![4. Thomas Kuhn, The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (University
of Chicago Press, 1977), xix–xx; idem, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, third edition
(University of Chicago Press, 1996 [1962]).
5. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958); idem, The Tacit
Dimension (Anchor, 1967).
6. Telling exceptions include Sharon Traweek, Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High-Energy
Physicists (Harvard University Press, 1988); Kathryn Olesko, Physics as a Calling: Discipline and
Practice in the Königsberg Seminar for Physics (Cornell University Press, 1991); Gerald Geison and
Frederic L. Holmes, eds., Research Schools, published as Osiris 8 (1993); Robert Kohler, Lords of the
Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life (University of Chicago Press, 1994); Rudolph,
Scientists in the Classroom; and Andrew Warwick, Masters of Theory: Cambridge and the Rise of
Mathematical Physics (University of Chicago Press, 2003).
7. Andrew Pickering, The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science (University of Chicago Press,
1995).
8. Harry Collins, “The TEA set: Tacit knowledge and scientific networks,” Social Studies of Science
4 (1974): 165–186; Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Boyle, Hobbes,
and the Experimental Life (Princeton University Press, 1985); Simon Schaffer, “Late Victorian
metrology and its instrumentarium: A manufactory of ohms,” in Invisible Connections: Instruments,
Institutions, and Science, ed. Robert Bud and Susan Cozzens (SPIE Optical Engineering Press, 1992),
23–56; Peter Galison, How Experiments End (University of Chicago Press, 1987); idem, Image and
Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics (University of Chicago Press, 1997).
9. Traweek, Beamtimes and Lifetimes; Steven Shapin, “‘A scholar and a gentleman’: The problem-
atic identity of the scientific practitioner in early modern England,” History of Science 29 (1991):
279–327; Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism
(University of Chicago Press, 1993); Kohler, Lords of the Fly; Lorraine Daston, “The moral economy
of science,” Osiris 10 (1995): 3–24; Hugh Gusterson, Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End
of the Cold War (University of California Press, 1996); and Lorraine Daston and Otto Sibum, eds.,
Scientific Personae and their Histories, published as Science in Context 16 (2003), June: 1–269.
8 Kaiser](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/28194258-250517170717-a4a21ab9/85/Pedagogy-And-The-Practice-Of-Science-Kaiser-David-23-320.jpg)
![chemist Aleksandr M. Butlerov: “If you consider, however, that I only have Saturday on
which to work; on the other days instruction in the laboratory absorbs my entire activ-
ity, then you would make allowances for me and find it excusable if my patience is
completely gone.”13
Nevertheless, despite his complaints, his six years in Göttingen can
be considered the most scientifically productive and socially happiest of his life. Of par-
ticular note was his work on isomerism. In a series of seminal studies, Beilstein demon-
strated that various organic compounds previously considered isomers were in fact the
same compound, facts he used to expand the credibility of August Kekulé’s structure
theory. As Beilstein wrote to the latter: “My critics reproach me for having accom-
plished little of real significance along this line, but it was necessary to show before-
hand that there is only one benzoic acid, that benzyl chloride and chlorotoluene are
different, and so forth, before these could bring to your theory that range and that sig-
nificance which it had from the beginning.”14
This established Beilstein’s reputation as
a gifted organic chemist.
Beilstein was not, of course, alone in the teaching labs, and his colleagues, von Uslar
and Rudolph Fittig, frequently irritated him. Von Uslar was deplorable as a pharma-
ceutical chemist with no theoretical interests. Fittig’s sins were graver: “[Fittig] is a
pedant through and through and treads so closely in the footsteps of his great teacher
Limpricht that I consider him to be the most insufferable man I have ever met. . . . The
present lecture assistant has fallen ill and Fittig has temporarily taken over his job so I
have this monster in my place the whole day.”15
So much for first impressions: Fittig
would soon become Beilstein’s inseparable colleague (at one point they shared an apart-
ment) and a crucial factor—together with Hans Hübner, another Göttingen Privat-
dozent—in shaping an emerging pedagogical style that stressed collegial cooperation
and complementary division of labor among teaching duties in a well-equipped labo-
ratory.16
Beilstein’s magnetic personality made him the clear center of the group. As
Fittig commented in his diary:
I respect his knowledge of organic chemistry, and I cannot fail to recognize that he, especially in
the matter of such important laboratory studies, has stimulated me many times. . . . He also stands
before the laboratory students in a proper but good relation, he tells them jokes and anecdotes . . .
and allows the difference between teacher and student to vanish completely. The students like
this, as well as his joviality; his sharp humor makes him their darling. I am in this respect entirely
different, and I will happily admit that I am abrupt, that I am too much a teacher, too school-
masterly. . . .17
This teaching style—using humor and individual attention to motivate students—like
so many other aspects of pedagogy, was site-specific. When Beilstein left Göttingen, this
casual demeanor became harder to maintain.
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![As Fittig and Beilstein became more closely acquainted, they discovered other com-
plementary aspects of their characters besides pedagogy. It has often been asserted with
respect to the Handbuch that Beilstein was anti-theoretical, and thus was predisposed
towards empirical compilation. Otto Krätz, for example, in his excellent study of Beil-
stein’s correspondence with Heidelberg (later Munich) chemist Emil Erlenmeyer, con-
trasts Beilstein as the “man of Praxis” to Erlenmeyer’s “man of Theory.”18
Perhaps this is
true, but next to Erlenmeyer almost any chemist would seem to be a “man of Praxis.” A
less skewed contrast is between Fittig and Beilstein, where Fittig is classed as the talented
experimentalist, and Beilstein is his theorist complement with his exceptional command
of the chemical literature.19
Beilstein in fact repeatedly stressed the importance of “indis-
pensable” theories that were “supported by noteworthy discoveries,” such as Kekulé and
Butlerov’s structure theory, and was quick to criticize Marcellin Berthelot’s textbook as
overemphasizing facts to the detriment of theory. Given that Beilstein’s reputation was
built on the success of structure theory, this conclusion should not strike us as odd,
despite Beilstein’s occasional later disclaimers of all theoretical speculation.20
Beilstein
was able to stake out this middle ground in his research and his teaching because Fittig
provided enough experimental guidance to balance the students’ training.
Beilstein’s insistence on the mutual dependence of theory and experiment made him
a pedagogue in high demand. In April 1865, St. Petersburg University attempted to hire
Beilstein. Wöhler and others lobbied Hannover not to let such a prize teacher go. As the
grand old man of Göttingen chemistry wrote to the Ministry in 1865, Beilstein “is the
most talented and knowledgeable [of the Assistants], he possesses above all of them
the most multifaceted scientific education, and his name known as among the most
advantageous through his achievements in the most difficult part of chemistry, organic
chemistry, on which he has been giving lectures each semester for 3 years already.”21
In
the end, Göttingen counter-offered to make Beilstein an extraordinary professor at the
ripe young age of 27, and threw in a sizable salary to boot—which Beilstein accepted
after failing to coax similar blandishments from A. A. Voskresenskii in Petersburg.22
Beilstein couched his final acceptance to Hannover in pedagogical terms: “My entire
goal and striving is directed so as to conduct my science, which I place above every-
thing, completely and independently. No place has offered more and better opportu-
nity than here in Göttingen . . . nowhere have I found such a pure scientific sense as
here and nowhere are the students as industrious as here. I put specifically a great deal
of weight on the last point. We chemists achieve very little ourselves, and only that
which we achieve through our students is actually valuable.”23
Anyway, no one really
expected that Beilstein would seriously abandon his alma mater.24
That assumption, it
turned out, could not be further off the mark.
Beilstein Unbound 15](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/28194258-250517170717-a4a21ab9/85/Pedagogy-And-The-Practice-Of-Science-Kaiser-David-30-320.jpg)
![Beilstein did not. In 1865 Erlenmeyer turned the journal over to Hübner at
Göttingen, who began to edit it in collaboration with Beilstein and Fittig. The journal—
once so tied to Erlenmeyer’s name that antipathy toward the one translated into antipa-
thy toward the other—became so identified with the triumvirate that a major obituary
for Erlenmeyer neglected to mention that he had ever had any connection to the Zeit-
schrift.28
Beilstein et al. turned the now-renamed Zeitschrift für Chemie into a fairly suc-
cessful journal. They maintained the old format, and Russian contributions remained
high—even after the creation of a Russian-language chemical journal under the aus-
pices of the Russian Chemical Society in 1869. Beilstein was particularly insistent on
developing the Russian connection, as he wrote to Butlerov on January 29, 1865:
I will in closing stress again that the “Zeitschrift” has in my person a warm advocate of Russia’s
interests. I wish that Russian chemists won’t just slave away laboriously on a Russian [sic:
German—MG] edition of their works (for you, who writes German so expertly, this is obviously
not necessary!). But many can thus postpone the publication of works, and thus I ask that they
send me only the Russian articles. I will worry about getting a correct translation. . . . Chemists
speak only one language and thus one should also know in Germany what is appearing in Russia.29
In several publications of this period, Beilstein stressed the important contributions
made by Russians in their own language and the lamentable ignorance of these find-
ings on the part of Western chemists. Beilstein’s favorable review of Butlerov’s Russian
textbook in organic chemistry similarly attempted to include Russians into a broader
community of chemists.30
The happily advancing juggernaut of the Zeitschrift ground to a complete halt in
1871, when it faced staggering competition for its small market niche from the Berichte
der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, founded in 1868. The Berlin Berichte achieved
much higher circulation after 1871 by virtue of its becoming the official organ of the
unified German Chemical Society. Beilstein wrote to Erlenmeyer from St. Petersburg on
April 26, 1871: “There remains no doubt: the Zeitschrift für Chemie can no longer be
conducted the way that it is now. Through the successful appearance of the Berliner
Berichte one of the chief tasks of the Zeitschrift—to publish quickly—is essentially
lost.”31
Beilstein then took the somewhat perverse move of attempting to foist the jour-
nal back to Erlenmeyer. The latter, now affiliated with the Annalen in Munich, rebuffed
these overtures, and the journal folded by the end of the year.
The central problem that the Zeitschrift had been created to ameliorate remained
unresolved, however. There was still a proliferation of disjointed chemical knowledge
among multiple subspecialties, compounded by increasingly nationalistic attitudes
towards domestic organs. This linguistic nationalism was most evident among the
Russians, a fact Beilstein lamented on several occasions.32
He complained to Erlenmeyer
Beilstein Unbound 17](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/28194258-250517170717-a4a21ab9/85/Pedagogy-And-The-Practice-Of-Science-Kaiser-David-32-320.jpg)
![in April 1871: “What is to become of us, when each city produces its own journal,
where one must seek out one’s bit of chemistry under dust, garbage, and mouse drop-
pings.”33
The knowledge needed to be systematized or it would be lost.
Beilstein, Russian: The St. Petersburg Technological Institute
In 1864 Beilstein had joked in a letter to Kekulé: “You won’t believe how much you
have risen in value here [since you left Germany for Belgium]. Look at [Hermann]
Kolbe, the poor devil, how he must struggle through with a lot of trouble, and on the
other hand, what a big shot [August] Hofmann is now. . . . What kind of big shot will
you be, if one draws you back to Germany. I constantly wish to become a professor of
chemistry in Peking or in the Sahara desert. Then I should make it difficult for
Hofmann to compete with me!”34
He was soon to make a transition perhaps even more
dramatic than the Sahara: in 1866, a year after he turned down St. Petersburg
University, Beilstein took a position at the less prestigious Technological Institute in the
same city.35
The move caught his Göttingen patrons by surprise. As Wöhler wrote to
Liebig in November 1866: “The Prussian ministry in Hannover has asked why we let
Beilstein go. He has taken a call from St. Petersburg with 2,500 thalers and is already
gone.”36
The immediate cause was personal. Beilstein’s father had died somewhat sud-
denly at the age of 56 in April 1865, and by 1866 the family needed him back in St.
Petersburg. Beilstein was officially appointed a professor at the Technological Institute
on 24 September 1866, and by June 1867 he became a subject of the Tsar.37
The Technological Institute was far from ideal. Created under Tsar Nicholas I as a way
to train large numbers of civilian engineers, the Institute featured high teaching loads
and students who were less interested in the pure sciences.38
Whereas St. Petersburg
University was located right next to the Academy of Sciences, the Technological
Institute, south of the city center, was marginalized from daily academic interaction.
Furthermore, Alexander II’s revised university statute of 1863 had expanded faculty
posts and generated a renaissance of natural scientific work at the University. This was
part of the reason why D. I. Mendeleev, later famous for his 1869 formulation of the
periodic system of chemical elements, gradually moved his base of operations from the
Technological Institute to the University. Although Mendeleev became a full professor
at the University in 1867 and thereafter devoted essentially no attention to the
Institute, he did not officially give up his post (or salary) at the Institute until 1871.
Beilstein was hired to teach analytic and organic chemistry in a demanding institution
that had been long neglected. Hardly a second Göttingen.
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![almost everything here. How hard it is for me to introduce discipline and order will be clear to you
immediately when I add that in one crowded room there are presently—175—yes, yes—175 men
working! [as opposed to 80–85 at Göttingen —MG]. . . . What kind of nonsense there is here under
these conditions! I had to give up being an academic (Gelehrter) and am a schoolmaster (Schulmeister)
in the harshest meaning of the word. How painfully I feel this biting contrast I don’t need to tell
you. Although I live here in the circle of my family, I still feel the greatest homesickness for my old
laboratory and my old students. I don’t have any time at all for my own work. All my free time goes
to the preparation of my lectures, that there is so much left here for me to accomplish.42
There are several points of interest here. First, there is Beilstein’s hostility to Mendeleev,
the rising star of the Petersburg chemical scene. Second, Beilstein was alienated from his
students, whose lack of preparation and interest forced him to abandon the collegial
teaching style he had developed at Göttingen. With his two assistants, he organized his
laboratory “militarisch,” using the explicit model of Löwig’s Breslau laboratory (which he
had hated while there).43
Given that he was still editing the Zeitschrift at a remove from
Göttingen, and since he did not have equally qualified colleagues, he was forced into a
cookie-cutter, chemistry-by-numbers approach to deal with his limited resources.
The third point of interest concerns the lack of a proper textbook for teaching ana-
lytical chemistry, which brings us to Beilstein’s Anleitung zur qualitativen Analyse
(Instructions for Qualitative Analysis), published in the late 1860s in response to the inad-
equate Mendeleev-generated Russian translation of Charles Gerhardt’s book. Beilstein,
who had distinguished analytical skills, is still widely known for his “Beilstein test,”
whereby a flame is used to detect the presence of halogens in an organic substance.44
Beilstein’s book was an attempt to integrate recent innovations in analytic chemistry in
a format that would be useful to unskilled students in the laboratory. Its absence of a
formal framework and emphasis on building transferable and widely applicable skills
made it uniquely adaptable across major theoretical and experimental divides. The text
was published simultaneously in Russian and German, going through six editions and
translated into Dutch, English, and French.45
Analytic chemistry was widely recognized as the most basic skill set for chemists. You
could not do higher levels of organic, inorganic, mineralogical, physiological, or any
other kind of chemistry unless you could properly analyze substances in a laboratory.46
Erlenmeyer, for example, was quite specific about the need for proper training in ana-
lytical chemistry: “Before [the beginner] can go on, he must first have gotten to know
exactly the bodies that he is supposed to find from now on by their properties and chem-
ical relations. His first order of business must therefore be to state without a doubt, that
he has experimentally studied the properties and transformations of metals, their salts,
oxides, chloride, sulfides, etc.”47
This further implied that not only was analytic chem-
istry the first branch of chemistry to be taught to students, and the most widely taught
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![Beilstein helped to publish the German translation of Butlerov’s structure-theoretical
textbook and assisted in the propagandizing of his chemical ideas.52
The situation soured when it came to D. I. Mendeleev, long Beilstein’s bête noire.
Mendeleev recalled in his 1861 diary his first meeting with Beilstein, then visiting his
family in Russia. At a party in chemist L. N. Shishkov’s house, Mendeleev remembered
the hubbub about this “dry German,” who left him with a very unpleasant impres-
sion.53
While Beilstein was still in Göttingen, he could paper over their mutual dislike.
He wrote a rather flattering review of Mendeleev’s Organic Chemistry (1861) in the
Zeitschrift für Chemie, where he lauded its creative—if somewhat outdated—use of
Gerhardt’s type theory.54
Right before his move to St. Petersburg, Beilstein wrote to
Mendeleev to thank him for “all of your kindness [in] naming me your successor at the
Institute, which you already promised me last year.” He also warned: “I will at first
often make you sick of me. Moving to a new circle of activity, I will be obliged to often
ask for your advice and help.”55
After Beilstein had begun to clean up Mendeleev’s mess
there, however, the goodwill dissipated. Beilstein would have liked to ignore him, but
that was becoming less and less feasible.
It became utterly impossible on November 11, 1880, when Mendeleev was denied the
chair in technology by the Physical-Mathematical Division of the Imperial Academy of
Sciences by a single vote. Butlerov had tried once before to get Mendeleev a post at the
Academy (then an adjunct chair in physics), but was rebuffed by the Permanent
Secretary, Konstantin Veselovskii. This more public rejection in 1880 sparked a massive
outcry from Russian chemists and from newspaper reporters. N. A. Menshutkin, secre-
tary of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society, asked chemists to sign a protest of the
Academy’s behavior, which he would then publish in a local newspaper. On the
grounds that a newspaper was an improper forum, Beilstein was the only chemist who
refused to sign, proposing instead an honorary address at their next professional meet-
ing.56
Beilstein’s “desertion” of the cause was attributed to his being a “German,” and
thus an affiliate of the supposed “German party” in the Academy of Sciences that was
widely (and erroneously) believed to have orchestrated Mendeleev’s rejection.57
In the
midst of the newspaper campaign in support of Mendeleev, only one substantial arti-
cle, published in the capital’s German paper, attacked the support for Mendeleev on the
grounds (mostly correct) that the Russian was not a technological chemist. Many
Petersburgers attributed authorship of the anonymous article to Beilstein.58
Injury was added to insult when Beilstein himself was awarded the chair in technol-
ogy in 1882. Drawing on their critique of Mendeleev, anti-Butlerov academicians
(Helmersen, Schrenk, Savich, Wild, and Gadolin) proffered Beilstein for the post as a
teacher at the Technological Institute with a decided emphasis on his contributions to
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![measurement by rote, and then you construct theories of limited abstraction on this
foundation. The stages of reasoning were clearly separated in St. Petersburg as they had
not been at Göttingen. Beilstein’s whirlwind survey of organic chemistry then moved
through a series of topics in increasing specificity: “The Determination of Vapor
Density,” “Rational Formulas—Isomerism,” “The Structure of Carbon Compounds,”
“Radicals,” “Substitution,” “Homology,” and “The Physical Properties of Compounds.”
He presented a system of organic chemistry, although still a necessarily incomplete one:
“As we look over the system of organic chemistry as it presently appears, we note still
many holes. The filling of these holes is only a question of time.”70
This was the incen-
tive to use the Handbuch: to ground oneself in basic principles and then become moti-
vated to develop the science in defined directions—to fill in the holes.
For all the similarity to a textbook in motivation, genealogy, and program, the fore-
word exposed the unique nature of the Beilstein venture:
In the present work I have made the attempt to present together as clearly as possible the com-
pletely analyzed organic compounds. I have refrained from an exhaustive characterization of the
compounds; one individual doesn’t have the strength to do that. Cursory, superficial remarks,
imprecisely researched compounds and reactions, etc., have been omitted here or only partially
included if there exist no other data for the nature of a body. Thus, as I have included references
to the literature as completely as possible, it would be easy for the reader to look up anything that
might be missing. Everything that contributes to an exact knowledge of the substances, such as
melting point, boiling point, specific weight, solubility, etc., as well as precisely determined trans-
formations and reactions of the bodies, are provided in their entirety.71
Beilstein wore on his sleeve the amount of personal labor and individual effort involved
in the compilation of the handbook: “All comments were—as far as they were accessible
to me—taken by the author from the original articles. In the entire book there are no cita-
tions that I have not looked up before the writing. All errors are from copying or printing.”72
In a letter to Zincke, Beilstein noted the role the attack on his “Germanness” had
played in the creation of the Handbuch, and the reciprocal effect of the Handbuch on
the way local chemists identified his nationality:
It will not be unknown to you, that since the political successes of Germans in Russia a hostile
mood against Germany and Germans has been spreading ever wider. The systematic smearing of
the newspapers was not without results. If I until now remained almost entirely unbothered by
Germanophobia (Deutschenhaß), I have recently also had to suffer from this evil. The circum-
stance, that on the occasion of the elections to the chemistry [sic] post at the Academy of Sciences
here some academicians also wanted to put my name on the list of candidates, has called forth a
big storm and drawn a whole array of spiteful comments towards me. . . . Even the fact that my
large handbook of organic chemistry was then appearing in German (there would be a dearth of
buyers for a Russian work), has drawn the censure of the patriots to me.73
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![The process of revising the Handbuch for a second edition shows to what extent Beil-
stein turned his back on the Russian chemical community that had spurned him.
Beilstein directed his solicitations for comments from readers almost entirely to
German chemists.74
Beilstein put out a second edition by himself by 1889, again
in German, but his revision of the third edition pushed him to think about a succes-
sor. In 1895 he wrote to Paul Jacobson, who would eventually agree to become a co-
editor of the Handbuch: “I am becoming old and have no co-worker. Now I worry only
with all my powers that the third edition be finished—the heavens can worry about
everything else.”75
Beilstein wanted the Handbuch to be continued as a cooperative venture, run as the
special branch of a scientific society, and he petitioned the German Chemical Society
in Berlin, snubbing his local peers entirely in favor of an “international” (read: German)
community. This was quite a transformation for the chemist who in 1873 at the Vienna
international exposition had been quite sanguine about the prospects for Russia to
become a full-fledged member of the international scientific community.76
Opinion in
the German chemical community was divided on whether the German Chemical
Society should take on the task, with Erlenmeyer in support of the idea as “not bad,”
but Volhard opposing since he thought the matter was “better left to private indus-
try.”77
It was eventually adopted in 1896, and after the third edition’s appearance and
Beilstein’s death in 1906, it moved there entirely.78
As Beilstein wrote to M. M. Richter:
“Now I can peacefully retreat from the scene, since I am now sure that my work will be
continued in the best manner, and good and complete handbooks will be available at
a cheap price.”79
Reviews of the Handbuch were ecstatic from the start. Richard Meyer wrote to
Erlenmeyer in 1882: “I use Beilstein’s book daily; it became immediately indispensable;
but there is a mass of errors in it! One has to go to the original articles every time; but
what is good is that you can find them quickly through the book.”80
Even the normally
gruff V. V. Markovnikov was enthusiastic about “Beilstein’s wonderful reference book,”
and P. P. Alekseev in Kiev commented in a letter to Butlerov in 1880: “I am now study-
ing Beilstein and Kekulé. Beilstein’s book is really a capital production. It is a pity,
though, that the generalizations are rather short.”81
Perhaps the most personally satis-
fying review for Beilstein was the letter sent by Henry E. Armstrong, president of the
Chemical Society of London, to congratulate the Russian Chemical Society on its
twenty-fifth anniversary on November 6, 1893. In a statement addressed to Mendeleev,
he wrote: “Our Society is proud to have enrolled your name in its liste [sic] of foreign
members and to have welcomed you as one of its Faraday lectures [sic]; and the roll also
includes the name of Beilstein—which, however, is no longer the mere name of an
Beilstein Unbound 27](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/28194258-250517170717-a4a21ab9/85/Pedagogy-And-The-Practice-Of-Science-Kaiser-David-42-320.jpg)
![individual but a household word and one which cannot be mentioned without the feel-
ing of gratitude arising in the chemists [sic] mind.”82
The ever-sarcastic Beilstein must
have smiled internally from his seat on the same dais to hear Mendeleev intone such
an endorsement. Beilstein’s Handbuch, the rejection of both his Petersburg pedagogy
and his Petersburg peers, was extolled in their midst.
Conclusion: Beilstein Abandoned
Beilstein adapted his pedagogical styles to different contexts without changing certain
principles about the necessity of theory for proper experimentation and the uselessness
of theory once it moved beyond the limits experiment set for it. Thus, at Göttingen, he
stressed the importance of collegial relations in the laboratory in order to initiate young
chemists into a community he perceived as standardized by just such a lack of hierar-
chy—an attitude present in his collegial editing of the Zeitschrift für Chemie with
Hübner and Fittig. When he moved to the Technological Institute in St. Petersburg, his
less-prepared students compelled him to move to a yet more fundamental level of stan-
dardization—that of analytical chemical practice, as encoded in his Anleitung. Finally,
after his hope for an integrated international community of practitioners was crushed
by the polarizing of the scientific community into nationalized camps after the 1880
Mendeleev affair, when he was classed as a German chemist somewhat against his will,
he moved once again to a more fundamental level and sought to standardize for prac-
titioners of organic chemistry the very objects of their study. In each case, Beilstein
maneuvered among the multiple instantiations of pedagogy as a category for history of
science in his attempt simultaneously to define a chemical community and the means
for stabilizing it.
One of Beilstein’s last public actions at the Russian Physico-Chemical Society was to
argue for the Geneva compromise on organic nomenclature. Already in 1890 Beilstein
announced the existence of both the German and French commissions which were
working to standardize organic terminology on an international footing, a sorely needed
reform. As the local representative of these committees to St. Petersburg—mediated
through his frequent vacations in Germany—Beilstein asked for any suggestions or
comments from Russians.83
Apparently, no one volunteered any suggestions, although
debates about a Russian nomenclature in the early 1870s had sparked a good deal of
interest. When the Geneva compromise system finally emerged, Beilstein was the only
one to support it publicly. In the face of opposition from (among others) Beketov and
Mendeleev—whose objections were remarkably insubstantial—Beilstein noted that the
Geneva system was already being introduced into the Handbuch and would most likely
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![7. Of course, man does not live by pedagogy alone, and I will pass over Beilstein’s important work
on industrial chemistry and especially the chemistry of Russian oil. See F. Beilstein, Die chemische
Grossindustrie auf der Weltausstellung zu Wien im Jahre 1873 (Quandt and Handel, 1873); F. Beilstein
and A. Kurbatow, “Ueber die Natur des kaukasischen Petroleums,” Ber. 13 (1880): 1818–1821;
idem, “II. Ueber kaukasischen Petroleum,” Ber. 14 (1881): 1620–1622; idem, “Ueber die
Kohlenwasserstoffe des amerikanischen Petroleums,” Ber. 13 (1880): 2028–2029. For an opposing
contemporary view on Russian oil, see W. Markownikoff and J. Spady, “Zur Constitution der
Kohlenwasserstoffe, Cn
H2n
, des kaukasischen Petroleums,” Ber. 20 (1887): 1850–1853.
Markovnikov’s citation of Beilstein’s work was always positive and respectful. See, for example,
Markovnikov and V. N. Ogloblin, “Issledovanie kavkazskoi nefti,” in V. V. Markovnikov, Izbrannye
trudy. Klassiki nauki, ed. A. F. Plate and G. V. Bykov (Izd. AN SSSR, 1955), 331–332. While some
Soviet commentators ignore Beilstein’s work on oil entirely in their surveys (such as S. R.
Sergienko, Ocherk razvitiia khimii i pererabotki nefti [Izd. AN SSSR, 1955]), leaping directly from
Mendeleev to Markovnikov, it is clear that Beilstein, not Mendeleev, was responsible for scientific
interest in the composition of Baku oil. See V. I. Kuznetsov, Vozniknovenie khimii alitsiklicheskikh
soedinenii (Izd. AN SSSR, 1961), 68.
8. This biographical outline is drawn from the sources in note 5.
9. Travel was crucial in this period for unifying various scientific cultures. See, for example, the
account of Bunsen’s travels in Fritz Krafft, “Das Reisen ist des Chemikers Lust—auf den Spuren
Robert Bunsens: Zu Robert Wilhelm Bunsens 100. Todestag,” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 22
(1999): 217–238.
10. For his early work, see F. Beilstein, “Ueber die Diffusion von Flüssigkeiten,” Annalen der Chemie
und Pharmacie 99 (1856): 165–197; idem, “Ueber das Murexid,” Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie
107 (1858): 176–191.
11. Huntress, “1938,” 304.
12. The classic work on this transformation remains Peter Borscheid, Naturwissenschaft, Staat und
Industrie in Baden (1848–1914) (Ernst Klett, 1976). On the laboratory at Göttingen, see the letter
from Beilstein to Kekulé, June 3, 1860, reproduced in Huntress, “1938,” 305.
13. Beilstein to Butlerov, 14/2 December 1862, reprinted in G. W. Bykow and L. M. Bekassowa,
“Beiträge zur Geschichte der Chemie der 60-er Jahre des XIX. Jahrhunderts: II. F. Beilsteins Briefe
an A. M. Butlerow,” Physis 8 (1966): 267–285, on 268.
14. Quoted in Richter, “How Beilstein is made,” 311. For the original researches, see F. Beilstein,
“Ueber die Identität des Chlorbenzols mit dem gechlorten Chlorbenzyl (Bichlortoluol),” Annalen
der Chemie und Pharmacie 116 (1860): 336–356; E. Reichenbach and F. Beilstein, “Ueber die Natur
der sogenannten Salylsäure,” Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie 132 (1864): 309–321.
15. Quoted in Huntress, “1938,” 305.
16. On Beilstein’s two associates, see the obituaries by F. Beilstein, “Hans (Julius Anton Edward)
Hübner,” Ber. 17 (1884): 763–776; R. M., “Rudolph Fittig,” Journal of the Chemical Society 99 (1911):
1651–1653.
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![17. Fittig’s diary entry of Sunday, November 24, 1860, quoted in Fr. Fichter, “Rudolph Fittig,” Ber.
44 (1911): 1339–1401, on 1352. As Fittig continued in 1860: “Everything that he [Beilstein] says
is original and funny, he looks at everything with a sharp understanding and a very healthy judg-
ment. His judgments and criticisms of others are most delightful. First he praises a lot, then fol-
lows a ‘However,’ by which the praise is supposed to be qualified a bit, only as a rule nothing of
the praise remains at all.” Quoted in Richter, “Friedrich Beilstein, Gedanken zur hundertsten
Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages,”102.
18. Editor’s introduction in Krätz, Beilstein-Erlenmeyer, 11.
19. Fichter, “Rudolph Fittig,” 1364; Hjelt, “Friedrich Konrad Beilstein,” 5046.
20. “In order to not be entirely hindered by false preconceived notions while working, I have bid
farewell to all speculations and am in the best sense a fierce enemy of all theories.” Quoted in
Richter, “K. F. Beilstein, sein Werk und seine Zeit,” 41. On Beilstein’s support of structure theory,
see Beilstein to Butlerov, 29/17 January 1865, in Bykow and Bekassowa, “II. F. Beilsteins Briefe an
A. M. Butlerow,” 270–271; F. Beilstein, Review of Marcellin Berthelot’s Chimie organique fondée sur
la synthèse, Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, no. 1 (1861): 542–560, on 560.
21. Quoted in Richter, “K. F. Beilstein, sein Werk und seine Zeit,” 39–40.
22. TsGIASPb, f. 14, op. 1, d. 6203, l. 4, quoted in Shmulevich and Musabekov, Fedor Fedorovich
Beil’shtein, 33–34.
23. Quoted in Richter, “K. F. Beilstein, sein Werk und seine Zeit,” 41–42.
24. See, for example, the assessment by the typically astute V. V. Markovnikov to his mentor
Butlerov, August 7 and September 13 [1865], reproduced in G. V. Bykov, ed., Pis’ma russkikh
khimikov k A. M. Butlerovu, Nauchnoe Nasledstvo, v. 4 (Izd. AN SSSR, 1961), 216–217.
25. The best secondary article on the Zeitschrift remains G. V. Bykov and Z. I. Sheptunova,
“Nemetskii ‘Zhurnal khimii’ (1858–1871) i russkie khimiki (K istorii khimicheskoi periodiki),”
Trudy Istorii Estestvoznaniia i Tekhniki 30 (1960): 97–110. This episode, as well as the major institu-
tions of German organic chemistry in this period, has been well treated in the seminal study by
Alan J. Rocke, The Quiet Revolution: Hermann Kolbe and the Science of Organic Chemistry (University
of California Press, 1993).
26. Rita Meyer, Emil Erlenmeyer (1825–1909) als Chemietheoretiker und sein Beitrag zur
Entwicklung der Strukturchemie (dissertation, Medical Faculty of Ludwig-Maximilians Universität,
Munich, 1984).
27. See Erlenmeyer to Butlerov, March 25, 1864, reproduced in G. W. Bykow and L. M. Bekassowa,
“Beiträge zur Geschichte der Chemie der 60-er Jahre des XIX. Jahrhunderts: I. Briefwechsel zwis-
chen E. Erlenmeyer und A. M. . Butlerow (von 1862 bis 1876),” Physis 8 (1966): 185–198, on 191.
Beilstein later somewhat exaggerated his role in publicizing the work of Russian chemists through
the Zeitschrift: F. F. Beil’shtein [Beilstein], “O rabotakh chlenov Russkago Fiziko-Khimicheskago
Obshchestva po aromaticheskomu riadu,” in Russkoe Khimicheskoe Obshchestvo. XXV (1868–1893).
Otdelenie khimii Russkago fiziko-khimicheskago obshchestva (V. Demakov, 1894), 39–56, on 47–48.
Beilstein Unbound 33](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/28194258-250517170717-a4a21ab9/85/Pedagogy-And-The-Practice-Of-Science-Kaiser-David-48-320.jpg)
![Many of these Russians became acquainted with Erlenmeyer personally in Heidelberg. On the
broader Russian colony in Heidelberg, see Willy Birkenmaier, Das russische Heidelberg: Zur
Geschichte der deutsch-russischen Beziehungen im 19. Jahrhundert (Wunderhorn, 1995). Beilstein is
never considered by Birkenmaier or other researchers as a true member of the Russian colony. He
is mentioned, however, in the appendix to Das russische Heidelberg, on 175.
28. W. H. Perkin, “Emil Erlenmeyer,” Journal of the Chemical Society 99 (1911): 1651–1653.
29. Reprinted in Bykow and Bekassowa, “II. F. Beilsteins Briefe an A. M. Butlerow,” on 271, with
ellipses. Beilstein’s efforts in translation were marked by occasionally significant errors. When
Mendeleev gave Beilstein the original article on the periodic system to be published in the
Zeitschrift, Beilstein had a student, A. A. Ferman, undertake the translation, who erroneously
replaced “periodicheskii” with “stufenweise,” instead of “periodische,” where Mendeleev described
the nature of the changes in properties with increasing atomic weight. While not Beilstein’s fault,
Mendeleev resented the error, which later complicated the priority dispute with Lothar Meyer. K.
Bening, D. I. Mendeleev i L. Meier (Tsentral’naia tip., 1911), i–iii.
30. F. Beilstein, Review of A. Butlerow’s Einleitung in das Studium der organischen Chemie, ZfC, N.S.
1 (1865): 727–730. See also F. Beilstein, Review of Marcellin Berthelot’s Chimie organique fondée sur
la synthèse, Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, no. 1 (1861): 542–560, on 553; F. Beilstein, Review of
August Kekulé’s Lehrbuch der organischen Chemie oder der Chemie der Kohlenstoffverbindungen,
Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, no. 1 (1863): 493–507, on 500: “He [Nikolai Beketov] placed his
observations in a dissertation which was published in April 1853 in Russian and surely because of
the latter circumstance remains unknown by the majority of chemists.”
31. Reproduced in Krätz, Beilstein-Erlenmeyer, letter 1, 16–17.
32. Beilstein to Erlenmeyer, May 11, 1872: “Now the Russians however have become great patri-
ots: they don’t want to publish their articles any more in foreign languages. Only a few, e.g.
[Nikolai] Menshutkin, are so kindly as to worry about taking care of a translation themselves. Thus
it is predictable that many useful works will be lost” (Krätz, Beilstein-Erlenmeyer, 26). And again in
Beilstein to Erlenmeyer, October 5, 1873: “My patriotic friends will make a stink if I don’t provide
the fatherland’s journal with original articles” (ibid., 41).
33. Krätz, Beilstein-Erlenmeyer, 15.
34. Quoted in Richter, “Friedrich Beilstein, Gedanken zur hundertsten Wiederkehr seines
Geburtstages,” 102
35. Beilstein’s appointment by the Technological Institute was a stunning 16–1 vote, far ahead of
the other two (Russian) candidates. “Zhurnal uchebnago komiteta S. Peterburgskago Praktiches-
kago Tekhnologicheskago Instituta,” September 24, 1866, RGIA, f. 733, op. 159, d. 12, l. 1ob.
36. Quoted in Reiner Luckenbach, “Der Beilstein: Geschichte, Gegenwart, und Zukunft,” in
Einhundert Jahre Beilsteins Handbuch der Organischen Chemie, 36.
37. This was necessary to become a professor under the Institute’s statute. His official term of serv-
ice only began with his renunciation of German citizenship. Director of the Technological
34 Gordin](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/28194258-250517170717-a4a21ab9/85/Pedagogy-And-The-Practice-Of-Science-Kaiser-David-49-320.jpg)
Pedagogy And The Practice Of Science Kaiser David
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- 6. Pedagogy and the Practice of Science
- 7. Inside Technology edited by Wiebe E. Bijker, W. Bernard Carlson, and Trevor Pinch A list of the series appears on page 415.
- 8. edited by David Kaiser Pedagogy and the Practice of Science Historical and Contemporary Perspectives The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England
- 9. © 2005 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please email special_sales@mitpress.mit.edu or write to Special Sales Department, The MIT Press, 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142. Set in Stone sans and Stone serif by The MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pedagogy and the practice of science : historical and contemporary perspectives / edited by David Kaiser. p. cm. — (Inside technology) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-11288-4 1. Science—Study and teaching (Higher)—History—19th century. 2. Science—Study and teaching (Higher)—History—20th century. 3. Science—Philosophy—History—19th century. 4. Science—Philosophy—History—20th century. I. Kaiser, David. II. Series. Q181.P344 2005 507.1'1—dc22 2004061364 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
- 10. Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Moving Pedagogy from the Periphery to the Center 1 David Kaiser I Teaching Practices, Transferring Skills 1 Beilstein Unbound: The Pedagogical Unraveling of a Man and his Handbuch 11 Michael D. Gordin 2 Making Tools Travel: Pedagogy and the Transfer of Skills in Postwar Theoretical Physics 41 David Kaiser 3 A Pedagogy of Diminishing Returns: Scientific Involution across Three Generations of Nuclear Weapons Science 75 Hugh Gusterson II Pedagogical Cultures in Collision 4 Fear, Shunning, and Valuelessness: Controversy over the Use of “Cambridge” Mathematics in Late Victorian Electro-Technology 111 Graeme Gooday 5 The Geist in the Institute: The Production of Quantum Physicists in 1930s Japan 151 Kenji Ito
- 11. 6 Instruments in Training: The Growth of American Probe Microscopy in the 1980s 185 Cyrus C. M. Mody III The Action of Textbooks 7 The Power of Didactic Writings: French Chemistry Textbooks of the Nineteenth Century 219 Antonio García-Belmar, José Ramón Bertomeu-Sánchez, and Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent 8 “Think Less about Foundations”: A Short Course on Landau and Lifshitz’s Course of Theoretical Physics 253 Karl Hall 9 In the “Context of Pedagogy”: Teaching Strategy and Theory Change in Quantum Chemistry 287 Buhm Soon Park IV Generational Reproduction 10 The Foundations of a Canon: Kohlrausch’s Practical Physics 323 Kathryn M. Olesko 11 Generating High-Energy Physics in Japan: Moral Imperatives of a Future Pluperfect 357 Sharon Traweek Conclusion: Kuhn, Foucault, and the Power of Pedagogy 393 Andrew Warwick and David Kaiser List of Contributors 411 Series List 415 Index 417 vi Contents
- 12. Acknowledgments The essays in this volume originated in a pair of workshops held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during January and September 2002. In addition to the con- tributors here, it is a great pleasure to thank the other workshop participants, who helped to make these meetings so stimulating: Myles Jackson, Ursula Klein, Robert Kohler, Michael Lynch, Mary Jo Nye, Christopher Ritter, Ana Simões, and Reed Stevens. I would also like to thank Shane Hamilton for research assistance, Stacey Nichols for editorial assistance, and Diane St. Laurent, Lois Folstein, and especially Kris Kipp for administrative assistance. The workshops were generously supported by grants from the Spencer Foundation (grant 200200064), from the National Science Foundation (grant SES-0118165), and from the Provost’s Fund for Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at MIT.
- 14. Pedagogy and the Practice of Science
- 16. Introduction Moving Pedagogy from the Periphery to the Center David Kaiser Scientists are not born, they are made. The ways in which this happens bear the marks of time and place: becoming a scientist in Wilhelmine Germany or in Victorian Britain was not the same as becoming a scientist in Cold War America. Despite the centrality of pedagogical concerns to the modern scientific professions, scholars in science stud- ies have not dedicated much systematic attention to the topic. Questions of pedagogy and training—the crafting of scientific practices and of the practitioners who put them to work—have tended to fall between the cracks separating traditional institutional and disciplinary studies on the one hand, and intellectual or conceptual studies on the other. This volume puts in the center what has usually fallen to the periphery by high- lighting how, where, and why questions of scientists’ training should fit into our stud- ies of the history, sociology, and anthropology of science. What do we stand to gain by using education and pedagogy as our window onto how sciences have changed and how scientific roles have evolved? Why have such questions not drawn systematic attention from the science studies community in the recent past? Pedagogy has long been a major concern of the modern scientific professions. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on science pedagogy and its reforms through- out the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, both in the United States and in Europe. Whether focused on the introduction of laboratory techniques for teaching in the late nineteenth century, on the highly touted multimedia productions of the Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC), the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS), and “Project Physics” during the Cold War, or on more recent efforts to incorporate com- puter simulations and more direct question-and-answer feedback into large introductory lectures, pedagogy has hardly been taken for granted by scientists themselves.1 Historians and sociologists of education have likewise long emphasized that school- ing and education are anything but passive or neutral activities. What counts as “appro- priate” or “acceptable” pedagogy in a particular setting is always conditioned by decisions about what skills students should acquire, and why, and by related concerns
- 17. about labor supplies and the flow of human capital into and beyond instructional set- tings.2 Education scholars have also highlighted various “hidden curricula” at work: alongside their formal subjects of instruction, educational institutions serve as the crucible for reproducing cultural, political, and moral values. With varying degrees of subtlety and effectiveness, schools prepare students to become good citizens and forge appropriate identities and roles in society.3 Of course, what counts as “good citizen- ship,” just like what counts as “appropriate skills,” always reflects active decisions (and often fraught controversy and bitter negotiations) in given contexts, and show telling variation across time and space. Pedagogy is where the intellectual rubber meets the politico-cultural road. The relative absence of such questions from the recent literature of science studies is therefore surprising. For one thing, questions of pedagogy, training, and education were heralded as central by well-known science studies scholars several decades ago. The most obvious source, and one to whom several contributors in the volume return, is Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn famously highlighted the importance of scientists’ training. In fact, when he first turned to the term “paradigm”—nowadays so much maligned—it was to talk about science students’ work on exemplary problems or exercises, by means of which they could practice the skills and tools they would need in order to engage in research later in their careers. Only later, just before writing The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), did Kuhn expand the notion of “paradigm,” freighting the term with its much more familiar associations of worldviews and reigning conceptual struc- tures.4 Kuhn is among the best-known historians and philosophers of science to have emphasized the need for proto-scientists to practice the skills of their trade, but he was not alone. Michael Polanyi—another scientist turned philosopher of science, also writ- ing in the 1950s and the 1960s—similarly emphasized time and again the centrality of “tacit knowledge” and the acquisition of craft-like or artisanal skills to scientific work. One must develop a “feel” for a research problem or a scientific instrument, Polanyi argued—a “hands-on” knowledge that no amount of formal, written instructions could ever replace.5 Kuhn’s and Polanyi’s analyses left many questions still open. In particular, they did not explore in any historical or anthropological detail how such exemplars emerged, how students in various generations actually learned to solve exemplars and build upon them in their own research, or whether students at different training centers learned about and leaned upon exemplars in distinct ways. Yet if Kuhn and Polanyi hardly exhausted all the questions we might ask about scientists’ training, they certainly tried to put the issues on the table. Pedagogy, education, training are hardly absent from the science studies literature of yesteryear. 2 Kaiser
- 18. Yet, while more recent trends in science studies have surely built upon themes related to scientific practices and skills, they have tended to leave the educational component out.6 The current fascination with local practices, material culture, replication, and metrology—a fascination that has opened up a tremendous amount of interesting and important work within our field since the 1980s—has tended to focus on the practices of already-established scientists. Case studies have been overwhelmingly concerned with peer-to-peer interactions among working scientists, rather than exam- ining how up-and-coming scientists and engineers have grappled with what Andrew Pickering calls “the mangle of practice.”7 Many of the most prominent studies within this genre, whether treating the replication of modern-day lasers or of seventeenth- century air pumps, the Victorian manufacture of standardized electrical units of meas- ure or the “big science” armamentarium of twentieth-century particle physics, reveal example after example of the difficulties that already-established scientists and instru- ment makers have had in getting new instruments to work properly.8 These studies, and many others like them, have certainly opened our eyes anew to the difficulties of acquiring new skills and deploying locally honed practices. Such studies ought to lead directly to questions of pedagogy and training: if skills and practices are difficult to mas- ter and yet central to the doing of science, then how do scientists in training master them in the first place? Practices, after all, have to be practiced—and we are thereby necessarily thrust into questions of scientists’ training and learning. Another exciting theme within recent science studies concerns the crafting of scientific roles or personae and the negotiation of “moral economies” regulating accepted norms and values within and among scientific communities.9 Once again, we are faced imme- diately with questions of scientists’ education and socialization: at least in the modern period, during which the age of the “gentlemanly amateur” of science has become but a distant memory, no one has just “done” science. Young recruits must be trained to become working scientists. Part of this training has always involved learning what it is to be a sci- entist. What is the proper role or self-image? What are the accepted norms, values, and behaviors? These have surely changed over time and across space. If these roles and moral economies are not fixed or merely “natural,” then some active work must be done in a given setting to establish and reinforce these roles. One of the most important processes in which such roles and systems of acceptable behavior get worked out and reinforced is in training new generations to “grow into” them. The problem of generational reproduc- tion—how one generation of scientists and engineers brings up its successors—is always shot through with decisions about norms, values, roles, and personae. Yet we must be careful to avoid a truism. If we stop by noting only that (at least since the late nineteenth century) all scientists and engineers have by necessity gone through Introduction 3
- 19. some form of training, then we have explained nothing. Think of the hollowness of the terms “urbanization” and “modernization,” or of the historians’ ruse that “the middle class is always rising.” Such formulations have become so broad as to carry little explanatory power. Moreover, it will do us little good to slip into a facile “educational determinism,” seeing all scientific or technical results as nothing but the blind recapit- ulation of previously learned methods. Such a monocausal story line is doomed to fail- ure from the start; tinkering and improvisation are always important parts of scientific practice. Rather than simply stating that all scientists and engineers must somehow have been trained, therefore, this volume pursues substantive links between types of training—as they have been negotiated and enacted in specific times and places—and the resulting scientific practices. Are there particular educational institutions or mech- anisms with which we can associate specific styles or approaches within the sciences? In other words, does the form of training matter to the content of science—and if so, how, in what ways, and to what extent? In pursuing these questions, this volume treats pedagogy not in the narrow sense of classroom teaching techniques—though these are certainly relevant—but more broadly: what are the institutions of training by means of which young recruits have become working scientists and engineers? The Practice-Practitioner Dyad The essays in this volume interrogate these links between scientists’ pedagogical formation, research strategies, and scientific identities, criss-crossing between episodes in Europe, Asia, and the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing on interrelated examples from the physical sciences, engineering, and tech- nology provides a baseline for comparison among the far-ranging cases, highlighting common themes and methodological concerns. The volume is organized into four parts: “Teaching Practices, Transferring Skills,” “Pedagogical Cultures in Collision,” “The Action of Textbooks,” and “Generational Reproduction.” Parts I and III focus on the question of how skills and practices can be transferred to scientists in training (the “practices” half of the practice-practitioner dyad); parts II and IV look more closely at how roles, norms, and values can become inculcated and new generations of practi- tioners produced. Teaching Practices, Transferring Skills The essays in part I address the interplay between techniques of instruction and chang- ing research strategies. Michael Gordin charts how the nineteenth-century chemist Friedrich Beilstein constantly adapted his teaching techniques and research goals to his 4 Kaiser
- 20. changing institutional settings. Out of Beilstein’s peripatetic pedagogy came a new Handbuch to help instantiate his vision of how young chemists should enter the field, organize their research, and communicate their findings. David Kaiser looks at the var- ious pedagogical processes by which new pencil-and-paper research tools—Feynman diagrams, introduced by the American theorist Richard Feynman—spread throughout postwar physics. New ways to calculate were accelerated by new institutions for train- ing the postwar generation; new skills became “second nature” against a backdrop of older practices that had already become routine. Hugh Gusterson examines a kind of arteriosclerosis in the ways that new skills have been inculcated in one particular branch of modern science: nuclear weapons science. With the rise of bureaucracy and the end of nuclear testing, questions of pedagogy again loom large as the secret weapons laboratories struggle to transfer the old guard’s skills and experience to newer recruits. Pedagogical Cultures in Collision Twenty-five years ago, historians and sociologists of science fastened onto scientific controversies as a potent means of bringing to the surface what usually remained tacit among scientists: their taken-for-granted epistemic and social norms. So, too, can scholars in science studies learn about prevailing pedagogical presuppositions by study- ing episodes of tension: controversies among scientists and engineers over what should count as “appropriate” or “effective” training highlight the pedagogical patterns on each side. Graeme Gooday examines how competing groups staked their claims to expertise over the new (and potentially lucrative) domain of electrotechnical machin- ery in the late nineteenth century by invoking practitioners’ training: would the “uni- versity men” drilled in Cambridge University’s Mathematical Tripos or the “practical men” schooled in personal apprenticeships retain ultimate authority? Kenji Ito asks how the new science of quantum mechanics spread beyond its originators: did the ever- fabled “Copenhagen Geist” float freely from Niels Bohr’s institute to the laboratories and universities of interwar Japan? Ito scrutinizes what Japanese physicists such as Nishina Yoshio brought back from their extended stays in Europe, and how they adapted these pedagogical approaches for their home environment. Cyrus Mody stud- ies how members of industrial laboratories and West Coast universities began to work with a new type of instrument during the 1980s and the 1990s. The two groups betrayed distinct expectations over what would count as scanning probe microscopy: from what would count as a probe microscope to who would be deemed a competent microscopist. Mody shows that the two groups’ differing pedagogical visions underlay their different responses to and uses of the new instruments. Introduction 5
- 21. The Action of Textbooks When scholars in science studies have written about pedagogy at all, it has often been to examine (and then disparage) scientific textbooks. Textbooks, so the conventional wisdom has agreed, represent the last stage of scientific creativity, the final desiccation of scientific discovery into routine, banal, taken-for-granted knowledge. Challenging this narrow view, Antonio García-Belmar, José-Ramón Bertomeu-Sánchez, and Berna- dette Bensaude-Vincent highlight the historicity of textbooks as a genre: our notion of the scientific textbook emerged in the decades after the French Revolution, taking form in the midst of major overhauls in governmental oversight of curricula and wide- ranging changes in the book-publishing industry. Far from being the end stage of sci- entific creativity, these authors argue, nineteenth-century chemistry textbooks offered their authors and publishers an influential venue for expressing creativity, both in how they chose to organize their material and how they approached the prevailing sci- entific and philosophical debates of their day. Karl Hall picks up on this theme, focus- ing on the world-famous textbooks by the Soviet physicists Lev Landau and Evgenii Lifshitz. Forged as a product of contrasting expectations and requirements within postwar Soviet culture, in which the task of writing textbooks received newfound scrutiny from the state, the Landau-Lifshitz books challenged prevailing generic con- ventions while framing a distinct social identity for young theoretical physicists. Careful editing and selective translation then helped to spread the books to students all over the world. Buhm Soon Park likewise highlights the choices that scientists make as they write their textbooks, crafting their books as armaments in ongoing theoretical debates. The quantum chemists Charles Coulson and Michael Dewar adopted strongly contrasting pedagogical styles within their postwar textbooks, yet each used his books to help turn the tide of practicing chemists toward his method- ological approach. Textbooks and teaching styles proved crucial in setting the pace for theory change in modern chemistry. Generational Reproduction Scientists and engineers do more than pass down skills and knowledge to younger gen- erations; they also strive to inculcate norms, roles, and personae. Kathryn Olesko stud- ies the process of canon formation in physics. Practical manuals such as Friedrich Kohlrausch’s embody cognitive and practical preferences, epistemological guidelines, and social norms—elements that later generations both adopt and adapt in the course of their training. Sharon Traweek reveals how decisions about what laboratories to establish and what equipment to build are often, at root, decisions about what kinds of students to train. Various sites within contemporary Japan serve as incubators for 6 Kaiser
- 22. different kinds of new physicists. Today, as throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, decisions about how to generate new knowledge are always interwoven with choices about how to generate new knowledge makers. In the concluding chapter, Andrew Warwick and David Kaiser subject the well-known work of Thomas Kuhn and Michel Foucault to critical scrutiny, drawing out a series of conceptual resources with which further studies of scientific pedagogy might fruitfully be undertaken. In all these ways, the essays in this volume consider the constitutive roles played by pedagogy in making modern science and engineering happen. Notes 1. On the introduction of laboratory-based teaching, see Owen Hannaway, “The German model of chemical education in America: Ira Remsen at Johns Hopkins (1876–1913),” Ambix 23 (1976), November: 145–164; Larry Owens, “Pure and sound government: Laboratories, playing fields, and gymnasia in the nineteenth-century search for order,” Isis 76 (1985), June: 182–194; Robert Kohler, “The PhD machine: Building on the collegiate base,” Isis 81 (1990): 638–662; Klaus Hentschel, Mapping the Spectrum: Techniques of Visual Representation in Research and Teaching (Oxford University Press, 2002), chapter 9. On Cold War science curricular reforms, see David Donahue, “Serving students, science, or society? The secondary school physics curriculum in the United States, 1930–65,” History of Education Quarterly 33 (1993), autumn: 321–352; John Rudolph, Scientists in the Classroom: The Cold War Reconstruction of American Science Education (Palgrave, 2002); David Kaiser, “Cold war requisitions, scientific manpower, and the production of American physicists after World War II,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 33 (2002), fall: 131–159; John Krige, “NATO and the strengthening of Western science in the post-Sputnik era,” Minerva 38 (2000): 81–108. For reviews of some recent reforms in undergraduate science teaching, see Eric Mazur, “Peer instruction,” in The Changing Role of Physics Departments in Modern Universities, ed. Edward Redish and John Rigden (American Institute of Physics, 1997), volume 2, 981–988; and Catherine Crouch and Eric Mazur, “Peer instruction: Ten years of experience and results,” American Journal of Physics 69 (2001): 970–977. 2. See, e.g., Joel Spring, The Sorting Machine Revisited: National Educational Policy since 1945, second edition (Longman, 1989); Herbert Kliebard, Schooled to Work: Vocationalism and the American Curriculum, 1876–1946 (Teachers College Press, 1999). 3. Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture, tr. Richard Nice (Sage, 1977); Michael Apple, ed., Cultural and Economic Reproduction in Education: Essays on Class, Ideology, and the State (Routledge, 1982); Richard Arum and Irenee Beattie, eds., The Structure of Schooling: Readings in the Sociology of Education (Mayfield, 2000). For interesting exam- ples beyond the United States, see E. Thomas Ewing, “How Soviet teachers taught: Classroom prac- tices and Stalinist pedagogy, 1931 to 1939,” East/West Education 15 (1994), fall: 117–152; Brian Puaca, Drafting Democracy: Education Reform in American-Occupied Germany, 1945–49 (MA thesis, University of North Carolina, 2001). Introduction 7
- 23. 4. Thomas Kuhn, The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (University of Chicago Press, 1977), xix–xx; idem, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, third edition (University of Chicago Press, 1996 [1962]). 5. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958); idem, The Tacit Dimension (Anchor, 1967). 6. Telling exceptions include Sharon Traweek, Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High-Energy Physicists (Harvard University Press, 1988); Kathryn Olesko, Physics as a Calling: Discipline and Practice in the Königsberg Seminar for Physics (Cornell University Press, 1991); Gerald Geison and Frederic L. Holmes, eds., Research Schools, published as Osiris 8 (1993); Robert Kohler, Lords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life (University of Chicago Press, 1994); Rudolph, Scientists in the Classroom; and Andrew Warwick, Masters of Theory: Cambridge and the Rise of Mathematical Physics (University of Chicago Press, 2003). 7. Andrew Pickering, The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science (University of Chicago Press, 1995). 8. Harry Collins, “The TEA set: Tacit knowledge and scientific networks,” Social Studies of Science 4 (1974): 165–186; Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Boyle, Hobbes, and the Experimental Life (Princeton University Press, 1985); Simon Schaffer, “Late Victorian metrology and its instrumentarium: A manufactory of ohms,” in Invisible Connections: Instruments, Institutions, and Science, ed. Robert Bud and Susan Cozzens (SPIE Optical Engineering Press, 1992), 23–56; Peter Galison, How Experiments End (University of Chicago Press, 1987); idem, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics (University of Chicago Press, 1997). 9. Traweek, Beamtimes and Lifetimes; Steven Shapin, “‘A scholar and a gentleman’: The problem- atic identity of the scientific practitioner in early modern England,” History of Science 29 (1991): 279–327; Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (University of Chicago Press, 1993); Kohler, Lords of the Fly; Lorraine Daston, “The moral economy of science,” Osiris 10 (1995): 3–24; Hugh Gusterson, Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War (University of California Press, 1996); and Lorraine Daston and Otto Sibum, eds., Scientific Personae and their Histories, published as Science in Context 16 (2003), June: 1–269. 8 Kaiser
- 24. I Teaching Practices, Transferring Skills
- 26. 1 Beilstein Unbound: The Pedagogical Unraveling of a Man and His Handbuch Michael D. Gordin Friedrich Konrad Beilstein is the most famous scientist you have never heard of. Unless, that is, you are a chemist, in which case he is the most famous chemist you know absolutely nothing about. Beilstein is a name constantly on the lips of essentially every practicing organic chemist in the world—and has been for over a century—but the amount of information widely known about his life pales in comparison to other less prominent figures such as Bunsen, Davy, and Pauling. Upon his death in 1906, Beilstein elicited the highest praise: The name Beilstein awakes in the currently living generation of chemists feelings of the sincerest gratitude. There is scarcely any work that so often lies open on the chemist’s table or in his labo- ratory as the Handbuch that carries Beilstein’s name and that is the result of his life’s work. It has become an indispensable guide to all those who are active in the area of organic chemistry— “a guidebook for the land of organic chemistry”—and one can scarcely even think now about a “Beilsteinless” era.1 And there is the source of our ignorance: Beilstein is not known as a person, but rather as a book, a reference work for the properties of all known organic compounds. Beilstein is unknown because historians have not asked “Who is Beilstein?” They have scarcely even asked “What is Beilstein?” Let us start with what Beilstein is. The “Beilstein” (more precisely the Handbuch der Organischen Chemie) was first published in 1881–1883 in two volumes comprising 2,200 pages and 15,000 organic compounds. In 1885 the second edition began to appear (completed in 1889 in three volumes), and the 1899–1906 third edition comprised four volumes. These first editions were compiled and edited by Beilstein alone (except the third, with which he had supplementary assistance). By 1981, on the hundredth anniversary of the Handbuch, the staff of the Beilstein Institute in Frankfurt am Main stood at 160. As it was simply but emphatically put in a commemorative volume that year: “The Beilstein Handbook is the most extensive collection of physical data in printed form in the world!”2 The Beilstein Handbuch represents the first pure reference handbook of
- 27. chemistry, and it became the site of that science’s first large-scale communal literary project.3 Yet I come not to praise Beilstein, but to exhume him. I propose that by breaking apart the monolith of the Handbuch and looking at the pedagogical roots of its forma- tion, we can come to a better understanding of the multiple ways in which pedagogy was implicated in the development of even the most mundane tools of organic chem- istry. The Handbuch is an object of pedagogy, having spawned numerous guides induct- ing students into its proper use, but I will focus on it as a subject of pedagogy.4 Who was Beilstein?5 Even naming him becomes complicated, since for Germans he was Friedrich Konrad Beilstein and for Russians he was Fedor Fedorovich Beil’shtein. (I adopt the former for the sake of convenience.) Later in his life, he would describe him- self thus: Beilstein (Friedrich, Conrad) born in St. Petersburg on 17 (5) February 1838. Completed the German high school in St. Petersburg & then moved to the University of Heidelberg. Studied besides that in Munich (with Jolly and Liebig), in Göttingen (with Wöhler) & in Paris (with Wurtz). Became in 1859 an Assistant in Prof. Löwig’s University Laboratory in Breslau. Went in 1860 (early in the year) in the same capacity to the Laborat. of Prof. Wöhler in Göttingen. Received doctorate in Göttingen in 1858 (Dissertation: on murexide). Habilitated in Göttingen in chemistry in 1860 and became an extraordinary professor there in 1865. Moved in autumn to Petersburg as professor of chemistry at the Technological Institute. Became in 1867 a teacher of chemistry at the Military-Engineering Academy there and in 1868 a chemist of the Department of Trade and Manufactures in the Imperial Russian Ministry of Finances. First scientific work: On the Diffusion of Liquids, conducted in 1855/6 in the physical cabinet of Prof. Jolly in Munich. Books: Introduction to Qualitative chemical analysis, 5 editions, Chemical Great-Industry at the World Exposition in Vienna 1873, Handbook of organ. Chemistry. In 2 editions as of 1885.6 Even a cursory glance at Beilstein’s account shows how he perceived his life to be sat- urated with pedagogy. What mattered was who trained him, where he trained others, and what texts he published to that end.7 I propose we take Beilstein at his word. I argue that the Handbuch emerged out of a long and diverse set of interactions between Beilstein and pedagogies in various contexts. Specifically, I will situate Beilstein as a teacher at Göttingen, as editor of the Zeitschrift für Chemie, as professor at the Technological Institute in St. Petersburg, and as editor of the Handbuch, and show how in each case the notion of what it meant to train students into practicing chemists was always tied to a particular receptive environment. As his environment in St. Petersburg turned hostile in 1880, Beilstein began to direct his pedagogy more abstractly. Instead of focusing on actual students, Russian or German, he con- 12 Gordin
- 28. centrated on building a Germanophonic international community of standardized thinkers. Student Teacher: Beilstein in Germany Beilstein’s paternal line hailed from Darmstadt, and his mother’s line, the Rutsches, originated in Baden, both of solidly Mittelstand stock. His great uncle, Konrad Rutsch, was a Protestant from the small village of Dühren, which he left at age 16, settling two years later in St. Petersburg in 1810. There he opened a grocery store at the corner of Malaia Morskaia and Nevskii Prospekt, roughly two blocks from the Winter Palace.8 In 1838, the year Beilstein was born, Konrad died, turning his business over to his niece Katharina Margarete Rutsch and her husband Karl Friedrich Beilstein. Our Beilstein was the first of their seven children (five boys, two girls), most of whom retained their status as German citizens. He was educated at the Protestant St. Petrischule in St. Petersburg, where he received extremely high marks and upon graduation at age 15 embarked for further study to Germany. An uncle paid for the trip. In Germany, Beilstein traveled to most of the various educational centers for the modern chemist.9 He studied with Robert Wilhelm Bunsen in Heidelberg for two years, then Justus von Liebig in Munich, and became close friends on another stay in Heidelberg with young Privatdozent August Kekulé. Beilstein took courses and learned laboratory skills from each of these figures before obtaining his doctoral degree at Göttingen under Friedrich Wöhler in February 1858, a few days shy of his twentieth birthday.10 Thus armed with academic credentials, he traveled to Paris and worked in Adolphe Wurtz’s laboratory, adopting the latter’s program of investigating aldehydes. Paris resolved Beilstein on an academic career in chemistry, and he assumed a labora- tory assistant position in Breslau in autumn 1859, under the fearsome charge of Carl Jacob Löwig. Breslau, and particularly Löwig’s centralized and dismissive attitude towards his students, were not to Beilstein’s taste.11 In 1860 Wöhler offered Beilstein a position in Göttingen as a laboratory assistant with better pay (and more congenial working conditions). Göttingen marked a pedagogically important moment for Beilstein, since this was when he was first expected to train future chemists. His main duties were to conduct practical laboratory instruction, an educational innovation stressed decades earlier by Liebig in his previous incarnation as the doyen of Giessen. After Liebig moved to Munich in the aftermath of the 1848–49 unrest in the German states, his model of chemical education spread essentially everywhere.12 This type of laboratory-specific teaching put heavy demands on the pedagogue’s time. As Beilstein reported to Russian Beilstein Unbound 13
- 29. chemist Aleksandr M. Butlerov: “If you consider, however, that I only have Saturday on which to work; on the other days instruction in the laboratory absorbs my entire activ- ity, then you would make allowances for me and find it excusable if my patience is completely gone.”13 Nevertheless, despite his complaints, his six years in Göttingen can be considered the most scientifically productive and socially happiest of his life. Of par- ticular note was his work on isomerism. In a series of seminal studies, Beilstein demon- strated that various organic compounds previously considered isomers were in fact the same compound, facts he used to expand the credibility of August Kekulé’s structure theory. As Beilstein wrote to the latter: “My critics reproach me for having accom- plished little of real significance along this line, but it was necessary to show before- hand that there is only one benzoic acid, that benzyl chloride and chlorotoluene are different, and so forth, before these could bring to your theory that range and that sig- nificance which it had from the beginning.”14 This established Beilstein’s reputation as a gifted organic chemist. Beilstein was not, of course, alone in the teaching labs, and his colleagues, von Uslar and Rudolph Fittig, frequently irritated him. Von Uslar was deplorable as a pharma- ceutical chemist with no theoretical interests. Fittig’s sins were graver: “[Fittig] is a pedant through and through and treads so closely in the footsteps of his great teacher Limpricht that I consider him to be the most insufferable man I have ever met. . . . The present lecture assistant has fallen ill and Fittig has temporarily taken over his job so I have this monster in my place the whole day.”15 So much for first impressions: Fittig would soon become Beilstein’s inseparable colleague (at one point they shared an apart- ment) and a crucial factor—together with Hans Hübner, another Göttingen Privat- dozent—in shaping an emerging pedagogical style that stressed collegial cooperation and complementary division of labor among teaching duties in a well-equipped labo- ratory.16 Beilstein’s magnetic personality made him the clear center of the group. As Fittig commented in his diary: I respect his knowledge of organic chemistry, and I cannot fail to recognize that he, especially in the matter of such important laboratory studies, has stimulated me many times. . . . He also stands before the laboratory students in a proper but good relation, he tells them jokes and anecdotes . . . and allows the difference between teacher and student to vanish completely. The students like this, as well as his joviality; his sharp humor makes him their darling. I am in this respect entirely different, and I will happily admit that I am abrupt, that I am too much a teacher, too school- masterly. . . .17 This teaching style—using humor and individual attention to motivate students—like so many other aspects of pedagogy, was site-specific. When Beilstein left Göttingen, this casual demeanor became harder to maintain. 14 Gordin
- 30. As Fittig and Beilstein became more closely acquainted, they discovered other com- plementary aspects of their characters besides pedagogy. It has often been asserted with respect to the Handbuch that Beilstein was anti-theoretical, and thus was predisposed towards empirical compilation. Otto Krätz, for example, in his excellent study of Beil- stein’s correspondence with Heidelberg (later Munich) chemist Emil Erlenmeyer, con- trasts Beilstein as the “man of Praxis” to Erlenmeyer’s “man of Theory.”18 Perhaps this is true, but next to Erlenmeyer almost any chemist would seem to be a “man of Praxis.” A less skewed contrast is between Fittig and Beilstein, where Fittig is classed as the talented experimentalist, and Beilstein is his theorist complement with his exceptional command of the chemical literature.19 Beilstein in fact repeatedly stressed the importance of “indis- pensable” theories that were “supported by noteworthy discoveries,” such as Kekulé and Butlerov’s structure theory, and was quick to criticize Marcellin Berthelot’s textbook as overemphasizing facts to the detriment of theory. Given that Beilstein’s reputation was built on the success of structure theory, this conclusion should not strike us as odd, despite Beilstein’s occasional later disclaimers of all theoretical speculation.20 Beilstein was able to stake out this middle ground in his research and his teaching because Fittig provided enough experimental guidance to balance the students’ training. Beilstein’s insistence on the mutual dependence of theory and experiment made him a pedagogue in high demand. In April 1865, St. Petersburg University attempted to hire Beilstein. Wöhler and others lobbied Hannover not to let such a prize teacher go. As the grand old man of Göttingen chemistry wrote to the Ministry in 1865, Beilstein “is the most talented and knowledgeable [of the Assistants], he possesses above all of them the most multifaceted scientific education, and his name known as among the most advantageous through his achievements in the most difficult part of chemistry, organic chemistry, on which he has been giving lectures each semester for 3 years already.”21 In the end, Göttingen counter-offered to make Beilstein an extraordinary professor at the ripe young age of 27, and threw in a sizable salary to boot—which Beilstein accepted after failing to coax similar blandishments from A. A. Voskresenskii in Petersburg.22 Beilstein couched his final acceptance to Hannover in pedagogical terms: “My entire goal and striving is directed so as to conduct my science, which I place above every- thing, completely and independently. No place has offered more and better opportu- nity than here in Göttingen . . . nowhere have I found such a pure scientific sense as here and nowhere are the students as industrious as here. I put specifically a great deal of weight on the last point. We chemists achieve very little ourselves, and only that which we achieve through our students is actually valuable.”23 Anyway, no one really expected that Beilstein would seriously abandon his alma mater.24 That assumption, it turned out, could not be further off the mark. Beilstein Unbound 15
- 31. Beilstein, Editor: The Zeitschrift für Chemie Before continuing with Beilstein’s pedagogical peregrinations, however, we need to pause and explore a literary project that grew up alongside Beilstein’s teaching style in the culture of Göttingen sociability: his joint editorship of the Zeitschrift für Chemie with Hübner and Fittig. The Zeitschrift is important to the history of the Handbuch both because Beilstein’s editorship involved the correlation and processing of diverse chem- ical material (thus providing necessary experience for his later magnum opus), and because the Zeitschrift functioned for roughly a decade as the only regular publication outlet for Russian chemists—albeit in German—and thus Beilstein’s role on the edito- rial board facilitated the constitution of a Russo-German chemical community, the eventual breakdown of which would leave traces in the Handbuch. Like Beilstein himself, the Zeitschrift für Chemie had a confusing set of appellations. In 1858, a Heidelberg quartet centered on August Kekulé founded the Kritische Zeit- schrift für Chemie, Physik und Mathematik, which consisted largely of book reviews in the associated three disciplines. In 1859, one of the four, Gustav Lewinstein, assumed con- trol of the journal with former pharmacist, now chemist, Emil Erlenmeyer, who had just become a Privatdozent at Heidelberg, and the journal was renamed the cumbersome Kritische Zeitschrift für Chemie und die verwandten Wissenschaften und Disciplinen als Pharmacie, Technologie, Agriculturchemie, Physik und Mineralogie. In 1860, as Erlenmeyer assumed more and more control, the editors changed the name yet again to the Zeitschrift für Chemie und Pharmacie, which it would remain until 1865. From 1861 to 1864, Erlenmeyer was the sole editor.25 The Zeitschrift quickly became more than just a synopsis of the state of the field, as Erlenmeyer increasingly imposed himself on the content of the journal. When excerpt- ing pieces for publication, he would frequently append lengthy and highly critical “Bemerkungen,” and he turned the journal into a one-sided vehicle for the promotion of various chemical reforms. Erlenmeyer’s frequently ad hominem and aggressive style alienated readers more than it attracted them.26 One of the saving graces of his jour- nal was the frequency with which Russian chemists, particularly those who had stud- ied in Erlenmeyer’s laboratory at Heidelberg, published original research in the Zeitschrift, including Aleksandr Butlerov’s fundamental developments in structure theory. Erlenmeyer’s alienation from the community, however, made it difficult to sustain high submission rates or circulation, and he began to offer it to other possible editors in 1864. He explicitly suggested that Butlerov adopt the journal as a German- language Russian chemical organ, an idea possibly suggested to him by Beilstein.27 Butlerov turned it down. 16 Gordin
- 32. Beilstein did not. In 1865 Erlenmeyer turned the journal over to Hübner at Göttingen, who began to edit it in collaboration with Beilstein and Fittig. The journal— once so tied to Erlenmeyer’s name that antipathy toward the one translated into antipa- thy toward the other—became so identified with the triumvirate that a major obituary for Erlenmeyer neglected to mention that he had ever had any connection to the Zeit- schrift.28 Beilstein et al. turned the now-renamed Zeitschrift für Chemie into a fairly suc- cessful journal. They maintained the old format, and Russian contributions remained high—even after the creation of a Russian-language chemical journal under the aus- pices of the Russian Chemical Society in 1869. Beilstein was particularly insistent on developing the Russian connection, as he wrote to Butlerov on January 29, 1865: I will in closing stress again that the “Zeitschrift” has in my person a warm advocate of Russia’s interests. I wish that Russian chemists won’t just slave away laboriously on a Russian [sic: German—MG] edition of their works (for you, who writes German so expertly, this is obviously not necessary!). But many can thus postpone the publication of works, and thus I ask that they send me only the Russian articles. I will worry about getting a correct translation. . . . Chemists speak only one language and thus one should also know in Germany what is appearing in Russia.29 In several publications of this period, Beilstein stressed the important contributions made by Russians in their own language and the lamentable ignorance of these find- ings on the part of Western chemists. Beilstein’s favorable review of Butlerov’s Russian textbook in organic chemistry similarly attempted to include Russians into a broader community of chemists.30 The happily advancing juggernaut of the Zeitschrift ground to a complete halt in 1871, when it faced staggering competition for its small market niche from the Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, founded in 1868. The Berlin Berichte achieved much higher circulation after 1871 by virtue of its becoming the official organ of the unified German Chemical Society. Beilstein wrote to Erlenmeyer from St. Petersburg on April 26, 1871: “There remains no doubt: the Zeitschrift für Chemie can no longer be conducted the way that it is now. Through the successful appearance of the Berliner Berichte one of the chief tasks of the Zeitschrift—to publish quickly—is essentially lost.”31 Beilstein then took the somewhat perverse move of attempting to foist the jour- nal back to Erlenmeyer. The latter, now affiliated with the Annalen in Munich, rebuffed these overtures, and the journal folded by the end of the year. The central problem that the Zeitschrift had been created to ameliorate remained unresolved, however. There was still a proliferation of disjointed chemical knowledge among multiple subspecialties, compounded by increasingly nationalistic attitudes towards domestic organs. This linguistic nationalism was most evident among the Russians, a fact Beilstein lamented on several occasions.32 He complained to Erlenmeyer Beilstein Unbound 17
- 33. in April 1871: “What is to become of us, when each city produces its own journal, where one must seek out one’s bit of chemistry under dust, garbage, and mouse drop- pings.”33 The knowledge needed to be systematized or it would be lost. Beilstein, Russian: The St. Petersburg Technological Institute In 1864 Beilstein had joked in a letter to Kekulé: “You won’t believe how much you have risen in value here [since you left Germany for Belgium]. Look at [Hermann] Kolbe, the poor devil, how he must struggle through with a lot of trouble, and on the other hand, what a big shot [August] Hofmann is now. . . . What kind of big shot will you be, if one draws you back to Germany. I constantly wish to become a professor of chemistry in Peking or in the Sahara desert. Then I should make it difficult for Hofmann to compete with me!”34 He was soon to make a transition perhaps even more dramatic than the Sahara: in 1866, a year after he turned down St. Petersburg University, Beilstein took a position at the less prestigious Technological Institute in the same city.35 The move caught his Göttingen patrons by surprise. As Wöhler wrote to Liebig in November 1866: “The Prussian ministry in Hannover has asked why we let Beilstein go. He has taken a call from St. Petersburg with 2,500 thalers and is already gone.”36 The immediate cause was personal. Beilstein’s father had died somewhat sud- denly at the age of 56 in April 1865, and by 1866 the family needed him back in St. Petersburg. Beilstein was officially appointed a professor at the Technological Institute on 24 September 1866, and by June 1867 he became a subject of the Tsar.37 The Technological Institute was far from ideal. Created under Tsar Nicholas I as a way to train large numbers of civilian engineers, the Institute featured high teaching loads and students who were less interested in the pure sciences.38 Whereas St. Petersburg University was located right next to the Academy of Sciences, the Technological Institute, south of the city center, was marginalized from daily academic interaction. Furthermore, Alexander II’s revised university statute of 1863 had expanded faculty posts and generated a renaissance of natural scientific work at the University. This was part of the reason why D. I. Mendeleev, later famous for his 1869 formulation of the periodic system of chemical elements, gradually moved his base of operations from the Technological Institute to the University. Although Mendeleev became a full professor at the University in 1867 and thereafter devoted essentially no attention to the Institute, he did not officially give up his post (or salary) at the Institute until 1871. Beilstein was hired to teach analytic and organic chemistry in a demanding institution that had been long neglected. Hardly a second Göttingen. 18 Gordin
- 34. Beilstein expected to be in a tough position when he arrived, since his close interac- tions in Germany with Russian academics made him aware of their onerous duties. As he recalled in 1893 about A. A. Voskresenskii, Mendeleev’s predecessor at St. Petersburg University: With the paper on theobromine Voskresenskii’s scientific activity stopped. . . . Teaching activities totally occupied him. Remember, that in those years the position of the scientist in Russia was unenviable. The meager salary for the position of professor far from protected one from material needs. It was necessary to seek out supplemental lessons for a living, for the preservation of a fam- ily, and simply for the needs of scientific activity. But even lessons paid poorly, so that a large part of working time went into teaching and there was no energy left for scientific works. This explains the verdict, which in the past was often heard among foreign scientists, that every year talented Russian scientists left Russia, worked passionately and successfully, but they stopped research as soon as they returned to their homeland.39 Those dire days had passed, but Beilstein faced the additional problem of repairing the consequences of what he would characterize as Mendeleev’s neglect. Beilstein stayed here for 30 years and lectured several hours a week (usually three hours inorganic/ analytic and four hours organic). Enrollments of engineering students continued to grow throughout the 1870s, with little hope for Beilstein to get either scientifically minded assistants or requisite compensation.40 Despite his overt despair, Beilstein was remem- bered as a gifted lecturer by contemporaries: “Lively, in constant motion, quick with words and actions, even perhaps sharp, Beilstein was markedly exceptional by his order in lectures. He spoke well, very lively, sometimes stepping off the subject, but these were not digressions into other areas of knowledge, like Mendeleev did; if Beilstein digressed, then they always concerned chemistry, and it seemed that he made these digressions in order to invigorate perhaps the exposition of the subject.”41 In 1891, after 25 years of service, he became emeritus, but he continued reading analytical chemistry lectures. He also read weekly chemistry lectures at Nicholas Military Engineering Academy. We get an excellent sense of the frustrations surrounding Beilstein’s initial position at the Institute in an especially revealing letter to Butlerov (then at Kazan) of November 1866: Perhaps the tidings have not yet reached you in the far East that I have now decided to move to Petersburg. I am Mendeleev’s successor at the Technological Institute and am busying myself dealing with my imposed duties. That is no small affair, when I tell you that my predecessor—who, as you know, is not really a practical chemist—never bothered with the work of Praktikanten and went at most for a few minutes into the laboratory every 1/4 of the year. He was in such a rush to get Chancel and Gerhardt translated, without bothering to consider progress in analytic chemistry in the least. This book was shoved into the hands of each Praktikant and then he was discharged with a blessing. You can easily imagine in what kind of dilapidated circumstances I have encountered Beilstein Unbound 19
- 35. almost everything here. How hard it is for me to introduce discipline and order will be clear to you immediately when I add that in one crowded room there are presently—175—yes, yes—175 men working! [as opposed to 80–85 at Göttingen —MG]. . . . What kind of nonsense there is here under these conditions! I had to give up being an academic (Gelehrter) and am a schoolmaster (Schulmeister) in the harshest meaning of the word. How painfully I feel this biting contrast I don’t need to tell you. Although I live here in the circle of my family, I still feel the greatest homesickness for my old laboratory and my old students. I don’t have any time at all for my own work. All my free time goes to the preparation of my lectures, that there is so much left here for me to accomplish.42 There are several points of interest here. First, there is Beilstein’s hostility to Mendeleev, the rising star of the Petersburg chemical scene. Second, Beilstein was alienated from his students, whose lack of preparation and interest forced him to abandon the collegial teaching style he had developed at Göttingen. With his two assistants, he organized his laboratory “militarisch,” using the explicit model of Löwig’s Breslau laboratory (which he had hated while there).43 Given that he was still editing the Zeitschrift at a remove from Göttingen, and since he did not have equally qualified colleagues, he was forced into a cookie-cutter, chemistry-by-numbers approach to deal with his limited resources. The third point of interest concerns the lack of a proper textbook for teaching ana- lytical chemistry, which brings us to Beilstein’s Anleitung zur qualitativen Analyse (Instructions for Qualitative Analysis), published in the late 1860s in response to the inad- equate Mendeleev-generated Russian translation of Charles Gerhardt’s book. Beilstein, who had distinguished analytical skills, is still widely known for his “Beilstein test,” whereby a flame is used to detect the presence of halogens in an organic substance.44 Beilstein’s book was an attempt to integrate recent innovations in analytic chemistry in a format that would be useful to unskilled students in the laboratory. Its absence of a formal framework and emphasis on building transferable and widely applicable skills made it uniquely adaptable across major theoretical and experimental divides. The text was published simultaneously in Russian and German, going through six editions and translated into Dutch, English, and French.45 Analytic chemistry was widely recognized as the most basic skill set for chemists. You could not do higher levels of organic, inorganic, mineralogical, physiological, or any other kind of chemistry unless you could properly analyze substances in a laboratory.46 Erlenmeyer, for example, was quite specific about the need for proper training in ana- lytical chemistry: “Before [the beginner] can go on, he must first have gotten to know exactly the bodies that he is supposed to find from now on by their properties and chem- ical relations. His first order of business must therefore be to state without a doubt, that he has experimentally studied the properties and transformations of metals, their salts, oxides, chloride, sulfides, etc.”47 This further implied that not only was analytic chem- istry the first branch of chemistry to be taught to students, and the most widely taught 20 Gordin
- 36. among the various other natural sciences, but it was also the most laboratory-intensive of the sciences. This visibility and importance of the field also made book reviews of ana- lytic chemistry manuals some of the most contentious of the decade.48 Beilstein felt his own book had to emphasize laboratory work and provide a sense of unity to the disci- pline, much as the Zeitschrift had tried to do for the chemical literature. He accomplished his pedagogical unification of chemistry by emphasizing the standardization of skills. His Handbuch would go even further by standardizing chemical concepts.49 Beilstein structured his book rather unusually. A very slim volume, the Anleitung is organized as a set of instructions, not as a conceptual organization of available tech- niques and information. The first twenty pages or so, “Examples of Practice in Analysis,” were designed to calibrate the student’s laboratory. That is, Beilstein walked the student through the basic procedures of titration, heating, etc.: what happens when you carbonize a substance, you moisten it, you put it to a flame, you dissolve it, etc. This part of the book ascertains that all students are using the same equipment in the same way—militarisch indeed. The other thirty pages of the book, the “Systematic Course of Analysis,” show in an even more explicit step-by-step form what the student is to do when presented with an unknown substance, assuming the set of skills devel- oped earlier. First you take part of the substance and add water. If it dissolves, then move to step 5, if it does not, try sulfuric acid, then move to step 7, and so on. In this fashion, the student should be able to identify the substance qualitatively at the end of the series. Meanwhile, Beilstein was also one of the most visible members of the Petersburg chemical community. Although Beilstein was awarded the Lomonosov prize of the Academy of Sciences in 1876 on the recommendation of A. M. Butlerov and N. N. Zinin, served as consultant for the Ministry of Finances on patent questions since 1867, and was president of the chemical section of the Russian Technical Society, he still felt scientifically isolated in Petersburg. He wrote to Butlerov late in 1866: “I am here in the big city more than ever in the isolation room of the sciences and each stimulation from the outside would be newly cherished.”50 He continued in April 1867: “I am until now completely isolated in Petersburg. Zinin, the only really thinking and active natural sci- entist, is through his high-aristocracy relationships almost unapproachable. The other chemists are either not chemists or look only with indignation or incomprehension on the progress of science.”51 A few months after he moved to Petersburg he began to agi- tate for Butlerov to be brought there from Kazan as an intellectual companion, and despite some stonewalling by Mendeleev, Butlerov was eventually offered a post at St. Petersburg University and the chair of chemistry at the Academy of Sciences. Relations between Beilstein and Butlerov were exceptionally good throughout the 1860s, when Beilstein Unbound 21
- 37. Beilstein helped to publish the German translation of Butlerov’s structure-theoretical textbook and assisted in the propagandizing of his chemical ideas.52 The situation soured when it came to D. I. Mendeleev, long Beilstein’s bête noire. Mendeleev recalled in his 1861 diary his first meeting with Beilstein, then visiting his family in Russia. At a party in chemist L. N. Shishkov’s house, Mendeleev remembered the hubbub about this “dry German,” who left him with a very unpleasant impres- sion.53 While Beilstein was still in Göttingen, he could paper over their mutual dislike. He wrote a rather flattering review of Mendeleev’s Organic Chemistry (1861) in the Zeitschrift für Chemie, where he lauded its creative—if somewhat outdated—use of Gerhardt’s type theory.54 Right before his move to St. Petersburg, Beilstein wrote to Mendeleev to thank him for “all of your kindness [in] naming me your successor at the Institute, which you already promised me last year.” He also warned: “I will at first often make you sick of me. Moving to a new circle of activity, I will be obliged to often ask for your advice and help.”55 After Beilstein had begun to clean up Mendeleev’s mess there, however, the goodwill dissipated. Beilstein would have liked to ignore him, but that was becoming less and less feasible. It became utterly impossible on November 11, 1880, when Mendeleev was denied the chair in technology by the Physical-Mathematical Division of the Imperial Academy of Sciences by a single vote. Butlerov had tried once before to get Mendeleev a post at the Academy (then an adjunct chair in physics), but was rebuffed by the Permanent Secretary, Konstantin Veselovskii. This more public rejection in 1880 sparked a massive outcry from Russian chemists and from newspaper reporters. N. A. Menshutkin, secre- tary of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society, asked chemists to sign a protest of the Academy’s behavior, which he would then publish in a local newspaper. On the grounds that a newspaper was an improper forum, Beilstein was the only chemist who refused to sign, proposing instead an honorary address at their next professional meet- ing.56 Beilstein’s “desertion” of the cause was attributed to his being a “German,” and thus an affiliate of the supposed “German party” in the Academy of Sciences that was widely (and erroneously) believed to have orchestrated Mendeleev’s rejection.57 In the midst of the newspaper campaign in support of Mendeleev, only one substantial arti- cle, published in the capital’s German paper, attacked the support for Mendeleev on the grounds (mostly correct) that the Russian was not a technological chemist. Many Petersburgers attributed authorship of the anonymous article to Beilstein.58 Injury was added to insult when Beilstein himself was awarded the chair in technol- ogy in 1882. Drawing on their critique of Mendeleev, anti-Butlerov academicians (Helmersen, Schrenk, Savich, Wild, and Gadolin) proffered Beilstein for the post as a teacher at the Technological Institute with a decided emphasis on his contributions to 22 Gordin
- 38. the chemistry of the oil industry, and as an officer of the Russian Technological Society. Anticipating objections from the so-called “Russian party,” they added in their December 22, 1881 nomination: “We also remind you, that F. F. Beilstein is a Russian subject, a native of St. Petersburg, where he received his education, and that he com- mands the Russian language fully.”59 Butlerov was hard-pressed to offer an adequate riposte. On January 19, 1882, the Physical-Mathematical Division voted on Beilstein’s candidacy. Of the 16 present, Beilstein received 12 votes, one more than the necessary two-thirds majority.60 Butlerov decided to blackball Beilstein at the General Assembly meeting of March 5, 1882, since a two-thirds vote there was necessary to confirm the January vote. Of the 27 academicians present, Beilstein received 17, one vote shy of the two-thirds majority. He would not receive his chair in technology until after Butlerov’s death in 1886. Beilstein was thus marked as German, not Russian, and he began to behave accordingly.61 After 1880, Mendeleev’s fame in the wake of his rejection made the Russian capital uniquely inhospitable for the displaced Göttingener. Before 1882, Beilstein had pub- lished 92 articles; afterwards only 21.62 One explanation for this is the increasing demands the Handbuch placed on his time after its first edition began to appear in 1881. But this itself was a consequence of his increasing isolation, which plunged him more deliberately into his compilatory work and disinclined him from publishing for his local peers. Consider Beilstein’s increasing disengagement with local Russian chemists at the Russian Chemical Society. He was one of the Society’s founding members in 1868, but among all Petersburg chemists of distinction, he was unique in not being rec- ognized by the Society in any substantial administrative or honorary capacity. In 1903, under the new charter of the Academy, Beilstein lost the presidential election to Aleksandr Zaitsev, a Kazan chemist who was never able to attend a single meeting.63 Mendeleev, on the other hand, became the Society’s third honorary member and was elected honorary president for life in the 1890s. Beilstein got the message. Beilstein Bound: The Handbuch der Organischen Chemie In an often-quoted letter, Beilstein drew the central connection between Russia, peda- gogical institutions, and the Handbuch: “Truly, I could only have written my Handbuch in Russia, and thus I have deferred calls back to Germany. At a Russian Polytechnicum professors don’t have to be scientifically active, because the students don’t give any rea- son for it, but in Germany they would have looked at me disapprovingly.”64 This case, however, is purely negative—pedagogy in Petersburg provided the context for the Handbuch because of an absence of demands. I contend for a more positive claim, that Beilstein Unbound 23
- 39. Beilstein’s book emerged out of an initial attempt to write another organic chemistry textbook, but upon facing isolation from his peers and the inability to generalize the model provided by his Anleitung, he defaulted to the form of the Handbuch. Beilstein did not approach his material hoping to write a comprehensive reference work. Ever since he was a Privatdozent at Göttingen, he had been gathering material on organic compounds and checking them for accuracy. This was specifically for teaching. It was only after he realized the need for an updated organic textbook in Russia that he began to work the material into a textbook. As he wrote to Erlenmeyer on February 22, 1878: I have gone now earnestly about carrying out a plan that I have had in mind for a long time: I am actually writing an organic chemistry. Now I am in a lot of trouble. As I have all the material com- pletely gathered before me, so I hope that I can be done with the writing in about 2 years. Now I am already in the 2nd year of work & have only gotten to glycerin. I have, you see, made it a rule while writing to monitor all citations myself & that is what has brought me slowly to such despair. But one can’t get around this kind of work if the results are supposed to be reliable. What I have written so far is actually more a catalog of organic chemistry rather than a textbook. Since I want to cite everything, that is actually everything, it seems to me to appear in a purely organic classification (acids with O2 : Cn H2n+2 O2 . . . acids with O3 . . .). For the purpose of looking things up it is entirely excellent—and I have now had enough opportunity to convince myself satisfactorily of that. But with reading it is something else. The story comes out too dry. Thus I miss throughout the relevant pages precisely your textbook in which one can look things up, but can also read. Time is looming upon me, however: if I want to make everything also nice and easy to digest, I will be done in 5–6 years & that is too much for me. I don’t have that much of my life to spend.65 The revision process of writing a textbook was forcing him to order the material purely by empirical formula.66 He did not attempt any organization that would help students assimilate the material: “I can say clearly what my vision is: I want to put together in one volume the complete material of org. chemistry ordered completely and clearly with exact information about the literature. Pretty speeches, charming comparisons, lively pictures and the rest of it are as good as completely absent.”67 No wonder the textbook idea failed. Nevertheless, Beilstein continually referred to the reference book as essentially rooted in its educational context. He accentuated these textbook origins—origins that failed to produce a textbook—before the Russian Chemical Society in 1893: The material of organic chemistry and particularly of the aromatic series is growing by horrific measures. When I began to gather this material 33 years ago for its special study and for the goal of teaching, it was possible to follow the successes of organic chemistry easily; now this seems to be an impossible task. I began to read Liebig’s Annalen correctly from its 101st volume. Then I had to reread all 100 volumes. Basing myself on Gerhardt’s famous handbook (rukovodstvo) to organic 24 Gordin
- 40. chemistry and with constant corrections in Gmelin’s classic handbook, I slowly gathered all the material in a form best suited for my goals. Then I had to look through the entire Jahresberichte der Chemie in order to convince myself that nothing had been missed. It stands to reason that it was necessary to take notes from the current periodical literature on all new facts and put them into the collection. Upon the appearance of each new guide to organic chemistry I compared its con- tent with my notes, and in the event of a disagreement—which happened rather often—I had to check with the original articles. Thus I accumulated rather reliable material, but in a form unsuit- able for a handbook. I had to rework the factual part, but when this was done, organic chemistry had again moved so far forward that it was necessary to redo everything over again. After 17 years of preparatory work, I went to publish it, and this explains why the entire work appeared in one brief period. . . . When my work was finished, I was sure that it was necessary to write everything over again. And this was done, but first it was necessary to redo everything a third time, so that now it is already clear that it is impossible to keep this arrangement any more. It is inconvenient to divide organic chemistry into a fatty series and an aromatic; an empirical division of camphors should be set up, sugary substances should also be grouped differently, ring-form compounds would be better united in different groups, etc. But I don’t have time or energy for this.68 (The “Beilstein System,” the organizing principle behind the present-day Handbuch, was only instituted in 1909, three years after Beilstein’s death.) What on earth did Beilstein mean by repeatedly referring to students in his autobio- graphical statements about the Handbuch? If we think of pedagogy too narrowly as what happens in the classroom, there is no connection between it and the Handbuch, a text so patently unusable in such contexts; but if we take a broader view of standard- izing practitioners into the chemical community, then a clearer connection emerges. The Handbuch, more perhaps than any other text, standardized what it meant to be a practitioner of organic chemistry: you worked on the kinds of materials that were in the Handbuch. Similarly, the editorial abstracting of the Zeitschrift standardized what the field of “chemistry” meant by correlating the disparate strands of chemical pub- lishing into one focused site. Circular, perhaps, but satisfying. A closer look at the first edition of the Handbuch bears this out. Beilstein had to create the demand for the kind of information he was providing among those less familiar with structure theory, and therefore distilled into a small introduction a presentation of the basic principles derived from Erlenmeyer’s, Gmelin’s, Kekulé’s, Gerhardt’s, and Kolbe’s textbooks, and those textbooks alone. For example, on the first page of the introduction he offered the standard history of organic chemistry dating from Wöhler’s synthesis of urea in 1828, and then continued to provide a framework to interpret the data included in the com- pilation, beginning with quantitative organic analysis—determining the composition of organic molecules—before moving on to how their structure might influence their properties.69 This development from analysis to higher levels of chemical thinking bears strong marks of his strategy at the Technological Institute: first you teach the basics of Beilstein Unbound 25
- 41. measurement by rote, and then you construct theories of limited abstraction on this foundation. The stages of reasoning were clearly separated in St. Petersburg as they had not been at Göttingen. Beilstein’s whirlwind survey of organic chemistry then moved through a series of topics in increasing specificity: “The Determination of Vapor Density,” “Rational Formulas—Isomerism,” “The Structure of Carbon Compounds,” “Radicals,” “Substitution,” “Homology,” and “The Physical Properties of Compounds.” He presented a system of organic chemistry, although still a necessarily incomplete one: “As we look over the system of organic chemistry as it presently appears, we note still many holes. The filling of these holes is only a question of time.”70 This was the incen- tive to use the Handbuch: to ground oneself in basic principles and then become moti- vated to develop the science in defined directions—to fill in the holes. For all the similarity to a textbook in motivation, genealogy, and program, the fore- word exposed the unique nature of the Beilstein venture: In the present work I have made the attempt to present together as clearly as possible the com- pletely analyzed organic compounds. I have refrained from an exhaustive characterization of the compounds; one individual doesn’t have the strength to do that. Cursory, superficial remarks, imprecisely researched compounds and reactions, etc., have been omitted here or only partially included if there exist no other data for the nature of a body. Thus, as I have included references to the literature as completely as possible, it would be easy for the reader to look up anything that might be missing. Everything that contributes to an exact knowledge of the substances, such as melting point, boiling point, specific weight, solubility, etc., as well as precisely determined trans- formations and reactions of the bodies, are provided in their entirety.71 Beilstein wore on his sleeve the amount of personal labor and individual effort involved in the compilation of the handbook: “All comments were—as far as they were accessible to me—taken by the author from the original articles. In the entire book there are no cita- tions that I have not looked up before the writing. All errors are from copying or printing.”72 In a letter to Zincke, Beilstein noted the role the attack on his “Germanness” had played in the creation of the Handbuch, and the reciprocal effect of the Handbuch on the way local chemists identified his nationality: It will not be unknown to you, that since the political successes of Germans in Russia a hostile mood against Germany and Germans has been spreading ever wider. The systematic smearing of the newspapers was not without results. If I until now remained almost entirely unbothered by Germanophobia (Deutschenhaß), I have recently also had to suffer from this evil. The circum- stance, that on the occasion of the elections to the chemistry [sic] post at the Academy of Sciences here some academicians also wanted to put my name on the list of candidates, has called forth a big storm and drawn a whole array of spiteful comments towards me. . . . Even the fact that my large handbook of organic chemistry was then appearing in German (there would be a dearth of buyers for a Russian work), has drawn the censure of the patriots to me.73 26 Gordin
- 42. The process of revising the Handbuch for a second edition shows to what extent Beil- stein turned his back on the Russian chemical community that had spurned him. Beilstein directed his solicitations for comments from readers almost entirely to German chemists.74 Beilstein put out a second edition by himself by 1889, again in German, but his revision of the third edition pushed him to think about a succes- sor. In 1895 he wrote to Paul Jacobson, who would eventually agree to become a co- editor of the Handbuch: “I am becoming old and have no co-worker. Now I worry only with all my powers that the third edition be finished—the heavens can worry about everything else.”75 Beilstein wanted the Handbuch to be continued as a cooperative venture, run as the special branch of a scientific society, and he petitioned the German Chemical Society in Berlin, snubbing his local peers entirely in favor of an “international” (read: German) community. This was quite a transformation for the chemist who in 1873 at the Vienna international exposition had been quite sanguine about the prospects for Russia to become a full-fledged member of the international scientific community.76 Opinion in the German chemical community was divided on whether the German Chemical Society should take on the task, with Erlenmeyer in support of the idea as “not bad,” but Volhard opposing since he thought the matter was “better left to private indus- try.”77 It was eventually adopted in 1896, and after the third edition’s appearance and Beilstein’s death in 1906, it moved there entirely.78 As Beilstein wrote to M. M. Richter: “Now I can peacefully retreat from the scene, since I am now sure that my work will be continued in the best manner, and good and complete handbooks will be available at a cheap price.”79 Reviews of the Handbuch were ecstatic from the start. Richard Meyer wrote to Erlenmeyer in 1882: “I use Beilstein’s book daily; it became immediately indispensable; but there is a mass of errors in it! One has to go to the original articles every time; but what is good is that you can find them quickly through the book.”80 Even the normally gruff V. V. Markovnikov was enthusiastic about “Beilstein’s wonderful reference book,” and P. P. Alekseev in Kiev commented in a letter to Butlerov in 1880: “I am now study- ing Beilstein and Kekulé. Beilstein’s book is really a capital production. It is a pity, though, that the generalizations are rather short.”81 Perhaps the most personally satis- fying review for Beilstein was the letter sent by Henry E. Armstrong, president of the Chemical Society of London, to congratulate the Russian Chemical Society on its twenty-fifth anniversary on November 6, 1893. In a statement addressed to Mendeleev, he wrote: “Our Society is proud to have enrolled your name in its liste [sic] of foreign members and to have welcomed you as one of its Faraday lectures [sic]; and the roll also includes the name of Beilstein—which, however, is no longer the mere name of an Beilstein Unbound 27
- 43. individual but a household word and one which cannot be mentioned without the feel- ing of gratitude arising in the chemists [sic] mind.”82 The ever-sarcastic Beilstein must have smiled internally from his seat on the same dais to hear Mendeleev intone such an endorsement. Beilstein’s Handbuch, the rejection of both his Petersburg pedagogy and his Petersburg peers, was extolled in their midst. Conclusion: Beilstein Abandoned Beilstein adapted his pedagogical styles to different contexts without changing certain principles about the necessity of theory for proper experimentation and the uselessness of theory once it moved beyond the limits experiment set for it. Thus, at Göttingen, he stressed the importance of collegial relations in the laboratory in order to initiate young chemists into a community he perceived as standardized by just such a lack of hierar- chy—an attitude present in his collegial editing of the Zeitschrift für Chemie with Hübner and Fittig. When he moved to the Technological Institute in St. Petersburg, his less-prepared students compelled him to move to a yet more fundamental level of stan- dardization—that of analytical chemical practice, as encoded in his Anleitung. Finally, after his hope for an integrated international community of practitioners was crushed by the polarizing of the scientific community into nationalized camps after the 1880 Mendeleev affair, when he was classed as a German chemist somewhat against his will, he moved once again to a more fundamental level and sought to standardize for prac- titioners of organic chemistry the very objects of their study. In each case, Beilstein maneuvered among the multiple instantiations of pedagogy as a category for history of science in his attempt simultaneously to define a chemical community and the means for stabilizing it. One of Beilstein’s last public actions at the Russian Physico-Chemical Society was to argue for the Geneva compromise on organic nomenclature. Already in 1890 Beilstein announced the existence of both the German and French commissions which were working to standardize organic terminology on an international footing, a sorely needed reform. As the local representative of these committees to St. Petersburg—mediated through his frequent vacations in Germany—Beilstein asked for any suggestions or comments from Russians.83 Apparently, no one volunteered any suggestions, although debates about a Russian nomenclature in the early 1870s had sparked a good deal of interest. When the Geneva compromise system finally emerged, Beilstein was the only one to support it publicly. In the face of opposition from (among others) Beketov and Mendeleev—whose objections were remarkably insubstantial—Beilstein noted that the Geneva system was already being introduced into the Handbuch and would most likely 28 Gordin
- 44. become the standard, so it would behoove the Russians to adopt it.84 Nikolai Menshutkin, editor of the Russian chemical journal, translated the nomenclature’s French rules into Russian. When Beilstein correctly identified errors in the translation which would cause confusion, Menshutkin grudgingly admitted his mistake while belittling Beilstein’s suggestions for repairing the Russian error.85 Even in areas like organic classification, where Beilstein was clearly the resident expert, his advice was rejected. A similar snub can be seen after Beilstein’s death. It is a rule of thumb that a chemist’s contemporary stature can be fairly well gauged by the kind of obituary he or she received. In the German Berichte, Beilstein’s obituary was a full and judicious account penned by another Russian “foreigner,” Helsinki chemist Edvard Hjelt. In the Russian Zhurnal, Beilstein received slightly over a page of impromptu comments by Beketov, his colleague at the Academy of Sciences (an institution not mentioned in the obituary), at a time when even minor chemists received at least ten pages and individuals of Beilstein’s international reputation often received over 100 pages of memorial. Beilstein’s death was quickly papered over to discuss a looming budget crisis.86 Little attention was paid to his pedagogical importance, either in the Russian context or through his Handbuch, which received a passing mention. It is important to remember that the constitution of a scientific community was far from the only kind of community these chemists were in. In particular, the formation of national communities of scientists who thought of themselves as Russian or German chemists, and not chemists in Russia or Germany, was an important causal factor in why such seemingly neutral texts as the Handbuch took on the form they did.87 Even opting to publish it in German—and not, for example, simultaneously in Russian, as he had for the Anleitung—was a statement by Beilstein about linguistic dominance in the sciences, and such questions about language are central to both pedagogy and nation formation.88 After both world wars, for example, the Handbuch was held up by German chemists as a testament of the possibility for goodness in German culture; Beilstein’s systematization of chemical knowledge atoned for other sins.89 These signs of the times continue: since 1981, all 230 volumes of “Beilstein” were published exclusively in English, as is today’s on-line version.90 Finally, I would like to stress the contingency of seemingly universal, immobile, and “indispensable” reference works, such as Beilstein’s Handbuch. Had his father’s death not prompted him to abandon his beloved Göttingen for Petersburg, Beilstein himself believed he would not have even embarked on the project. And had the rejection of Mendeleev by the Academy of Sciences not taken on its nationalist dimensions, that Handbuch would most likely, I argue, have looked more like a textbook with a (very) Beilstein Unbound 29
- 45. long appendix of data on compounds. In a letter to Paul Jacobson shortly before his death, Beilstein commented on the contingency of the Handbuch: “If I look now, in all calmness, on the achievements of my last 40 years, it seems to me a lucky stroke of fate from the heavens that I was born and lived in a time, when such an undertaking as my Chemistry could be completed. Here all the necessary conditions happened to come together. Only a few years different and all would be in vain.”91 Beilstein’s point was purely about the chemistry: had he been earlier, Kekulé’s theory would not have existed as a basis; had he been later, there would have been too many compounds for one man to organize. But the contingency, like the Handbuch itself, can be applied much more widely than its author intended. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Matthew Jones, David Kaiser, Robert Kohler, and Mary Jo Nye for helpful comments on earlier versions of this essay. Notes The follow abbreviations are used in the notes: ADIM: Arkhiv-Muzei D. I. Mendeleeva (D. I. Mendeleev Archive-Museum), St. Petersburg, Russia; Ber.: Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft; PFARAN: Peterburgskii Filial Arkhiva Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk (Petersburg Division of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences), St. Petersburg, Russia; RGIA: Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv (Russian State Historical Archive), St. Petersburg, Russia; TsGIASPb: Tsentral’nyi Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv Sankt-Peterburga (Central State Historical Archive of St. Petersburg), St. Petersburg, Russia; ZfC: Zeitschrift für Chemie; ZhRFKhO: Zhurnal Russkago Fiziko- Khimicheskago Obshchestva (Journal of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society). All dates in German texts or in correspondence to or from Germany are given in the new-style Gregorian calendar. Dates that occur unambiguously in Russia are given according to the old-style Julian calendar, which lagged 12 days behind the Western calendar in the nineteenth century, 13 in the twentieth. Transliterations from Russian follow a modification of the standard Library of Congress format. All unattributed translations are mine. 1. Edv. Hjelt, “Friedrich Konrad Beilstein,” Ber. 40 (1907): 5041–5078, on 5041. 2. Highlighted in orange in How to Use Beilstein: Beilstein Handbook of Organic Chemistry (Beilstein Institute, 1979), 8. 30 Gordin
- 46. 3. F. Richter, “K. F. Beilstein, sein Werk und seine Zeit: Zur Erinnerung an die 100. Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages,” Ber. 71A (1938): 35–71, on 46. Richter was then editor of the Handbuch. Chemical handbooks have, of course, a long history, beginning with French efforts in the eigh- teenth century and continuing, most importantly, in Leopold Gmelin’s Handbuch der Chemie. In Gmelin’s initial handbook, organic materials took up barely half the space. In the fourth edition (1841–1870), they occupied about two-thirds of the ten volumes. See Leopold Gmelin, Handbuch der Chemie, fourth edition (Karl Winter, 1843). Beilstein’s organic classification is heavily based on the Laurent method used by Gmelin. On Gmelin, see E. Pietsch with E. Beyer, “Leopold Gmelin— der Mensch, sein Werk und seine Zeit,” Ber. 72A (1939): 5–51. For a superficial survey of handbook history, see Heinz Götze, “Das wissenschaftliche Handbuch,” in Einhundert Jahre Beilsteins Handbuch der Organischen Chemie (H. Stürtz, 1981), 83–98. 4. The list of works explicating the so-called “Beilstein system” is large. See, for example, B. Prager, D. Stern, and K. Ilberg, System der organischen Verbindungen: Ein Leitfaden für die Benutzung von Beilsteins Handbuch der Organischen Chemie (Julius Springer, 1929); Oskar Weissbach, The Beilstein Guide: A Manual for the Use of Beilsteins Handbuch der Organischen Chemie (Springer-Verlag, 1976); How to Use Beilstein; Friedo Giese, Beilstein’s Index: Trivial Names in Systematic Nomenclature of Organic Chemistry (Springer-Verlag, 1986); Ernest Hamlin Huntress, A Brief Introduction to the Use of Beilstein’s Handbuch der Organischen Chemie (Wiley, 1930); Friedrich Richter, Kurze Anleitung zur Orientierung in Beilsteins Handbuch der Organischen Chemie (Julius Springer, 1936). Some of these, such as Huntress’s text, include problem sets for practice. 5. The only book-length biography of Beilstein in any language remains L. A. Shmulevich and Iu. S. Musabekov, Fedor Fedorovich Beil’shtein, 1838–1906 (Nauka, 1971), which goes to some effort to dismiss Beilstein’s real conflicts in Russia. The best overall works are the collection of essays on the Handbuch by Friedrich Richter: “How Beilstein Is Made,” tr. Ralph E. Oesper, Journal of Chemical Education 15 (1938): 310–316; “Beilsteins Handbuch—75 Jahre organisch-chemischer Dokumentation,” Angewandte Chemie 70 (1958): 279–284; “Friedrich Beilstein, Gedanken zur hun- dertsten Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages,” Angewandte Chemie 51, no. 7 (1938): 101–107; “K. F. Beilstein, sein Werk und seine Zeit.” See also 75 Jahre Beilsteins Handbuch der Organischen Chemie: Aufsätze und Reden, ed. Richter (Springer-Verlag, 1957). For obituaries, see Hjelt, “Friedrich Konrad Beilstein”; Otto N. Witt, “Friedrich Konrad Beilstein,” Journal of the Chemical Society 99 (1911): 1646–1649. Also valuable are Ernest H. Huntress, “1938: The one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Konrad Beilstein (1838–1906),” Journal of Chemical Education 15 (1938): 303–309; Iu. S. Musabekov and L. A. Shmulevich, “Akademik F. F. Beil’shtein i ego vklad v khimiiu,” Voprosy Istorii Estestvoznaniia i Tekhniki, no. 3 (28) (1969): 61–66; M. Gerchinov, “Beil’shteinovskie daty,” Khimiia i sotsialisticheskoe khoziaistvo, no. 7 (1931): 142. Almost all the information on Beilstein on p. 15 of John Turkevich, Chemistry in the Soviet Union (Van Nostrand, 1965), down to the chemist’s first name and his publications, is incorrect. 6. Sent into the Krause Album and preserved at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Reproduced in Beilstein-Erlenmeyer: Briefe zur Geschichte der chemischen Dokumentation und des chemischen Zeitschriftenwesens, ed. Otto Krätz (Werner Fritsch, 1972), p. 8. Beilstein wrote a similar letter for his file in St. Petersburg, dated July 1, 1867. TsGIASPb, f. 492, op. 2, d. 2073, ll. 1–1ob. This ver- sion displays some grammatical lapses in the Russian. Beilstein Unbound 31
- 47. 7. Of course, man does not live by pedagogy alone, and I will pass over Beilstein’s important work on industrial chemistry and especially the chemistry of Russian oil. See F. Beilstein, Die chemische Grossindustrie auf der Weltausstellung zu Wien im Jahre 1873 (Quandt and Handel, 1873); F. Beilstein and A. Kurbatow, “Ueber die Natur des kaukasischen Petroleums,” Ber. 13 (1880): 1818–1821; idem, “II. Ueber kaukasischen Petroleum,” Ber. 14 (1881): 1620–1622; idem, “Ueber die Kohlenwasserstoffe des amerikanischen Petroleums,” Ber. 13 (1880): 2028–2029. For an opposing contemporary view on Russian oil, see W. Markownikoff and J. Spady, “Zur Constitution der Kohlenwasserstoffe, Cn H2n , des kaukasischen Petroleums,” Ber. 20 (1887): 1850–1853. Markovnikov’s citation of Beilstein’s work was always positive and respectful. See, for example, Markovnikov and V. N. Ogloblin, “Issledovanie kavkazskoi nefti,” in V. V. Markovnikov, Izbrannye trudy. Klassiki nauki, ed. A. F. Plate and G. V. Bykov (Izd. AN SSSR, 1955), 331–332. While some Soviet commentators ignore Beilstein’s work on oil entirely in their surveys (such as S. R. Sergienko, Ocherk razvitiia khimii i pererabotki nefti [Izd. AN SSSR, 1955]), leaping directly from Mendeleev to Markovnikov, it is clear that Beilstein, not Mendeleev, was responsible for scientific interest in the composition of Baku oil. See V. I. Kuznetsov, Vozniknovenie khimii alitsiklicheskikh soedinenii (Izd. AN SSSR, 1961), 68. 8. This biographical outline is drawn from the sources in note 5. 9. Travel was crucial in this period for unifying various scientific cultures. See, for example, the account of Bunsen’s travels in Fritz Krafft, “Das Reisen ist des Chemikers Lust—auf den Spuren Robert Bunsens: Zu Robert Wilhelm Bunsens 100. Todestag,” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 22 (1999): 217–238. 10. For his early work, see F. Beilstein, “Ueber die Diffusion von Flüssigkeiten,” Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie 99 (1856): 165–197; idem, “Ueber das Murexid,” Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie 107 (1858): 176–191. 11. Huntress, “1938,” 304. 12. The classic work on this transformation remains Peter Borscheid, Naturwissenschaft, Staat und Industrie in Baden (1848–1914) (Ernst Klett, 1976). On the laboratory at Göttingen, see the letter from Beilstein to Kekulé, June 3, 1860, reproduced in Huntress, “1938,” 305. 13. Beilstein to Butlerov, 14/2 December 1862, reprinted in G. W. Bykow and L. M. Bekassowa, “Beiträge zur Geschichte der Chemie der 60-er Jahre des XIX. Jahrhunderts: II. F. Beilsteins Briefe an A. M. Butlerow,” Physis 8 (1966): 267–285, on 268. 14. Quoted in Richter, “How Beilstein is made,” 311. For the original researches, see F. Beilstein, “Ueber die Identität des Chlorbenzols mit dem gechlorten Chlorbenzyl (Bichlortoluol),” Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie 116 (1860): 336–356; E. Reichenbach and F. Beilstein, “Ueber die Natur der sogenannten Salylsäure,” Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie 132 (1864): 309–321. 15. Quoted in Huntress, “1938,” 305. 16. On Beilstein’s two associates, see the obituaries by F. Beilstein, “Hans (Julius Anton Edward) Hübner,” Ber. 17 (1884): 763–776; R. M., “Rudolph Fittig,” Journal of the Chemical Society 99 (1911): 1651–1653. 32 Gordin
- 48. 17. Fittig’s diary entry of Sunday, November 24, 1860, quoted in Fr. Fichter, “Rudolph Fittig,” Ber. 44 (1911): 1339–1401, on 1352. As Fittig continued in 1860: “Everything that he [Beilstein] says is original and funny, he looks at everything with a sharp understanding and a very healthy judg- ment. His judgments and criticisms of others are most delightful. First he praises a lot, then fol- lows a ‘However,’ by which the praise is supposed to be qualified a bit, only as a rule nothing of the praise remains at all.” Quoted in Richter, “Friedrich Beilstein, Gedanken zur hundertsten Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages,”102. 18. Editor’s introduction in Krätz, Beilstein-Erlenmeyer, 11. 19. Fichter, “Rudolph Fittig,” 1364; Hjelt, “Friedrich Konrad Beilstein,” 5046. 20. “In order to not be entirely hindered by false preconceived notions while working, I have bid farewell to all speculations and am in the best sense a fierce enemy of all theories.” Quoted in Richter, “K. F. Beilstein, sein Werk und seine Zeit,” 41. On Beilstein’s support of structure theory, see Beilstein to Butlerov, 29/17 January 1865, in Bykow and Bekassowa, “II. F. Beilsteins Briefe an A. M. Butlerow,” 270–271; F. Beilstein, Review of Marcellin Berthelot’s Chimie organique fondée sur la synthèse, Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, no. 1 (1861): 542–560, on 560. 21. Quoted in Richter, “K. F. Beilstein, sein Werk und seine Zeit,” 39–40. 22. TsGIASPb, f. 14, op. 1, d. 6203, l. 4, quoted in Shmulevich and Musabekov, Fedor Fedorovich Beil’shtein, 33–34. 23. Quoted in Richter, “K. F. Beilstein, sein Werk und seine Zeit,” 41–42. 24. See, for example, the assessment by the typically astute V. V. Markovnikov to his mentor Butlerov, August 7 and September 13 [1865], reproduced in G. V. Bykov, ed., Pis’ma russkikh khimikov k A. M. Butlerovu, Nauchnoe Nasledstvo, v. 4 (Izd. AN SSSR, 1961), 216–217. 25. The best secondary article on the Zeitschrift remains G. V. Bykov and Z. I. Sheptunova, “Nemetskii ‘Zhurnal khimii’ (1858–1871) i russkie khimiki (K istorii khimicheskoi periodiki),” Trudy Istorii Estestvoznaniia i Tekhniki 30 (1960): 97–110. This episode, as well as the major institu- tions of German organic chemistry in this period, has been well treated in the seminal study by Alan J. Rocke, The Quiet Revolution: Hermann Kolbe and the Science of Organic Chemistry (University of California Press, 1993). 26. Rita Meyer, Emil Erlenmeyer (1825–1909) als Chemietheoretiker und sein Beitrag zur Entwicklung der Strukturchemie (dissertation, Medical Faculty of Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, Munich, 1984). 27. See Erlenmeyer to Butlerov, March 25, 1864, reproduced in G. W. Bykow and L. M. Bekassowa, “Beiträge zur Geschichte der Chemie der 60-er Jahre des XIX. Jahrhunderts: I. Briefwechsel zwis- chen E. Erlenmeyer und A. M. . Butlerow (von 1862 bis 1876),” Physis 8 (1966): 185–198, on 191. Beilstein later somewhat exaggerated his role in publicizing the work of Russian chemists through the Zeitschrift: F. F. Beil’shtein [Beilstein], “O rabotakh chlenov Russkago Fiziko-Khimicheskago Obshchestva po aromaticheskomu riadu,” in Russkoe Khimicheskoe Obshchestvo. XXV (1868–1893). Otdelenie khimii Russkago fiziko-khimicheskago obshchestva (V. Demakov, 1894), 39–56, on 47–48. Beilstein Unbound 33
- 49. Many of these Russians became acquainted with Erlenmeyer personally in Heidelberg. On the broader Russian colony in Heidelberg, see Willy Birkenmaier, Das russische Heidelberg: Zur Geschichte der deutsch-russischen Beziehungen im 19. Jahrhundert (Wunderhorn, 1995). Beilstein is never considered by Birkenmaier or other researchers as a true member of the Russian colony. He is mentioned, however, in the appendix to Das russische Heidelberg, on 175. 28. W. H. Perkin, “Emil Erlenmeyer,” Journal of the Chemical Society 99 (1911): 1651–1653. 29. Reprinted in Bykow and Bekassowa, “II. F. Beilsteins Briefe an A. M. Butlerow,” on 271, with ellipses. Beilstein’s efforts in translation were marked by occasionally significant errors. When Mendeleev gave Beilstein the original article on the periodic system to be published in the Zeitschrift, Beilstein had a student, A. A. Ferman, undertake the translation, who erroneously replaced “periodicheskii” with “stufenweise,” instead of “periodische,” where Mendeleev described the nature of the changes in properties with increasing atomic weight. While not Beilstein’s fault, Mendeleev resented the error, which later complicated the priority dispute with Lothar Meyer. K. Bening, D. I. Mendeleev i L. Meier (Tsentral’naia tip., 1911), i–iii. 30. F. Beilstein, Review of A. Butlerow’s Einleitung in das Studium der organischen Chemie, ZfC, N.S. 1 (1865): 727–730. See also F. Beilstein, Review of Marcellin Berthelot’s Chimie organique fondée sur la synthèse, Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, no. 1 (1861): 542–560, on 553; F. Beilstein, Review of August Kekulé’s Lehrbuch der organischen Chemie oder der Chemie der Kohlenstoffverbindungen, Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, no. 1 (1863): 493–507, on 500: “He [Nikolai Beketov] placed his observations in a dissertation which was published in April 1853 in Russian and surely because of the latter circumstance remains unknown by the majority of chemists.” 31. Reproduced in Krätz, Beilstein-Erlenmeyer, letter 1, 16–17. 32. Beilstein to Erlenmeyer, May 11, 1872: “Now the Russians however have become great patri- ots: they don’t want to publish their articles any more in foreign languages. Only a few, e.g. [Nikolai] Menshutkin, are so kindly as to worry about taking care of a translation themselves. Thus it is predictable that many useful works will be lost” (Krätz, Beilstein-Erlenmeyer, 26). And again in Beilstein to Erlenmeyer, October 5, 1873: “My patriotic friends will make a stink if I don’t provide the fatherland’s journal with original articles” (ibid., 41). 33. Krätz, Beilstein-Erlenmeyer, 15. 34. Quoted in Richter, “Friedrich Beilstein, Gedanken zur hundertsten Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages,” 102 35. Beilstein’s appointment by the Technological Institute was a stunning 16–1 vote, far ahead of the other two (Russian) candidates. “Zhurnal uchebnago komiteta S. Peterburgskago Praktiches- kago Tekhnologicheskago Instituta,” September 24, 1866, RGIA, f. 733, op. 159, d. 12, l. 1ob. 36. Quoted in Reiner Luckenbach, “Der Beilstein: Geschichte, Gegenwart, und Zukunft,” in Einhundert Jahre Beilsteins Handbuch der Organischen Chemie, 36. 37. This was necessary to become a professor under the Institute’s statute. His official term of serv- ice only began with his renunciation of German citizenship. Director of the Technological 34 Gordin
- 50. Institute to the Department of Trade and Manufactures, October 11, 1869, RGIA, f. 733, op. 159, d. 12, l. 3. The German papers attesting to his nationality as well as his academic transcripts are attached to this document. In his farewell letter to v. Warnsedt on October 18, 1866, Beilstein com- mented that he would prefer to keep his German citizenship as long as possible. See the excerpt in Richter, “K. F. Beilstein, sein Werk und seine Zeit,” 53. 38. On the Technological Institute, see Piatidesiatiletnii iubilei S.-Peterburgskago Prakticheskago Tekhnologicheskago Instituta: 28-go noiabria 1878 g. (A. M. Kotomin, 1879). 39. Beilstein, “O rabotakh chlenov Russkago Fiziko-Khimicheskago Obshchestva po aromatich- eskomu riadu,” 40–41. 40. Beilstein to Erlenmeyer, October 2, 1871: “Our Institute counts at the moment about 1300 stu- dents, I have in one lecture course over 550 attending, whose honoraria here apparently end up landing in the State’s money-bag.” Krätz, Beilstein-Erlenmeyer, 25. 41. V. V. Kurilov, “Tri korifeia russkoi khimii. (F. F. Beil’shtein, D. I. Mendeleev i N. A. Menshutkin),” in Sbornik statei Ekaterinoslavskago nauchnago obshchestva, ed. I. F. Aldyrev, t. 7 (Tip. Arteli Ekaterin. Raboch. Pechatnago dela, 1907), 53–61, on 60. For a more favorable assessment of Mendeleev’s style, see V. P. Veinberg, Iz vospominanii o D. I. Mendeleeve kak lektor (Tip. Gubernskago Upravleniia, 1910). 42. Letter of November 6, 1868, reprinted in Bykow and Bekassowa, “II. F. Beilsteins Briefe an A. M. Butlerow,” 278–279. Beilstein continued to agitate for renovation of the laboratory at the Institute up to his full retirement in 1896. Shortly before he left the institution, he managed to wrangle funds for a complete overhaul of the facilities. See his report at RGIA, f. 741, op. 1, d. 186, ll. 8–9ob. 43. Hjelt, “Friedrich Konrad Beilstein,” 5051. Beilstein developed a distaste for his Russian stu- dents: “He sympathized little with Russian students in general, who obviously belonged to an entirely different type than their German comrades” (ibid., 5053). Beilstein was on good terms with a few of his students at the Institute, such as A. Kurbatov and L. Jawein, with whom he co- authored pieces and whom he sponsored for membership in the Russian Chemical Society. 44. F. Beilstein, “Ueber den Nachweis von Chlor, Brom und Jod in organischen Substanzen,” Ber. 5 (1872): 620–621. The test was simultaneously published in Russian as F. Beil’shtein, “Ob otkry- tii khlora, broma i ioda v organicheskikh soedineniiakh,” ZhRFKhO 4 (1872), no. 9: 358–359. 45. F. Beilstein, Anleitung zur qualitativen chemischen Analyse, second edition (Quandt and Handel, 1870; fifth edition, 1877; sixth edition, 1887). The first English translation was done by William Ramsay, later the famous discoverer of the noble gases. In his preface, he praises the book: “The translation of the present work has been undertaken with a view to furnish laboratory students with a manual, which should contain the principal methods of Qualitative Chemical Analysis. It is well known and extensively used in Germany, and the name of its author cannot fail to be a guarantee of its excellence.” F. Beilstein, A Manual of Qualitative Chemical Analysis, tr. William Ramsay (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1873), 5. For more on its popularity, see the later American transla- tions and adaptations: W. S. Christopher, Chemical Experiments for Medical Students Arranged after Beilstein Unbound 35
- 51. Beilstein (Robert Clarke, 1888), 3; Charles O. Curtman, Dr. F. Beilstein’s Lessons in Qualitative Chemical Analysis, Arranged on the Basis of the Fifth German Edition, second edition (Druggist Publishing, 1886), v. Curtman indicates that Beilstein authorized the translation. 46. G. Lewinstein, Review of W. Stein’s Anleitung zur qualitativen Analyse und zu den wichtigsten Gehaltsprüfungen, ZfC 3 (1860): 78–80, on 78. 47. E. Erlenmeyer, “Zur qualitativen Analyse,” ZfC 3 (1861): 29–32, on 30. Beilstein agreed, as seen in his review of the Zeitschrift für analytische Chemie, Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, no. 2 (1863): 940–945, on 940. 48. Louis Ernst, Review of C. F. Rammelsberg’s Leitfaden für die qualitative chemische Analyse, ZfC 3 (1861): 159–160. 49. On the importance of skills in transcending theoretical divides, see H. M. Collins, Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice (Sage, 1985); Peter L. Galison, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics (University of Chicago Press, 1997). 50. Letter of November 6, 1866, reprinted in Bykow and Bekassowa, “II. F. Beilsteins Briefe an A. M. Butlerow,” 280. We know from Beilstein’s students that he rarely sought out companions in the capital and worked long hours alone. See Richter, “Beilsteins Handbuch,” 280. 51. Reprinted in Bykow and Bekassowa, “II. F. Beilsteins Briefe an A. M. Butlerow,” 282. 52. See Bykov, Pis’ma russkikh khimikov k A. M. Butlerovu, 51. Beilstein also wrote Erlenmeyer mockingly about Butlerov’s increasing fascination with Spiritualism. Krätz, Beilstein-Erlenmeyer, 19. For more on Spiritualism and Butlerov, see Michael D. Gordin, A Well-Ordered Thing: Dmitrii Mendeleev and the Shadow of the Periodic Table (Basic Books, 2004), 85–87. 53. Diary entry of August 16, 1861, in D. I. Mendeleev, “Dnevnik 1861 g.,” Nauchnoe Nasledstvo 2 (1951): 111–212, on 163. Mendeleev’s impression did not improve when he went to a party in honor of Beilstein at Fritzsche’s house on August 16 (ibid., 164). He also met Beilstein among a group of chemists on October 10 (ibid., 188). Shmulevich and Musabekov fudge somewhat in try- ing to explain away the blatant hostility between the two. Shmulevich and Musabekov, Fedor Fedorovich Beil’shtein, 52. 54. F. Beilstein, Review of Mendelejeff’s Organische Chemie, ZfC 5 (1862): 271–276, on 271. On this textbook and its role in the creation of the periodic system, see Michael D. Gordin, “The organic roots of Mendeleev’s periodic law,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 32 (2002): 263–290. 55. F. Beilstein to D. Mendeleev, September 27, 1866, Göttingen, ADIM I-V-39-1-46. 56. These events are chronicled in detail in Gordin, A Well-Ordered Thing, chapter 5, including a translation of Beilstein’s response to Menshutkin on 122. For an alternative, Butlerov-centric, interpretation of these events, see I. S. Dmitriev, “Skuchnaia istoriia (o neizbranii D. I. Mendeleeva v Imperatorskuiu akademiiu nauk v 1880 g.),” Voprosy Istorii Estestvoznaniia i Tekhniki, no. 2 (2002): 231–280. 36 Gordin
- 52. 57. Beilstein ironically had denounced the silliness of the notion of German and Russian parties in a letter to Butlerov on October 15, 1867, a full 13 years before it would resurface. Bykow and Bekassowa, “II. F. Beilsteins Briefe an A. M. Butlerow,” 284. As a further irony, it was Butlerov who resurrected the German party case most strongly in a popular article published in the right-wing journal Rus’. See A. M. Butlerov, Sochineniia, 3 v. (Izd. AN SSSR, 1953), III, 118. 58. “Zur Nichtwahl Mendelejew’s,” St. Petersburger Zeitung, December 24, 1880, 359: 2. 59. “Predlozhenie i balotirovanie professora F. F. Beil’shteina v ordinarnye akademiki po tekhnologii i khimii, prisposoblennoi k iskusstvam i remeslam,” Zapiski Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk 41 (1882), no. 1: 84–167, on 86. 60. “Predlozhenie i balotirovanie professora F. F. Beil’shteina,” 125. 61. To be specific about what I mean about Beilstein’s alienation qua German: he was not alien- ated from the civil service or the Russian bureaucracy, and he attained the level of privy coun- cilor—also Mendeleev’s rank as Director of the Chief Bureau of Weights and Measures—in 1895, and he was elected honorary member of several institutions like Kiev University. But among Petersburg chemists he felt himself persona non grata. On his honors, see Hjelt, “Friedrich Konrad Beilstein,” 5068. 62. Shmulevich and Musabekov, Fedor Fedorovich Beil’shtein, 44. Beilstein’s complete bibliography of non-Russian articles shows a marked decline into the 1880s. See Hjelt, “Friedrich Konrad Beilstein,” 5078. 63. Protocols of Chemical Division of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society, December 4, 1903, ZhRFKhO 35 (1903), no. 9: 1265. 64. Hjelt, “Friedrich Konrad Beilstein,” 5054. 65. Krätz, Beilstein-Erlenmeyer, 60. 66. Beilstein continued to Erlenmeyer on March 17, 1878: “My worry is, that I can’t finish revis- ing my materials in 2 years, as I had thought at first. I beg you to consider, that I have before me the totally gathered complete materials. While writing I take the original in hand each time. Now I am only asking each Christian individual to gather the ‘material’! Woe is the unfortunate one who has gotten it into his head to be able to complete the entire Jahresberichte alone. What I possess are excerpts crafted only from the originals. Those I bring now all prettily in order nicely and clearly arranged by empirical formula. . . .” Krätz, Beilstein-Erlenmeyer, 64. 67. Beilstein to Erlenmeyer, March 17, 1878, in Krätz, Beilstein-Erlenmeyer, 64. This may be a ref- erence to Mendeleev’s famously encyclopedic Principles of Chemistry. 68. Beilstein, “O rabotakh chlenov Russkago Fiziko-Khimicheskago Obshchestva po aromatich- eskomu riadu,” 52–53. 69. F. Beilstein, Handbuch der Organischen Chemie, 2 v. (Leopold Voss, 1883), I, 2–3. The front mat- ter and format did not change until the post-Beilstein Handbuch. Of course, the material in the cat- alog was heavily expanded, corrected, and updated. Beilstein Unbound 37
- 53. 70. Beilstein, Handbuch der Organischen Chemie, I, 35. 71. Beilstein, Handbuch der Organischen Chemie, I, v. 72. Beilstein, Handbuch der Organischen Chemie, I, v. This was, in one sense, an attempt to remedy the faults of previous textbooks, like that of August Kekulé. As Beilstein commented in his review of that work: “The material is selected with skill and everywhere is pointed to by citations to the original articles. By these citations the author takes into account primarily Kopp’s Jahresbericht and Liebig’s Annalen, which however is unfair to many works.” That is, by not looking at all journals, Kekulé risked undermining his own synthesis. F. Beilstein, Review of Kekulé’s Lehrbuch der organis- chen Chemie, 493. 73. Quoted in Richter, “Friedrich Beilstein, Gedanken zur hundertsten Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages,” 103. 74. Beilstein, Handbuch der Organischen Chemie, I, vii–viii. See also his request in the minutes of the March 10, 1884 meeting of the German Chemical Society, printed in Ber. 17 (1884): 489. Krätz reproduces one of Beilstein’s letters to an anonymous colleague dated August 17, 1883, soliciting help on the Handbuch. Krätz, Beilstein-Erlenmeyer, 81–82. 75. Quoted in Hjelt, “Friedrich Konrad Beilstein,” 5064. 76. Beilstein, Die chemische Grossindustrie auf der Weltausstellung zu Wien im Jahre 1873, 55. 77. Erlenmeyer to an unknown recipient June 13, 1895, and Volhard to Erlenmeyer, March 27, 1896, both in Krätz, Beilstein-Erlenmeyer, 83. 78. For the official acceptance, see “Rundschrieben,” from the minutes of the February 4, 1896 meeting of the German Chemical Society, Ber. 29 (1896): 321–324. On the later history of the Handbuch after this transformation, see Richter, “Beilsteins Handbuch,” 280–281. 79. Quoted in Hjelt, “Friedrich Konrad Beilstein,” 5065. 80. Letter of November 5, 1882, reproduced in Meyer, Emil Erlenmeyer (1825–1909) als Chemie- theoretiker, 391. 81. Markovnikov quotation from “Nafteny i ikh proizvodnye v obshchei sisteme organicheskikh soedinenii (1902),” in Markovnikov, Izbrannye trudy, 516. The Alekseev letter is reproduced in Bykov, Pis’ma russkikh khimikov k A. M. Butlerovu, 25. Alekseev had studied under Beilstein for a year in Göttingen. See P. P. Alekseev to A. M. Butlerov, December 8, 1863, in ibid., 13. See also K. M. Zaitsev to Butlerov, May 16, 1862, in ibid., 145. Beilstein maintained contact with Alekseev through the 1880s after the latter moved to Kiev (ibid., 20, 26). 82. Russkoe Khimicheskoe Obshchestvo. XXV (1868–1893), 4. 83. Protocols of Chemical Division of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society, September 13, 1890, ZhRFKhO 22 (1890), no. 7: 480. 84. Protocols of Chemical Division of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society, October 8, 1892, ZhRFKhO 24 (1892), no. 8: 542–543. 38 Gordin
- 54. 85. N. Menshutkin, “K voprosu o khimicheskoi nomenklature: Sostavlenie nazvanii organich- eskikh kislot,” ZhRFKhO 25 (1893), no. 1: 10. 86. N. N. Beketov, “Pamiati Fed. Fed. Beil’shteina,” in Protocols of Chemical Division of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society, November 2, 1906, ZhRFKhO 38 (1906), no. 9: 1279–1280. 87. Consider the way Beilstein’s “homeland” (Heimat) has been treated. Heimat is one of those notoriously tricky German words that serve as political touchstones. Biographers have tended to declare that Beilstein’s birthplace—Russia—was his Heimat, as in Hjelt, “Friedrich Konrad Beilstein,” 5047, while German commentators in the twentieth century have selected Germany for the honor of being “always his spiritual Heimat.” Luckenbach, “Der Beilstein,” 36. Beilstein him- self sided with the latter, as he declared in a letter to Erlenmeyer on October 5, 1873: “I have lived alone 12 years in Germany and consider it always as my scientific homeland (Heimath), for which I always have and will have the greatest respect.” Krätz, Beilstein-Erlenmeyer, 43. Although Beilstein was fluent in Russian (and French and English, and proficient in both Italian and Swedish), he strongly preferred to speak German at home and among friends. 88. William Coleman, “Prussian Pedagogy: Purkyne at Breslau, 1823–1839,” in The Investigative Enterprise: Experimental Physiology in Nineteenth-Century Medicine, ed. William Coleman and Frederic L. Holmes (University of California Press, 1988), 15–64, on 35. 89. F. Richter, “75 Jahre Beilsteins Handbuch der Organischen Chemie: Ein Jubiläum der Wissenschaft,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 13, 1956, reprinted in Richter, 75 Jahre Beilsteins Handbuch der Organischen Chemie (1957), 5–10, on 5; idem, “Zur Feierstunde am 14. Dezember 1956,” in ibid., 19–25, on 19, for World War II; Paul Jacobson, “Beilsteins Handbuch der Organischen Chemie, ein Spiegel ihrer Entwicklung,” in ibid., 85–93, on 93. 90. Dermot A. O’Sullivan, “Germany’s Beilstein will change to English,” Chemical and Engineering News 59 (1981), May 18: 21–22, reprinted in Einhundert Jahre Beilsteins Handbuch der Organischen Chemie, 123–127. 91. Letter of October 7, 1906, quoted in Hjelt, “Friedrich Konrad Beilstein,” 5066. Beilstein Unbound 39
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- 56. murskaamaan käden, joka hänelle sitä ojentaa ja armotta repimään rikki sen, joka antaa hänen toimia ja elää. Isäsi oli kirjoittanut hyvin kohteliaan kirjeen, jotta suostuisin ottamaan hänet vastaan; mutta hän ei ensinkään ollut kirjeensä kaltainen. Hänen ensimäiset sanansa olivat ylimieliset, häpeämättömät, vieläpä uhkaavatkin, niin että annoin hänen ymmärtää, että olin kotonani ja että minun ei tarvinnut tehdä hänelle tiliä elämästäni muuten kuin mikäli oli kysymys todellisesta rakkaudesta, jota tunsin hänen poikaansa kohtaan. Herra Duval rauhoittui silloin hieman, mutta sanoi kuitenkin, ettei hän voinut kauempaa sallia, että hänen poikansa saattoi itsensä perikatoon minun tähteni; että olin tosin kaunis, mutta olinpa kuinka kaunis tahansa, niin en saanut käyttää kauneuttani turmellakseni nuoren miehen tulevaisuuden sellaisilla kuluilla, kuin mitä minulla oli. Oli olemassa ainoastaan yksi vastaus, eikö totta? Ja se oli, että siitä lähtien, kun olin tullut rakastajattareksesi, ei mikään uhri ollut minulle ollut liian suuri ollakseni sinulle uskollinen, pyytämättä sinulta enemmän rahoja kuin mitä saatoit antaa. Näytin panttilaput, kuitit myydyistä esineistä, kerroin, että aioin myydä huonekaluni maksaakseni velkani ja voidakseni elää yhdessä sinun kanssasi, olematta sinulle liian raskaana taakkana. Puhuin meidän onnestamme, että sinä olet tuottanut minulle rauhallisemman, onnellisemman elämän, ja lopulta hän tuli vakuutetuksi kaikesta ja ojensi minulle kätensä sekä pyysi anteeksi äskeisen käytöksensä. Sitten hän sanoi: — Silloin, neiti, en pyydä teitä esityksilläni ja uhkauksillani, vaan rukouksillani tekemään poikani hyväksi vieläkin suuremman
- 57. uhrauksen kuin mitä tähän saakka olette tehnyt. Tämä johdatus saattoi minut vapisemaan. Isäsi astui lähemmäksi, tarttui molempiin käsiini ja jatkoi ystävällisellä äänellä: — Lapseni, älkää pahastuko siitä mitä teille nyt sanon; koettakaa vaan ymmärtää, että elämä toisinaan vaatii sydämeltä julmia välttämättömyyksiä, joihin täytyy alistua. Te olette hyvä ja ylevämielisempi kuin monet naiset, jotka ehkä halveksivat teitä, mutta jotka eivät ole edes teidänkään arvoisianne. Mutta ajatelkaa, että rakastajattaren rinnalla on myöskin perhe; että paitsi rakkautta on olemassa myöskin velvollisuuksia; että intohimon kautta seuraa se kausi, jolloin miehellä täytyy, jotta häntä kunnioitettaisiin, olla varma ja vakava asema elämässä. Pojallani ei ole mitään omaisuutta ja kuitenkin hän on valmis luovuttamaan teille äitinsä perinnön. Jos hän ottaisi vastaan uhrin, jonka aiotte tehdä, vaatisi kunniantunto ja arvokkuus häntä korvaamaan sen tällä lahjoituksella, joka ainaiseksi suojaisi teidät täydelliseltä hädältä. Mutta hän ei voi ottaa vastaan tuota uhria, siksi että maailman silmissä tuon suostumuksen aiheuttaisi epärehellinen vaikutin, ja moinen epäluulo ei saa liittyä meidän nimeemme. Ei otettaisi huomioon, että Armand rakastaa teitä ja että te rakastatte häntä, että tämä molemminpuolinen rakkaus on hänelle onni ja teille ojennus, asia otettaisiin vain yhdeltä kannalta, nimittäin, että Armand Duval on sallinut liehinaisen — suokaa anteeksi, rakas lapsi, kaikki mitä olen pakoitettu teille sanomaan — myydä kaiken omaisuutensa hänen tähtensä. Silloin seuraisivat omantunnon tuskat, olkaa varma siitä, ja te joutuisitte molemmat kahleisiin, joita ette voisi murtaa. Mitä te silloin tekisitte? Nuoruutenne olisi mennyttä, poikani tulevaisuus tuhottu; ja minä, hänen isänsä, saisin vain toiselta lapselta kiitollisuutta, jota odotan molemmilta. Te olette nuori, te olette kaunis, elämä on lohduttava
- 58. teitä, te olette jalomielinen, ja muisto hyvästä teosta on tasoittava paljon menneisyydestänne. Niiden kuuden kuukauden aikana, jolloin Armand on tuntenut teidät, on hän unohtanut minut. Neljä kertaa olen kirjoittanut hänelle, eikä hän ole ajatellutkaan vastata minulle. Olisin voinut kuolla, eikä hän olisi tietänyt siitä mitään. Vaikkakin päättäisitte elää toisin kuin olette elänyt, ei Armand, joka rakastaa teitä, sallisi teidän viettää sellaista yksinäistä elämää, johon hänen vaatimattomat varansa pakoittaisivat teidät, ja joka ei sovi teidän kauneudellenne! Hän on pelannut, tiedän sen, ja tiedän myöskin, että hän ei ole maininnut siitä sanallakaan teille. Mutta hetkellisessä huumauksessa olisi hän voinut menettää osan siitä minkä vuosien kuluessa olen kerännyt tyttäreni myötäjäisiksi, hänelle itselleen ja omien vanhojen päivieni varalle. Mitä ei ole tapahtunut, voi vielä tapahtua. Oletteko sitäpaitsi varma siitä, että elämä, josta luovutte hänen tähtensä, ei houkuttele teitä uudestaan? Oletteko varma siitä, ettette koskaan rakasta ketään muuta? Ettekö lopulta kärsisi siteistä, joihin suhteenne rakastajanne saattaisi ja joita olisi vaikea saada hänet unohtamaan, jos kunnianhimoiset ajatukset vuosien kuluessa seuraisivat rakkausunelmia? Ajatelkaa kaikkea tätä, neitiseni; te rakastatte Armandia, osoittakaa se hänelle ainoalla tavalla mikä teillä vielä on jälellä, uhraamalla rakkautenne hänen tulevaisuutensa hyväksi. Vielä ei onnettomuutta ole tapahtunut, mutta se on tapahtuva, vieläpä suurempi kuin olen ennustanut. Ja lopuksi, lapseni, saatte tietää miksi olen tullut Parisiin. Kuten jo mainitsin, on minulla tytär, nuori, kaunis ja puhdas kuin enkeli. Hän rakastaa, ja hän on myöskin tehnyt rakkaudestaan elämänsä unelman. No niin! Tyttäreni menee naimisiin miehen kanssa, jota hän rakastaa, ja hän joutuu kunnialliseen perheeseen, joka tahtoo, että minunkin olisi kunniallinen. Tulevan vävyni omaiset ovat saneet kuulla kuinka Armand elää Parisissa, ja he katsovat avioliiton mahdottomaksi, jos
- 59. Armand jatkaa nykyistä elintapaansa. Käsissänne on siis lapsen tulevaisuus, lapsen, joka ei koskaan ole tehnyt teille mitään ja jolla on oikeus katsoa tulevaisuuteen. Onko teillä oikeutta ja onko teillä voimia särkeä sitä? Rakkautenne ja tuskanne nimessä, Marguerite, lahjoittakaa minulle tyttäreni onni! — Ystäväni, itkin hiljaa, kuullessani kaikkia näitä seikkoja, joita itsekin olin usein ajatellut, mutta jotka isäsi suussa muuttuivat vielä vakavammaksi todellisuudeksi. Ja minä sanoin itselleni kaiken sen, jota isäsi ei ollut uskaltanut minulle sanoa, mutta joka usein oli ollut hänen huulillaan: että suhteemme aina näyttäisi laskelmalta minun puoleltani; että menneisyyteni ei oikeuttanut minua uneksimaan sellaisesta tulevaisuudesta; ja että otin edesvastuun, jota tapani ja maineeni eivät voineet ta'ata. Ja lopuksi, rakastin sinua, Armand. Herra Duvalin isällinen puhetapa, puhtaat tunteet, joita hän minussa herätti, halu voittaa hänen kunnioituksensa ja sinun, josta olin varma myöhemmin, kaikki tämä täytti sydämeni jaloilla ajatuksilla, jotka kohottivat minua omissa silmissäni; ja nämä uudet tunteet vaiensivat ne neuvot, joita onnellisten päivien muistot sinun kerallasi antoivat minulle. — Hyvä, herra, sanoin minä, kuivaten kyyneleeni. Uskotteko, että rakastan poikaanne epäitsekkäällä rakkaudella? — Uskon, vastasi herra Duval. — Hyvä, syleilkää minua siis niin kuin syleilisitte tytärtänne, ja minä sanon, että suudelmanne on tekevä minut vahvaksi rakkauttani vastaan, ja että poikanne on viikon kuluttua palaava luoksenne. — Te olette jalo tyttö, vastasi isäsi, suudellen minua otsalle, — ja Jumala palkitsee teitä hyvyydestänne. Mutta minä pelkään, että
- 60. poikani ei suostu tähän kaikkeen. — Olkaa rauhallinen, herraseni, hän on vihaava minua. Meidän kummankin tähden täytyi ylitsepääsemättömän esteen nousta välillemme. Kirjoitin sentähden Prudencelle, että suostuin kreivi N…n ehdoitukseen, ja että hän ilmoittaisi kreiville, että tahdoin syödä illallista hänen ja Prudencen kanssa. Sinetöin kirjeen ja pyysin isääsi ottamaan sen mukaansa Parisiin, kertomatta hänelle sen sisältöä. Hän tahtoi kuitenkin tietää sen. — Se sisältää poikanne onnen, vastasin minä. Hän suuteli minua vielä kerran ja kaksi kiitollisuuden kyyneltä kostutti otsaani. Ja samassa, kun olin suostunut menemään toiselle miehelle, tunsin ylpeyttä ajatellessani mitä tällä uudella hairahduksellani lunastin. Herra Duval nousi nyt vaunuihinsa ja matkusti pois. Mutta olinhan minä nainen, enkä minä voinut olla itkemättä nähtyäni sinut; mutta minä en horjunut. — Teinkö oikein? sitä kysyn nyt itseltäni ollessani sairaana ja vuoteen omana, jonka ehkä vasta kuolleena jätän. Sinä näit kärsimykseni, kun välttämätön eronhetki läheni; isäsi ei ollut silloin tukemassa minua ja olin vähällä tunnustaa sinulle kaikki, niin suuresti pelkäsin ajatusta, että sinä vihaisit ja halveksisit minua. Rukoilin Jumalalta voimia kestämään uhraukseni, ja minä luulen, että Hän kuuli minua.
- 61. Mutta noilla illallisilla tarvitsin jotakin muuta, sillä minä en tahtonut tietää mitä tein, niin suuresti pelkäsin, että horjuisin päätöksessäni. Etsin väkijuomista unhoitusta, ja kun seuraavana aamuna heräsin, olin minä kreivin rakastajatar. Siinä koko totuus, ystäväni; tuomitse ja anna minulle anteeksi, niinkuin minä olen antanut sinulle anteeksi kaiken pahan minkä olet minulle siitä lähtien tehnyt.
- 62. KAHDESKYMMENESKUUDES LUKU. Mitä tuota kovanonnen yötä seurasi, tiedät yhtä hyvin kuin minäkin, mutta mitä sinä et ehkä aavista, on kaikki ne kärsimykset, joita olen saanut kokea, siitä hetkestä alkaen kun sinä matkustit. Olin kuullut, että isäsi oli vienyt sinut mukanaan, mutta aavistin kuitenkin, ett'et voisi elää kauan etäällä minusta, ja kun näin sinut Champs-Elysées'ella tulin liikutetuksi, mutta en hämmästynyt. Ja nyt alkoi tuo jokapäiväinen loukkausten sarja, johon kuitenkin ilolla alistuin, sillä paitsi sitä, että se oli todistuksena rakkaudestasi, uskoin minä, että kuta enemmän sinä vainosit minua sitä enemmän kohoaisin silmissäsi sinä päivänä, jolloin saisit tietää totuuden. Älä ihmettele tätä iloista uhrautumista, Armand; rakkauteni oli avannut sydämeni jaloille tunteille. Mutta minulla ei kuitenkaan ollut heti tätä voimaa. Tehtyäni uhrauksen kului pitkä aika ennenkuin sinä palasit, ja sillä aikaa täytyi minun tarttua kaikenlaisiin keinoihin, etten tullut hulluksi ja tukahduttaakseni ajatukset elämästä, johon olin jälleen joutunut. Prudence on kai kertonut sinulle siitä? Toivoin siten saavuttavani pikaisen kuoleman ja luulen, että toivoni pian täyttyy. Terveyteni luonnollisesti huononi huononemistaan, ja
- 63. sinä päivänä, jona lähetin rouva Duvernoyn pyytämään sinulta armahdusta, olin sekä ruumiillisesti että sielullisesti aivan menehtymäisilläni. Viimeinen loukkauksesi karkoitti minut Parisista. Jätin kaikki! Kreivi G… oli Lontoossa. Hän on niitä miehiä, jotka pysyvät hyvinä ystävinä entisten rakastajattariensa kanssa, vihaamatta heitä. Sentähden ajattelin heti häntä. Etsin hänet, ja hän otti heti minut ystävällisesti vastaan. Mutta hän oli siellä erään hienon maailmannaisen rakastaja ja pelkäsi näyttäytyä julkisesti minun seurassani. Hän esitti minut ystävilleen, jotka panivat toimeen illalliset, joiden jälkeen eräs heistä vei minut kotiinsa. Mitä minun olisi pitänyt tehdä, ystäväni? Surmatako itseni? Silloinhan olisin hyödyttömällä omantunnontuskalla rasittanut elämääni, jonka tulee olla onnellinen. Ja muuten, miksi surmata itseään, kun kuolema kuitenkin on niin lähellä. Elin nyt koneellista elämää, niinkuin sieluton ruumis, ajatukseton esine. Sitten matkustin takaisin Parisiin, ja minä tiedustelin sinua. Sain silloin kuulla, että olit matkustanut kauas pois. Mikään ei enää pidättänyt minua, ja elämäni muuttui samanlaiseksi kuin se oli ollut kaksi vuotta ennenkuin tutustuin sinuun. Koetin saada takaisin herttuan, mutta olin loukannut häntä liian syvästi, ja tuollaiset ukot eivät ole kärsivällisiä, kenties siksi, että he huomaavat, että he eivät ole kuolemattomia. Sairauteni paheni päivä päivältä, minä kalpenin, kävin surumieliseksi ja entistä laihemmaksi. Parisissa oli iloisempia ja rehevämpiä naisia kuin minä; jouduin hieman unhotuksiin. Nyt olen oikein sairas. Olen kirjoittanut herttualle ja pyytänyt rahaa, sillä minulla ei ole sitä, ja velkoojani ahdistelevat säälimättömästi laskuillaan. Vastanneekohan herttua? Oi, jos sinä
- 64. olisit Parisissa, Armand! Sinä kävisit luonani ja käyntisi lohduttaisivat minua. 20 päivänä joulukuuta. Ulkona on kamala ilma; sataa lunta; olen aivan yksin. Kolme päivää on minulla ollut sellainen kuume, etten ole voinut kirjoittaa sanaakaan. Ei ole tapahtunut mitään uutta, ystäväni; joka päivä elää minussa heikko toivo saada sinulta kirje, mutta sellaista ei saavu, eikä luultavasti tule saapumaankaan. Vain miehet voivat olla anteeksiantamattomia. Herttua ei ole vastannut. Prudence on alkanut käydä panttilaitoksessa. Minä syljen ehtimiseen verta. Voi, jos sinä näkisit minut tällaisena! Sinä olet kovin onnellinen, kun saat olla lämpöisen taivaan alla, eikä sinun tarvitse tuntea, niinkuin minun, jäävuorta rintasi päällä. Tänään nousin hetkiseksi vuoteestani, katsellakseni uutimien takaa Parisin katuelämää, tuota elämää, joka luultavasti on ainaiseksi minulta mennyt. Näin muutamia tuttuja, iloisia, huolettomia kasvoja. Kukaan ei katsahtanut ikkunaani. Kerran ennen, kun olin sairas, etkä sinä vielä tuntenut minua, tulit sinä joka aamu tiedustelemaan vointiani. Nyt olen taas sairas. Olemme viettäneet yhdessä kuusi kuukautta. Olen rakastanut sinua niinkuin nainen rakastaa voi, mutta nyt sinä olet kaukana luotani, ja sinä kiroat minua, enkä minä saa sinulta ainoatakaan lohdutuksen sanaa. Mutta siihen on syynä ainoastaan sattuma, sillä olen varma siitä, että jos sinä olisit Parisissa, niin sinä et jättäisi minua yksin huoneeseeni. 25 päivänä joulukuuta. Lääkärini kieltää minua kirjoittamasta joka päivä. Niin, muistoni kiihoittavatkin kuumettani; mutta eilen sain kirjeen, joka teki minulle
- 65. hyvää, enemmän tunteiden johdosta, joita se ilmaisi kuin sitä seuraavan aineellisen avun vuoksi. Voin kirjoittaa tänään. Kirje oli isältäsi, ja kas tässä mitä se sisälsi: /# 'Neitiseni. Sain juuri kuulla, että olette sairas. Jos olisin Parisissa, tulisin itse tiedustelemaan vointianne; ja jos poikani olisi täällä, lähettäisin hänet luoksenne. Mutta minä en ole tilaisuudessa lähtemään G…sta ja Armand on kuuden tahi seitsemän sadan kilometrin päässä täältä. Sallikaa minun siis yksinkertaisesti kirjoittaa teille, neiti, sanoakseni, että olen sangen pahoillani sairautenne johdosta, ja että sydämestäni toivon teidän pian jälleen toipuvan. Eräs ystävistäni, herra H… saapuu luoksenne; olkaa hyvä ja ottakaa hänet vastaan. Olen pyytänyt häntä toimittamaan erään asian ja odotan kärsimättömänä sen tulosta. Pyydän teitä, neitiseni, vastaanottamaan vakuutukseni erinomaisimmasta kunnioituksestani.' #/ Sellainen oli kirje, jonka sain. Isälläsi on jalo sydän, rakasta häntä, ystäväni, sillä maailmassa ei ole montaa miestä, jotka ovat rakkauden arvoisia. Tämä hänen nimikirjoituksellaan varustettu kirjeensä vaikutti minuun edullisemmin kuin kaikki lääkärien määräykset. Tänä aamuna saapui herra H… Hän oli kovin hämillään arkaluontoisen tehtävän johdosta, jonka herra Duval oli hänelle antanut ja se oli yksinkertaisesti: jättää minulle tuhannen francsia isältäsi. Tahdoin ensin kieltäytyä ottamasta sitä vastaan, mutta herra H… sanoi silloin, että kieltäytymiseni loukkaisi herra Duvalia, joka ei
- 66. ainoastaan valtuuttanut häntä jättämään minulle tuota rahaerää, vaan lisäksi toimittamaan minulle kaikki mitä tarvitsin. Silloin otin vastaan tuon avun, jota ei voi, silloin kun se tulee isältäsi, kutsua almuksi. Jos olen palattuasi kuollut, niin näytä isällesi mitä olen hänestä kirjoittanut, ja sano hänelle, että tyttöraukka, jota hän kunnioitti tällä lohduttavalla kirjeellä, vuodatti kiitollisuuden kyyneleitä ja rukoili jumalaa hänen puolestaan. 5 päivänä tammikuuta. Minulla on ollut monta tuskallista päivää. Minulla ei ollut aavistustakaan siitä, että ruumis voisi kärsiä niin. Voi, mennyttä elämääni! Saan maksaa siitä kaksin kerroin nyt. Yöllä valvottiin luonani. En voinut enää hengittää. Kuumehoureet ja yskä kuluttivat loput ruumisparastani. Ruokasalini on täynnä makeislaatikoita ja kaikenlaisia lahjoja, joita ystäväni ovat minulle antaneet. Prudence antaa uudenvuodenlahjoiksi minun saamiani esineitä. Ulkona on pakkanen ja lääkäri on sanonut, että jos kauniita ilmoja jatkuu, saan minä lähteä ulos muutamien päivien kuluttua. 8 päivänä tammikuuta. Eilen olin ajelemassa. Oli ihana ilma. Champs-Elysées oli täynnä ihmisiä. Ilmassa oli kevään tuntua. Kaikki näytti juhlalliselta. En ollut koskaan aavistanut, mitä eilen huomasin, nimittäin, että auringon säde sisältäisi niin paljon iloa, lempeyttä ja lohtua. Tapasin miltei kaikki tuttavani, iloisina ja huvittelunhaluisina. Kuinka paljon onnellisia onkaan, jotka eivät itse tiedä olevansa sitä.
- 67. Olympe ajoi ohitseni hienoissa vaunuissa. Hän koetti loukata minua katseellaan. Hän ei tiedä kuinka kauaksi tuollaisista pikkumaisuuksista olen päässyt! Muuan kunnon nuorukainen, jonka olen kauan tuntenut, pyysi minua illastamaan itsensä ja erään ystävänsä seurassa, joka, sanoi hän, suuresti haluaa tehdä tuttavuutta kanssani. Hymyilin surullisesti ja ojensin hänelle kuumeisen käteni. En ole koskaan nähnyt kenenkään niin hämmästyvän. Kello neljä palasin kotiin ja söin päivällistä hyvällä ruokahalulla. Tuo retki ulkoilmassa teki minulle hyvää. Ajattelehan, jos minä tulisin jälleen terveeksi! Toisten elämän ja onnen näkeminen herättää elämän toivon sellaisessa, joka edellisenä iltana sielunsa yksinäisyydessä ja sairashuoneensa hämärässä toivoi mahdollisimman pikaista kuolemaa. 10 päivänä tammikuuta. Tuo toivo oli vain unelma. Nyt olen taas vuoteen omana ja ruumistani peittää polttava laastari. Olemme varmaankin tehneet paljon pahaa ennen syntymäämme, tahi sitten täytyy meidän saada nauttia suurta autuutta kuolemamme jälkeen, koska jumala tahtoo, että kaikenlaiset vaivat ja tuskat raskauttavat elämäämme. 12 päivänä tammikuuta.
- 68. Kärsin yhä. Kreivi N… lähetti minulle eilen rahoja. En ottanut niitä vastaan. En huoli mitään siltä mieheltä. Hän on syynä siihen, että sinä et ole nyt luonani. Oi, meidän suloisia päiviämme Bougivalissa! Missä te olette? Jos lähden elävänä tästä huoneesta, niin teen pyhiinvaellusretken taloon, jossa yhdessä asuimme. Mutta minä jätän tämän huoneen ainoastaan kuolleena. Kuka tietää voinko enää huomenna edes kirjoittaakaan. 25 päivänä tammikuuta. Nyt on kulunut yksitoista yötä, jolloin en ole nukkunut, jolloin tukehtumiskohtaukset ovat minua vaivanneet ja jolloin joka hetki olen ollut vähällä kuolla. Lääkäri on kieltänyt minua lainkaan tarttumasta kynään. Julie Duprat, joka valvoo luonani, sallii minun kuitenkin kirjoittaa nämä rivit. Etkö sinä siis palaa ennenkuin kuolen? Onko siis kaikki välillämme ainaiseksi loppunut? Kuvittelen, että parantuisin, jos sinä tulisit. Mutta mitä hyötyä olisi parantumisestani? 28 päivänä tammikuuta. Aamulla heräsin kovaan meluun. Julie, joka nukkuu huoneessani, kiiruhti ruokasaliin. Kuulin miesääniä, joita hän turhaan koetti vaientaa. Julie palasi itkien. Tultiin merkitsemään huonekalujani ja tavaroitani. Pyysin, että Julie sallisi heidän tekevän mitä he nimittivät oikeudeksi. Ulosottovirkailija tuli makuuhuoneeseeni hattu päässä. Hän avasi
- 69. laatikot, merkitsi kirjaansa kaiken minkä näki, eikä ollut huomaavinaankaan, että kuoleva lepäsi vuoteessa, jonka lain armeliaisuus onneksi salli minun pitää. Ennen lähtöään suvaitsi hän sanoa minulle, että voin yhdeksän päivän sisällä jättää vastalauseeni, mutta hän asetti vahdin huoneisiin! Jumalani, mitä minusta on tuleva? Tämä teko huononsi yhä tilaani. Prudence tahtoi pyytää isäsi ystäviltä rahaa, mutta minä vastustin sitä. Tänään sain kirjeesi. Kuinka sitä tarvitsinkaan! Saapuneekohan vastaukseni sinulle ajoissa perille? Näetkö vielä minut? Tämä on onnen päivä, joka salli minun unohtaa kaiken sen mitä kuuden viikon aikana olen saanut kokea. Minusta tuntui kuin voisin paremmin, huolimatta painostavasta surumielisyydestä, jota tunsin vastatessani kirjeeseesi. Kun kaikki ympäri käy, ei ihmisen tarvitse aina tuntea itseään onnettomaksi. Ajattelen, että minä en ehkä kuolekaan, että sinä palaat, että saan nähdä kevään taas, että sinä rakastat minua vielä ja että me alamme elää jälleen yhdessä! Sellainen hupakko minä olen! Minun on vaikea pitää kynää kädessäni kirjoittaessani tästä sydämeni mielettömästä unelmasta. Mitä tahansa tapahtuneekin, rakastin sinua paljon, Armand, ja minä olisin kuollut jo aikoja sitten, ellei muisto rakkaudestamme olisi pitänyt minua yllä, niin, ja heikko jälleennäkemisen toivo. 4 päivänä helmikuuta.
- 70. Kreivi G… on palannut. Hänen rakastajattarensa petti hänet. Hän on kovin suruissaan, sillä hän rakasti tyttöään. Hän kertoi sen minulle. Tuon poikaparan asiat ovat huonosti, mutta se ei estänyt häntä maksamasta ulosottomiehelleni ja poistamasta vartijaa. Puhelin hänen kanssaan sinusta, ja hän lupasi puhua sinulle minusta. Hänellä on hyvä sydän. Eilen lähetti herttua erään henkilön tiedustelemaan vointiani, ja tänään saapui hän itse. En käsitä kuinka tuo vanhus voi enää elää. Hän istui kolme tuntia luonani, mutta ei puhunut kahtakymmentä sanaakaan. Kaksi suurta kyyneltä vierähti hänen silmistään, kun hän näki kuinka kalpea minä olin. Hänen tytärvainajansa muisto kai puristi ne esille. Hän on ikäänkuin nähnyt tyttärensä kuolevan kaksi kertaa. Hän ei moittinut minua ensinkään. Oli ikäänkuin hän olisi salaisesti nauttinut, nähdessään kuinka tauti oli minua runnellut, ja hän oli ehkä ylpeä saadessaan olla jalkeilla silloin kun minä, vielä nuori ihminen, makasin kärsimysten murtamana. Ilma on jälleen muuttunut rumaksi. Prudence ei enää käy luonani. Julie on mahdollisimman paljon tykönäni. Kun en enää voi antaa Prudencelle niin paljon rahoja kuin ennen, alkaa hän syyttää sitä, että hänen toimensa pidättävät häntä. Kun minä nyt, lääkärien lausunnoista huolimatta, olen lähellä kuolemaa, tunnen melkein katumusta, että kuuntelin isääsi; jos olisin tietänyt, etten olisi anastanut enempää kuin vuoden elämästäsi, niin en olisi vastustanut toivomustani saada viettää tuo vuosi yhdessä sinun kanssasi, sillä silloin olisin ainakin saanut kuollessani pitää kiinni ystävän kädestä. Jos olisimme saaneet olla yhdessä tämän
- 71. vuoden, niin luulen, etten olisi niin pian kuollut. Tapahtukoon Jumalan tahto! 5 päivänä helmikuuta. Voi, tule, tule, Armand; kärsin kauheita tuskia; Jumalani, minä kuolen! Minulla oli eilen niin ikävä, että tahdoin viettää iltani muualla kuin kotona. Herttua oli käynyt täällä aamulla. Luulen melkein, että tuon ukon, jonka kuolema on unohtanut, näkeminen jouduttaa kuolemaani. Polttavasta kuumeesta huolimatta, annoin pukea itseni ja ajoin Vaudeville teatteriin. Julie oli maalannut kasvoni, etten näyttäisi kalpealta kuin ruumis. Asetuin samaan aitioon, missä ensi kerran tapasimme toisemme; koko ajan katselin paikkaa, jolla sinä silloin istuit, mutta, jolla nyt istui eräs hölmö, joka kovaäänisesti nauroi kaikille näyttelijöiden laskettelemille tyhmyyksille. Minut vietiin puolikuolleena kotiin. Yskin ja syljin verta koko yön. Tänään en voi puhua ja tuskin jaksan liikuttaa käsivarsiani. Hyvä Jumala! Hyvä Jumala! Minä kuolen! Odotin sitä kyllä, mutta minä en voi tottua ajatukseen, että minun täytyy kärsiä vielä enemmän kuin mitä nyt kärsin, ja jos… Lauseita, joita Marguerite oli koettanut kirjoittaa edelleen, ei voinut lukea, ja Julie Duprat oli jatkanut. 18 päivänä helmikuuta. Herra Armand.
- 72. Siitä päivästä lähtien, kun Marguerite oli teatterissa, on hän huonontumistaan huonontunut. Ensin hän menetti puhekykynsä ja sitten kyvyn käyttää jäseniään. On mahdotonta kuvata kuinka ystäväparkamme kärsii. Elän alituisessa tuskassa, sillä en ole tottunut tällaisiin mielenliikutuksiin. Kuinka minä toivonkaan, että te olisitte luonamme! Hän hourii melkein aina; mutta jos hän sitten hourii tahi on tajuissaan, lausuu hän aina teidän nimeänne, onnistuessaan jotakin sanomaan. Lääkäri sanoi minulle, että hän ei kestä enää kauaa. Tuo vanha herttua ei ole käynyt sen jälkeen, kun Marguerite kävi näin huonoksi. Hän sanoi lääkärille, että hän kärsi liiaksi nähdessään Margueriten tuskat. Rouva Duvernoy käyttäytyy rumasti. Hän, joka miltei kokonaan eli Margueriten kustannuksella, on tehnyt sitoumuksia, joita hän ei voi täyttää, ja kun hän nyt huomaa, että hänen naapurinsa ei enää voi häntä hyödyttää, niin hän ei tule edes enää tervehtimäänkään häntä. Koko maailma hylkää hänet. Kreivi G…n täytyi matkustaa takaisin Lontooseen. Ennen lähtöään lähetti hän meille hiukan rahaa; hän on tehnyt voitavansa; mutta ulosottomiehet ovat taas toimessaan, ja velkojat odottavat vain Margueriten kuolemaa, myydäkseen hänen omaisuutensa. Olin valmis uhraamaan viimeiset roponi, estääkseni sen, mutta ulosottovirkailija sanoi, että se oli tarpeetonta. Kun hän nyt kuitenkin kuolee, niin on parempi luovuttaa kaikki kuin pelastaa mitään hänen omaisilleen, jotka eivät ole välittäneet hänestä eivätkä ole koskaan
- 73. rakastaneet häntä. Te ette voi kuvitella millaisessa kurjuudessa tuo tyttöparka kuolee. Eilen ei meillä ollut ropoakaan. Hopeat, jalokivet, saalit, kaikki ovat pantatut, ja loput on myyty tahi ovat merkityt. Marguerite tietää vielä mitä hänen ympärillään tapahtuu, ja hän kärsii siitä koko sielustaan ja ruumiistaan. Suuria kyyneleitä vierii hänen poskillaan, jotka nyt ovat niin kalpeat ja kuihtuneet, että te ette nyt tuntisi entistä rakastettuanne, jos näkisitte hänet. Minun täytyi lupautua kirjoittamaan teille, kun hän ei itse enää jaksanut, ja istun nyt hänen vieressään ja kirjoitan. Hän kääntää silmänsä minua kohti, mutta hän ei näe minua, lähestyvä kuolema on jo laskenut verhonsa hänen silmilleen. Mutta hän hymyilee, ja minä olen varma siitä, että hän on koko sielullaan ja kaikilla ajatuksillaan teidän luonanne. Joka kerta kun ovi avautuu loistavat hänen silmänsä ja hän luulee joka kerta, että te saavutte. Kun hän sitten huomaakin pettyneensä, palaa hänen kasvoilleen tuskallinen ilme, kylmä hiki kihoaa niille ja poskipäät muuttuvat purppuran punaisiksi. 19 päivänä helmikuuta. Tämä päivä on ollut kovin surullinen, Armand parka! Aamulla sai Marguerite tukehtumiskohtauksen, lääkäri iski hänestä suonta ja hän jaksoi taas hiukan puhua. Lääkäri neuvoi häntä kutsuttamaan papin. Marguerite suostui siihen ja lääkäri läksi itse toimittamaan asiaa. Sillä aikaa kutsui Marguerite minut aivan lähelleen, pyysi minua avaamaan kaapin ja osoitti minulle myssyä ja pitkää, pitseillä peitettyä paitaa, sanoen heikolla äänellä: — Minä kuolen, tehtyäni tunnustukseni; pue minut silloin noihin, ne ovat kuolleen koruja. Voin puhua, mutta olen puhuessani
- 74. tukehtua. Minä tukehdun! Ilmaa! Kyyneleet valuivat silmistäni kun menin avaamaan ikkunan; hetkinen sen jälkeen saapui pappi. Menin häntä vastaan. Saatuaan tietää kenen luona hän oli, näytti hän pelkäävän, että hänet otettaisiin huonosti vastaan. — Astukaa sisään vaan, isä, sanoin minä hänelle. Hän ei viipynyt kauan sairaan luona, ja kun hän poistui, sanoi hän minulle: — Syntinen oli hän eläessään, mutta kuollessaan on hän kristitty. Hetkisen kuluttua palasi hän jälleen ristiä kantavan kuoripojan ja lukkarin seurassa, joka kulki heidän edellään ja soitti kelloa, osoittaen siten, että Jumala saapui kuolevan luo. He menivät kaikki kolme makuuhuoneeseen, jossa ennen oli kaikunut niin monta ihmeellistä sanaa, mutta joka nyt oli muuttunut pyhätöksi. Minä polvistuin. En tiedä kuinka kauan vaikutus, jonka tuo näky minuun teki, on säilyvä, mutta minä luulen, etten tule enää koskaan elämässäni sellaista kokemaan. Pappi voiteli kuolevan jalat, kädet ja otsan pyhällä öljyllä ja luki lyhyen rukouksen, ja Marguerite oli nyt valmis lähtemään taivaaseen, jonne hän epäilemättä pääsee, jos Jumala on nähnyt hänen elämänsä koettelemukset ja hänen pyhitetyn kuolemansa. Siitä lähtien hän ei ole sanonut sanaakaan, eikä liikuttanut jäsentäkään. Ainakin kaksikymmentä kertaa olisin luullut häntä kuolleeksi, ellen olisi kuullut hänen vaivaloista hengitystään.
- 75. 20 päivänä helmikuuta, kello 5 illalla. Kaikki on loppu. Margueriten kuolinkamppailu alkoi viime yönä kello kahden vaiheilla. Kukaan marttyyri ei ole koskaan kärsinyt sellaisia tuskia kuin hän, päättäen huudoista, joita hänen suustaan kuului. Kaksi tahi kolme kertaa kohosi hän istumaan vuoteessa, ikäänkuin tahtoen pidättää elämäänsä, joka palasi Jumalan luo. Pari kolme kertaa mainitsi hän myöskin teidän nimenne; sitten hän vaikeni ja vaipui raukeana takaisin vuoteeseensa. Kyyneleet virtasivat hänen silmistään ja hän kuoli. Menin hänen luoksensa ja mainitsin hänen nimensä, mutta kun hän ei vastannut, niin suljin hänen silmänsä ja suutelin häntä otsalle. Rakas Marguerite parka, olisin tahtonut olla pyhä nainen, että olisin voinut tällä suudelmalla jättää hänet Jumalan huomaan. Sitten puin hänet niinkuin hän oli pyytänyt minun tekemään. Läksin noutamaan pappia, poltin kaksi vahakynttilää hänen edestään ja rukoilin kirkossa kokonaisen tunnin hänen puolestaan. En tunne paljon uskontoa, mutta minä luulen, että Jumala säälii häntä, jolla, vaikka hän olikin nuori ja kaunis, ei ollut muita kuin minä, joka olisi sulkenut hänen silmänsä ja pukenut hänet kuolinvaatteisiin. 22 päivänä helmikuuta. Tänään oli hautajaiset. Monta Margueriten ystävistä oli saapunut kirkkoon. Muutamat itkivät vilpittömästi. Kun ruumissaatto läksi Montmartrelle, oli siinä ainoastaan kaksi miestä, kreivi G…, joka oli
- 76. kiireimmiten saapunut Lontoosta, sekä herttua, jota kaksi palvelijaa tuki. Kirjoitan nämä rivit Margueriten kotona, kyynelten valuessa silmistäni, sillä, jos kestäisi kauan ennenkuin palaisitte, ehkä en silloin enää voisi kuvata näitä yksityisseikkoja kaikessa surullisessa tarkkuudessaan, niinkuin nyt voin täällä, missä ne ovat tapahtuneet.
- 77. KAHDESKYMMENESSEITSEMÄS LUKU. — Oletko lukenut sen? kysyi Armand sitten, kun oli lukenut käsikirjoituksen. — Käsitän kuinka sinun on täytynyt kärsiä, ystäväni, jos kaikki tämä on totta! — Isäni vakuutti sen todeksi kirjeessään. Puhuttuamme hetkisen Margueriten surullisesta kohtalosta, läksin kotiin levähtääkseni hetkisen. Armand toipui pian ja me kävimme yhdessä Prudencen ja Julie Duprat'in luona. Prudence oli äskettäin tehnyt vararikon. Hän kertoi, että Marguerite oli siihen syypää, sillä hän oli lainannut tuolle tytölle suuria summia, eikä saanut niitä koskaan takaisin. Kiitos tämän jutun, jonka Prudence kertoi kaikkialla huonon taloudellisen asemansa puolustukseksi, sai hän narratuksi tuhannen francsin setelin Armandilta, joka ei uskonut häntä, mutta oli uskovinaan Margueriten takia.
- 78. Sitten me läksimme Julie Duprat'in luokse, joka kertoi meille kaikki nuo surulliset tapaukset, joiden todistajana hän oli ollut, ja joka vuodatti vilpittömiä kyyneleitä muistellessaan ystäväänsä. Armandilla oli vielä yksi tehtävä täytettävänään; käydä isänsä luona. Hän tahtoi minua mukaansa. Saavuimme G…hen, missä tapasin herra Duvalin sellaisena kuin hän poikansa kuvauksessa minulle ilmeni: kookkaana, arvokkaana ja hyvätahtoisena. Hän vuodatti onnen kyyneleitä nähdessään Armandin sekä puristi lämpimästi minun kättäni. Huomasin pian, että sama tunne kuin isässä vallitsi myöskin muissa tuon veronkantajan luona. Hänen tyttärellään, Blanchella, oli silmissä ja katseessa tuo läpinäkyvä kirkkaus ja suun ympärillä tuo puhtaus, joka todistaa, että sielussa liikkuu vain puhtaita ajatuksia ja että huulet lausuvat vain hurskaita sanoja. Hän oli iloinen veljensä paluusta, ja tietämätön, että kaukana hänen luotaan eräs liehinainen oli uhrannut onnensa hänen pelkän nimensä mainitsemisesta. Jäin joksikin ajaksi tuon onnellisen perheen luokse, joka kokonaan tahtoi omistaa itsensä pojan ja veljen sydänsurun lievittämiseksi. Sitten palasin jälleen Parisiin, missä kirjoitin tämän tarinan sellaisena kuin se minulle kerrottiin. Sillä on ainoastaan yksi etu, nimittäin se, että se on tosi. En tule siihen johtopäätökseen kertomuksesta, että kaikki Margueriten kaltaiset tytöt voisivat tehdä niinkuin hän teki; kaukana
- 79. siitä; mutta minä tiedän nyt, että yksi heistä oli oppinut tuntemaan todellista rakkautta, että hän oli kärsinyt ja kuollut sen edestä. Olen kertonut mitä olen kuullut. Se oli velvollisuuteni. En ole paheen ylistäjä, mutta tahdon olla jalon kärsimyksen tulkkina kaikkialla missä se minuun vetoaa. Margueriten tarina on poikkeustapaus, toistan sen vielä; mutta jos se olisi ollut tavallinen tapaus, ei sitä olisi maksanut vaivaa kirjoittaa muistiin. Loppu.
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