The Sachsenwald departed from Hamburg on 17 March 1922, with Wegener and Kuhlbrodt aboard, and made a rapid crossing to Havana in about five days. Sea conditions were rough, with stormy and rainy weather, which only improved when they entered the trade winds. After Havana, they hopped from port to port in Cuba and then headed for Veracruz in Mexico, where, arriving on 30 April, they were docked for eleven days. Wegener and Kuhlbrodt were welcomed there by the local scientific community, the Sociedad Cientifica Antonio Alzate, shown around the observatory, and given a demonstration of their observing methods, and both men were made honorary members of the society.1 Leaving Mexico, they had nine more days at sea before arriving in New Orleans, on 20 May, and after a three-day layover there, they had a slow trip around Florida, arriving in Jacksonville (Fernandina) on the Atlantic Coast on 28 May, remaining there through 16 June.
There was plenty of writing time for Wegener, especially in these American ports. Though they had sent up pilot balloons each day while in port in Cuba and Mexico, the captain was afraid that somehow the Americans would find out that Wegener and Kuhlbrodt were not members of the ship’s crew but scientific passengers, and in fact employees of the German Admiralty, and seize the ship; he therefore forbade them to send any balloons aloft or make any other measurements from the deck. On the return voyage, they had no better luck with weather than on the outgoing one. While conditions were less stormy than on the outbound voyage, there was a thick overcast, and almost all the balloons were immediately lost in the persistent low clouds.2
Wegener seems to have been invigorated by the voyage and to have enjoyed himself, even in the midst of the bad weather. Whenever he was in an especially good mood, he would write humorous doggerel of the kind favored by his father and his father-in-law, in the spirit of Christian Morgenstern’s Galgenlieder. He produced a poem with illustrations for the children: “Auf hoher See, Hipp Hipp Hurra, Wir fahren nach Amerika / Wir stampfen gegen Wind und See, sieben Meilen Fahrt, Herrjemineh! [Across the sea, hip hip hurrah! We’re traveling to America. We struggle against the wind and sea, just 7 miles, Oh my! Oh me!].”3 That is probably enough to get the idea, and it explains why Else would generally run away whenever he recited poetry, either Morgenstern’s or his own.
He arrived home on 18 June with the rest of the manuscript of the third edition, which he sent off to the press within days. While he had been away, there had been interesting news, exciting but unsettling. Gustav Hellmann (1854–1939) had decided to retire as head of the Prussian Meteorological Institute and as professor of meteorology at the University of Berlin. Wegener would certainly be one of the three candidates in the short list for the Ruf (call). The directorship of the institute and the professorship were tied together, and there was no question of having one without the other. The administrative work of running the institute, which Hellmann had headed since 1907, was even more burdensome than the administrative work Wegener faced at Hamburg. He was very worried he would be chosen; he hated the administrative work, and Else said that for him the appointment in Berlin would be “out of the frying pan and into the fire” (vom Regen im die Traufe bekommen).4
He wanted to be a professor, but not a professor with an institute. There was some talk by Lundager and Koch of creating a professorship for him in Denmark, but he was not sure he wished to leave Germany. If he were chosen for Berlin, he thought he must refuse. It would be an insult to Berlin and a considerable professional embarrassment for him to do so, and it might cause him to be passed over when a more desirable position became vacant. He decided that if he were chosen he would plead that his scientific and personal connections with Köppen and their current collaboration would make it impossible for him to accept—and hope that Berlin would believe him and that honor would be satisfied.5
The top-ranked candidate was August Schmauß (1877–1954), then in Munich and working at the Meteorological Institute, without a professorship. His interests and Wegener’s were exactly parallel: they had studied atmospheric layering, thermodynamics, precipitation, and meteorological optics and acoustics. Quite independently of one another, they had both written papers on “the atmosphere as a colloid” in 1920, and Schmauß would later become famous for this work. The second-ranked candidate was Wegener’s old colleague, Heinrich von Ficker (1881–1957), who had held the professorship in meteorology and geophysics at the University of Graz since 1911; here the overlap with Wegener’s work was also great. These were both strong candidates, and how could Schmauß, in particular, refuse?
Wegener managed to calm down and convince himself that he was in the clear as far as Berlin was concerned, but, to everyone’s surprise and Wegener’s distress, Schmauß declined the offer. The University of Munich and the Meteorological Institute there did not want to lose him, and to keep him there, they created a new professorship in meteorology, which he took up in the late summer of 1922. Now everything depended on what Ficker decided, and no one knew what he was going to do.
An Austrian Summit Meeting
An opportunity to find out appeared to be in the offing. While Wegener was away at sea, an invitation had arrived from Exner and Ficker that Wegener should represent the German Naval Observatory at a scientific meeting to be held in Austria from 10 to 14 October 1922, to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Austrian mountain meteorological station atop the Alpine peak Sonnblick, at 3,100 meters (10,171 feet) altitude. The invited guests (and their spouses) would stay in hotels in the resort town of Bad Gastein. The invitation specified that only those who felt capable of an eight-hour Alpine ascent to the peak should register for the meeting.6 The Austrians wished to make a statement about the vitality of mountain meteorology and of Austrian science generally, even as they had gone from a great empire to a small country. It was an impressive list of invitees—Exner, Ficker, Schmauß, Defant, Schmidt, Geiger, Wegener, and others. Wegener accepted with alacrity and looked forward to the trip; Else, even more so.
The principal question facing Alfred and Else was how they should pay for their excursion. Since late 1921, Germany had entered an inflationary spiral that constantly devalued its currency; the proximate cause was that the Allies were demanding payment of war reparations in gold and would not accept German currency. The German government began to print money at a furious pace in order to buy foreign currencies that were acceptable in lieu of gold; this exacerbated the inflation.
Things were grim in Hamburg in summer 1922. The combination of Alfred’s salary and Köppen’s pension was “not enough for the simple essentials of life.”7 They let go what domestic help they had, they planted an extensive garden on open land at the balloon station next to the airport, and they worked hard to increase the output of their fruit trees. Else’s mother tended a large flock of chickens for eggs and meat. They were getting up at four o’clock in the morning most days to pump water and bring the buckets into the house so they could warm up enough for them to wash the children when evening came. Just getting from one end of the day to the other took all their energy; Else said that their backs were constantly sore from hoeing and weeding the garden. Alfred reiterated his conviction that ten years in Hamburg would kill him.8
In spite of the money trouble, Alfred was determined to go to Austria for the meeting, and he told Else they should empty their bank account and use it to finance a month-long vacation in the Austrian Alps wrapped around the conference; if they just left the money in the bank, it would soon be worthless anyway. Else thought this reckless but was excited to go. Alfred’s seagoing trip, she noted, had filled him with a wanderlust that made it difficult for him to stay at his desk. Administrative work had piled up while he was away, and it took him the rest of the summer to clear the backlog.
They were a bit short of outdoor gear for a hiking trip, and especially short of warm clothing. Alfred still had some of his expedition clothing, skis, and other mountain gear, but Else had to make the rest out of army surplus pants and coats (for him) and, for herself, to make winter clothing from wool
she had bought to make a suit for Alfred. She had said that she didn’t want to do it, but he said, “Why not? We can’t afford to send it to the tailor anyway!”9
They left in late September, two weeks before the conference, a welcome relief after a month of hard work “putting by” the garden produce. They took the train to Munich, where they changed all of their remaining money into Austrian currency. For nearly two weeks they hiked in the Alps, and it was the most thrilling time of Else’s life. She marveled at her husband’s skill with an alcohol stove in freezing temperatures, his ability to make delicious meals out of almost nothing, and his idea to cook food in the morning and wrap it in wool so it would be warm at noon. Sometimes they had to sleep in makeshift shelters, because most of the Alpine huts were closed and locked at the end of September; sometimes they had to force open a window in a locked hut and get in that way.10 They barely saw a soul for the last week of their hike and lost track of time, arriving in Bad Gastein a day early for the conference. They quickly found Exner and Ficker, who were staying at one of the great hotels, and who concurred that Alfred and Else should of course spend the night as their guests.11
On 9 October, comfortably settled in their hotel, they dined with the Exners and Fickers. Ficker turned to Alfred and Else over coffee and said, “I’m going to accept the offer from Berlin.” He’d been mulling it over for a long time, and he wanted to return to Germany. Else said that at that moment she felt a heavy weight lift from her heart; they would not have to go to Berlin, and Alfred would not have to be embarrassed. The next morning, there was more. August Schmauß had arrived the previous evening, and after breakfast he took Wegener aside and told him that he would most likely be listed first as Ficker’s successor (Nachfolger) in Graz: the professorship would probably be his if he wanted it. Things had already started to move, and Schmauß said that all things being equal, Wegener could probably expect a formal offer before the end of 1922.12
They were thrilled but hardly dared hope. The possibility of this appointment was a chain of a series of unpredictable events. There was Hellmann’s decision to retire, Schmauß’s decision to stay in Munich, and then Ficker, after much deliberation, deciding to go to Berlin. The chain was even longer than they knew. There was the matter of Victor Conrad (1876–1962), another strong candidate besides Wegener to replace Ficker. Conrad had been an Extraordinarius (associate professor) at the University of Czernowitz in Bukovina, on the eastern border of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. With the collapse of the empire, all subjects had until 1922 to relocate themselves freely within its old borders, after which mobility would be frozen. Conrad, who had lost his professorship and all his possessions, was in Vienna, working on seismology and making major strides in the understanding of the layering of the inside of Earth. He was a logical candidate for Graz as part of the larger “resettlement” of German and Austrian professors who had lost their posts. But Conrad was a Jew, and there was considerable agitation in Graz over the influx of Jewish students to the university. Admission at Graz was by competitive examination, and Jews from the eastern part of the empire were consistently beating out local students, especially for the medical school. The anti-Jewish feeling in Graz would have made it difficult to put Conrad on the list. This may also have affected Wegener’s fate, though he was completely unaware of it. In the end, Conrad did not make the list. Wegener was to be listed first, Albert Defant (1884–1974) second, and Wilhelm Schmidt (1883–1936) third.13
However contingent the circumstances, if Wegener were actually able to become the professor of geophysics and meteorology at the Karl-Franzens-Universität in Graz, it would be the first academic or professional appointment of his career (since he first habilitated at Marburg) not made under emergency conditions. It could be his first real professorship (Ordinarius), and more importantly it would come without an institute, without administrative responsibilities, and with only opportunity for teaching and pursuing his own scholarly work. Of course, there would be negotiations over salary and pensions; nothing was certain in this precarious time, and he might well face the prospect of a salary lower than what he drew from the observatory. Still, it was what he and Else had always wanted and what all their family and friends had always wanted for them.
Climates of the Geological Past
When Wegener returned from Austria, there was the usual accumulation of administrative work, as well as a relapse into the severe conditions of life in Hamburg, as the German mark spiraled down toward worthlessness. Luckily, Koch and Lundager invited him to come to Copenhagen to give a series of lectures on his theory of displacements and the history of climate. The honorarium, payable in Danish kroner, would help a good deal, and Wegener’s ability to give these lectures in Danish (he did) strengthened their bid to bring him to Copenhagen as a professor of geophysics. Wegener was also able (probably with the help of van Bemmelen) to get his work on lunar craters published in the Netherlands. While still closed out of international scientific cooperation with France, England, and the United States, there was no barrier to German scientific work appearing in Scandinavia or in the Netherlands, and Wegener was increasingly vigilant about making his science available for wider consideration.14
Wegener’s major intellectual effort in late 1922, with the third edition in press, was his unfinished work with Köppen on climates of the past. He had already taken all but the barest summary of the evidence concerning past climates out of the book on continents and oceans. He had said in the introduction that he had done so because the amount of material at his disposal would have thrown the book out of balance.15 Indeed, the third edition (1922) was only ten pages longer than its 1920 predecessor. While the evidence he published in 1922 concerning paleoclimates was a necessary part of the observational support for displacements, the history of Earth’s climate, based on continental displacements and migration of the poles, was altogether Beiwerk (supplemental material) from the standpoint of the displacement theory. It was an interesting development of his ideas, but not a necessity in their demonstration or defense. As Wegener had said, the farther one came forward in time, the less one needed displacement theory to explain climate zones based on shifting latitudes, and the more one needed it to explain the pattern of geological structures and fossil remains based on shifting longitudes.
The proposed joint work on climates would be a different kind of book than Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane, in a different genre. It would not be a theory of origins (Entstehung), nor a review of basic questions (Grundfragen) or a summary of principles (Grundzüge), nor even a Handbuch/Lehrbuch, where one got the full range of mainstream opinion on a topic keyed to the relevant literature.
Wegener and Köppen were after a synthesis (Synthese) of available paleoclimate evidence, along the lines of what Sueß had done for geology in Das Antlitz der Erde. There, Sueß had assumed as a framework both Earth contraction and the sinking of great land bridges and then put the available evidence together in those terms. There were no “multiple working hypotheses” in Das Antlitz der Erde, and no one expected them: it was not a Handbuch. The book Wegener and Köppen were writing would begin from the premise that Wegener’s theory of continental displacements was correct. This is a very important point: they would not attempt to argue for the reality of such displacements, any more than Sueß had argued for Earth contraction: Sueß had rather shown that if you assumed it, many disparate facts could be integrated and understood together. That would be the stance that Wegener and Köppen would take for climate history by assuming displacements.
They were entirely in agreement on the range of significant causes of climate change and their rank ordering. Wegener had, preparatory to this writing, put together an article for Deutsche Revue on the subject entitled “Die Klimate der Vorzeit” (The climates of the past), which was a preview of both the methods they would follow and the subjects they would cover. Köppen had listed a number of possible causes of climate change in his Petermanns article in 1921; Wegener now repeated and ext
ended this material from a different standpoint. He divided these causes into “essential” and “likely.” Of the essential causes, the first and most important was migration of the pole, and the second was continental displacements. These were both “progressive” through geologic time. The third most important cause, the distribution of land and water, was also essential but not directional in time. Rather, it was oscillatory. This question (of distribution of land and water) referred here to the alternating transgression and regression of shallow seas on continental surfaces, not an alternation of land and deep ocean. Wegener’s fourth “essential” cause of climate change was “variation in the elements of Earth’s motion.” After that there came the three residual “likely” causes: variations in solar radiation, the absorption and emission of such radiation from Earth (what we would now call the “albedo”), and “cosmic radiation” (Weltraumstrahlung).16
The novel element (other than continental displacements) in this list of causes is “variation in the elements of Earth’s motion.” This refers not to the nineteenth-century tradition of astronomical causes of ice ages, as in the work of Joseph Adhémar (1797–1862) and James Croll (1821–1890), but specifically to the work of the Serbian mathematician, astronomer, and geophysicist Milutin Milankovich (1879–1958). Milankovich (by profession a civil engineer) had been captured early in the war by the Austro-Hungarian army and had spent four years in house arrest in Budapest, working by day in the reading room at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on his passion for celestial mechanics. Milankovich had become very excited by the first accurate measurement of the solar constant in 1915, and he was using this measure of solar radiation to estimate the surface temperature on Mars. The red planet interested him especially because of its polar caps.17 Using the techniques he developed in this work, as well as his love of calculation, he spent the years 1915–1918 working on an astronomical theory of the ice ages on Earth. This was the first version of a theory for which he would later become famous, a theory generally accepted today (with modifications) as the most likely explanation of the great advances of ice in the Paleozoic, the Permo-Carboniferous, and the Pleistocene.18
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