced of atomic stucture, since one could hardly think about these fields without it. But in other sciences it was considered merely a useful hypothesis, Now it had been established in black on white and all mineralogists and crystallographers threw themselves diligently into research on the grid structures of crystals and other matter. Naturally one required a new and expensive X-ray measurement apparatus, and not all institutes could afford them. Leipzig could, and Rinne equipped himself with a wonderful institute and began working the new land. Then came the war, everyone went into the field, including Gross who soon got a brain concussion. [324] He went to Dresden to recover, married the daughter of the arsenal manager, and was declared unsuitable for war due to mental defect. Following this he returned to the institute in Leipzig, took his wife along as assistant, and had the wonderful institute all to himself. He worked diligently during the entire war, completed one project after another in the unknown field of x-ray crystallography, but published nothing, since due to his mental defect he was unable to work.

After the war ended all the work came into the light, and against the many square meters of printed paper I had nothing since I spent those years in the louse infested east. So Gross got the chair of mineralogy in Hamburg. He knew as little of mineralogy then as he did earlier. In lab practice the most hilarious scenes occurred. [325] My students had learned quite a bit from my lab practice. Once, when Mrs. Gross asked one of them about a little green crystal, he whispered "That is a pseudomorphosis of malachite from cuprite from Chessy near Lyon." These crystals are so pretty and uniquely octahedral and rombododecahedral that every beginner in mineralogy knows them from the collections. In reply to the surprised question of of Mrs. Gross, the professor's assistant, about how he had known that, he answered "We learned that in the practicum with Dr. Herzenberg."

Then the assistant went to the husband, and the following dialogue developed in front of the students: She: "do you know what this is?" he: "No, what is it?", she, proudly: "That is a pseudomorphosis of malachite from cuprite from Chessy near Lyon." He: "By God's will, from where do you know that?" She: "Mr. Meyer just told me." I realized I would not be there much longer. I consulted with father, he agreed with my view, and I resigned from the civil service effective the end of the summer semester. [326]  Had I meekly swallowed everything and stayed, I could have avoided the professorship only by suicide. I would have become professor; eventually, when I had managed to cover enough square meters of paper with print, chairman, and finally would have fallen into Hitler's people mill [menschenmmuhle]; who knows where I would be now.

Thus, in 1919, the gates of German academia shut permanently behind me. I was totally free and felt the first days of this freedom as wonderful fortune. I could go where I wanted in the mornings, the botanical garden with its morning splendor, or the fairy-tale cemetery in Ohlsdorf, or an excursion in the wonderful surroundings of Hamburg. I was not earning anything, but father helped me a bit, so I was worry free. First I went on a sort of vacation or recovery trip through all places in Germany where I had friends or relatives. Then I started with my [327] own "institute" as a consulting engineer in Hamburg.

[Business card shown here}

I had enough work to cover my expenses and to keep me from getting bored. Some of my previous students continued to work with me until their exams, among them Heiland, who later specialized in geophysical research, and after the Doctorate examination emigrated to the U. S., where he has been a professor at the mining school in Ogden, (Golden?) Colorado for many years. There were students of all ages, from China, Mexico, Brazil, and they all successfully learned to analyze ores and minerals, use the blowpipe, and know about gem-stones. [328] My collection had grown significantly since my student days through further collecting and purchase, and filled a room, which I used for teaching, with seven storage cabinets. I tried to continue my experiments with making synthetic diamonds, but it was not possible, quite apart from whether it would have been successful, or, more likely not. I had opinions of a gem expert  [edelsteingutachten], and of a few mine experts [minengutachten]. Also my friend and fellow student from Freiberg, Ernest Zimmer, (251) joined me for a year.

Zimmer came from Bamberg, from an old socialist family. He was a dear comrade, and very talented. As a student he learned Russian from Russian friends, and went to the Urals on summer vacation to practice. Soon he commanded Russian, written and spoken, so well that he could lecture in Russian on mine surveying in the mining school in Jekaterinburg. [329] Then he learned Turkish, and after completing his studies became a mining engineer at Siemens Mines Kedaberg in the Causcasus (who's director I had met in Norway in 1907) - (241). When the war broke out, being a German. he was placed in a civilian prison camp where he met Mrs. Ada Friedlander, who would become his wife and the painter Ludvig Johst, both of whom he would later introduce me to in Hamburg. When the Russian revolution started Zimmer fled Russia across the frozen Moonsund to the German troops on the Oesel island. He then went to Germany and was together with me in Hamburg for a short time. He was in south America for a brief time, then three years in the Kirgistan steppes at a Soviet copper mine, and since then with the Turkish government in Ankara  as consulting mining engineer.

As I was saying, I did not have a lot to do, which was just as well, since hardly a week went by [330] when someone did not come to visit me. The whole family paraded through Hamburg and I learned to be a tour guide. I adjusted the tours according to age and time available. If relatives stayed longer we could make day-long excursions to the Central cemetery in Ohlsdorf, Hagenbeck's animal park in Stellingen, and Blankenese. Otherwise one had to turn to the inner city and the Alster pond, taking the elevator to the tower of the St. Michael church from which one had an unforgettable view of the entire Hamburg region, and go into the tunnel under the Elba to come out on the other side. It was always very interesting for the visitors. When one went from the railway station to the town hall one first passed the natural history Museum on the left. [331] Hamburg built it after the German-French war of 1871 with its share of the five billion franks extorted by Bismark. By my time it was only a zoological institute and museum; the other natural sciences had obtained their own buildings. Amalie Dietrich still worked in this institute until her death. The meetings of the Natural science Society also took place there. Going further along the monumental Monckenbergstrasse with beautiful business buildings,  on the right side stood the Barkhof. This commercial building housed a giant cafe in the ground floor, which had a space in which stood the famous Heine monument.

I must tell you the story of this monument, having told it to so many people before you. The empress Elizabeth of Austria had a fine estate [332] on the island of Corfu, palace and achillean castle [Burg Achilleion]. Heinrich Heine was her favorite poet, so she had the Danish sculptor Hasselriis, who also made the Heine monument in the Pere Lachaisse cemetery in Paris, make a Heine monument of white marble, in which the poet sits in a suffering pose, and placed it in the Achileion. When Luccheni stabbed her in Genf in 1898 the Achileion was orphaned. In 1910 Kaiser Wilhelm II acquired it, and he was not a friend of Heine. He had the monument removed, and in its place put an imposing Achilles statue. What to do with the Heine piece [Heineleben]? They thought up the glorious idea of giving the monument to the Hamburg publisher Campes, who once printed Heine's work, as a rightful inheritor. The statue was packed in a crate, naturally a large crate, [333] since it was life size with easy chair and bulky pedestal. Campes had no idea what to do with the imperial gift, and wanted to donate it to Hamburg but did not get very far. The citizens and the senate were indignant, because Heine did not treat Hamburg nicely, but if they were to have a Heine monument they would have a new one of their own made. They had no use for hand-me-down monuments and ordered a bronze monument from Lederer, who also made the Bismark monument in Hamburg. The Achilion Heine remained in the crate; Hamburg city land was denied to him. In 1911/12 the Barkhof was built, and Campes had connections to the project; the space was intentionally built in, and Heine could now be set up on private land, where he fitted well and was a pleasure for many. [334]

After the war the Jew-hate sharpened, and the Germans could no longer stand a monument to a Jew. One morning it appeared that several fingers had been broken off a marble hand. A few weeks later the statue appeared with colorful paint poured over it. This damage could not be repaired either. Finally the poor sufferer was painted with tar. naturally the guilty were never found or punished. Next a wooden box was built around the monument and painted field-gray, so the chaste sons of the Teutons could not be hurt and angered by the sight of Heine. Then the monument was removed and set up in the Donner villa on the shore of the Elba. Hamburg set up the massive bronze by Lederer in the city park; it was not so easy to damage it, but surely the Nazis melted it down long ago. [msp 335]

After the Heine monument one continued to the town hall market. There stood the beautiful old town hall, built in the 90's in the style of the German renaissance. Directly across from it stood the Kaiser Wilhelm monument. The town hall made a dusky, gray-black impression. When it was besieged and shot at during the disturbances of 1919, the entire huge building looked as if it had been bombarded with snowballs. Each rifle bullet sprayed some of the stone off, and I discovered with surprise that the whole building was made of bright white Elaba sandstone. The dust in the air of Hamburg is mixed with plenty of coal soot from the harbor traffic, which is why all monument structures in Hamburg have taken on the same uniform gray-black color. Only Dutch brick [Backsteinklinker] (Terracotta?) withstood the effect of the dust, and in newer buildings, such as Chile Haus, Ballin Haus, which naturally were built with reinforced concrete, only Dutch brick was used for decorative cover. I wonder which of these buildings still stands after hundreds of English air attacks. [336]

From the town hall market it went over the Jungfernstieg with the world renowned Alster pavilion to the Goosemarket. The Lessing monument was there, and Lessing looked out directly on the since then renamed Schwiegerstrasse. Old Hamburg, before the world war, was the prostitution district. There were bordello streets, especially in the harbor area near the Altona border. But there also was a very elegant bordello street near the city center, across form the Lessing monument, which wended behind the State Theater, namely the Schwiegerstrasse. After the war  bordellos were banned, including on the Schwiegerstrasse, which was itself renamed "Kalkhof" and the buildings converted to offices. But during my time in Hamburg the bordellos on the Schwiegerstrasse flourished. It was not only the meeting place for Hamburg's jeunesse doree, but also some upright [ 337] family men from Hamburg and foreign countries amused themselves there, since it was one of Hamburg's tourist attractions.

I am telling you about it because a strange quirk of fate occurred there, on the Gansemarkt, between the Schwiegerstrasse and the Lessing monument. On 14 may 1912 the police found the corpse of an elderly man there. The corpse was taken to the morgue, no identification could be found, but the clothing indicated that he belonged to the highest social circles. Then the storm let loose. King Frederick the VIII of Denmark, father of the current kings of Denmark and Norway, had arrived incognito in Hamburg, as he often did, left his adjutant at the station, and gone off alone on his side trip. He was already 70 years old, and it was not good for him. Returning to the hotel he fell over dead. At that time ordinary people in Europe seldom carried [338] identification papers, not to speak of kings. So, for a long time, the king of Denmark lay unrecognized in the morgue between suicide victims, harbor corpses, and murdered prostitutes. The next day the anxious adjutant looked for the king and found the corpse of his royal master. There were attempts to hide the story, but it became a feeding frenzy for the socialist press. Very quietly a Danish war ship appeared in the harbor, and very quietly King Frederick VIII was returned to Denmark to be buried with his cousins.

From the Gansemarkt it then went through the Dammthorstrasse, past the Stadtheater, Hauptpost, Esplanadehotel to the Dammthor banhof. Through the Rothenbaumchaussee into the Schluterstrasse, where I lived until I left for Bolivia, on the left then was the beautiful university endowed by Edmund Siemens, who, on news of the armistice [339] on 11 November 1918, fell down dead, as did Bullin, the founder of the Hamburg-America line, with whom it is not known whether an overdose of sleeping pills was intentional or accidental.

I lived in Schluterstrasse 10, a yellow Dutch brick building, I lived with Miss Mess as a boarder. A short time after we moved in there a young man showed up. This was Grigorij Falk, whom you know as uncle Grinja, the father of dear Faniuta. Now I want to tell about him. His father, Robert Falk, was one of the richest men in Libau. He had several industrial enterprises, was general agent of the Cunard line in Libau, which was a very profitable business, since emmigrants left the Libau harbor weekly in droves [hellen scharen ?]. He had three sons. Emil, the oldest attended kindergarten with me at Miss Rosenpflanzer, also his later wife Manja. Emil attended the gymnasium in Libau, and succeeded in being kept back in every grade. [340] Thus he left the gymnasium as a grown man, married his Manja Pines, and studied medicine as a husband. He was busy during the war as a doctor in the Russian army, then came back to Libau, where the anti-Jewish politics of the Latvian republic made his life almost impossible. When the Soviets occupied Latvia in 1939 he was again used as a doctor. The second brother, Vitja, attended Realschule with me, but was a few grades younger, so I did not know much of him. He studied in Mitweida [sp?], married a German and had a son. After the war they moved to Libau, and it did not go well for them. Grinja was already with me in Bolivia when I had the awful task of telling him that Vitja had shot his wife and then taken his own life. The child was adopted by the older brother Emil. The burial caused problems, since no denomination wished to give up its corpse. so they lie buried next each other, [341] but separated by the wall that separates the Jewish from the protestant cemetery. The youngest son, Grinja, was only a few weeks younger than your uncle George. I knew him only as a fat, chubby-cheeked boy in Libau. Then in 1920 he emerged in Hamburg at Miss Mess. We lived there together for 5 years, and in 1926, a year after me, he came to Bolivia.

Of all my acquaintances he had the most difficult experiences and memories, of which I want to tell you, Just before his Bar-mitzva his mother, while going downstairs, was unlucky in falling from one of the last steps, hit her head, and broke her neck. A few years later came the world war. Grinja's father came from the German-Russian border, and had a Russian childhood friend who became a gendarmerie colonel. His name was Miassojedow. The gendarmerie in Russia during Czarist times was almost almighty, not quite like the GPU or the Gestapo later, [342} but powerful enough to be frightening. Having a gendarmerie colonel as a friend in Petersburg was a great connection, and Robert Falk nurtured the friendship. Miassojedow had the special task of observing the private life of the grand dukes (male members of the Czar's family), and soon had made deathly enemies of the whole clique. This did not bother a gendarmerie colonel much, but when the war broke out and Nikolai Nikolajewitsch, the Czar's uncle, became commander of the colonels, the situation changed. The first major Russian defeats came, and just like in olden times, only magic and witchcraft could be blamed, there was only one explanation: espionage. The wildest espionage rumors swirled through Russia, and even the Czar's wife, the unlucky Hessian princess Alix, was not immune from suspicion. Finally all suspicion of treachery concentrated on colonel [343] Miassojedow. He was arrested, and with him about a dozen of his friends, including Robert Falk with his companion. The military court in Warsaw met for months and came to an indecisive judgement, since the whole espionage incident was war hysteria. The decision reads about banning to settlement in Siberia, which actually was only a discipline punishment, since such exiles could live there freely. Robert Falk still wrote while on the journey, and that is the last I heard of him.

In the meantime Libau was occupied by the Germans, and contact with Russia was cut off. Only when Warsaw, Kowno, Wilna, etc. fell into German hands, and travelers from Warsaw came to Libau, did the children and the family find out that after the Military court judgement was reversed, Nikolai Nicolajewitsch telegraphed orders from Moscow that all the convicts be returned to Warsaw, and had them hanged, including Robert Falk. [344]
 
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