Science and Nationality: The Case of Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876)

Author(s): Jane M. Oppenheimer

Source: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 134, No. 2 (Jun., 1990), pp. 75-82

Published by: American Philosophical Society

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 Science and Nationality:
The Case of Karl Ernstvon Baer
(1792 1876)1
JANEM. OPPENHEIMER

WilliamR. Kenan,Jr.ProfessorEmeritus,
Biologyand HistoryofScience

K
BrynMawr College

arlErnstvon Baerwas a German-speaking

Balt,butthisis nota
specificallyBaltictale; ithas nothingto do withthe politicsor the
ethnicityof the Balts as we read of them at the moment.Ifit can
be categorizedat all, itis perhaps a geographicalstory.What interestsus
about von Baer is that he led two entirelydifferentscientificlives, the
firstin Prussia, the second in Czarist Russia.2 The kind of work he did
in the two lands could not have been more different,and our question
is to what degree the kind of work thathe did was related to where he
did it.
He taughtin Konigsberg,then in Prussia, forabout 17 years. Figure 1
shows how he appeared when he leftKonigsbergforthe ImperialAcad-
emy of Sciences in St. Petersburgin 1834. Figure 2 representshis ap-
1 Based on a transcriptof a talk presented at a meetingof the Society on 9 November
1989; a longer and more fullydocumented versionis under preparationforsubmissionto
the Society's Transactions.I am deeply obligated to Roy Goodman, ReferenceLibrarianof
the American Philosophical Society, and Anne Pringle, Science Librarian, Bryn Mawr
College, forindispensable assistance in solving abstruse bibliographicalproblems.
2 The principal published sources of biographicalinformation about von Baer are the
following:L. Stieda, Karl Ernstvon Baer. Eine biographische Skizze,2d ed. (Braunschweig:
Vieweg, 1886; unchanged from1st ed., 1877); B. E. Raikov,Karl Ernstvon Baer1792-1876.
SeinLebenundsein Werk,trans.H. von Knorre(Leipzig: JohannAmbrosiusBarth,1968); K.
E. von Baer,Nachrichten uiberLebenundSchriftendesHerrnDr. KarlErnstvonBaer,mitgetheilt
von ihmselbst(St. Petersburg:RitterschaftEhstlands, 1865, distributedprivately;trade
editions published under same title:St. Petersburg:H. Schmitzdorf,1866, and Braunsch-
weig: F. Vieweg, 1886). English translationof 1886 edition: K. E. von Baer, Autobiography
ofDr. KarlErnstvonBaer,ed. JaneM. Oppenheimer, trans.H. Schneider(Canton, Mass.:
Science HistoryPublications,1986);FoliaBaeriana,ed. T. Sutt,4 vols. (Tallinn:Valgus, 1975,
1976, 1978, 1983); PerepiskaKarla Bera,ed. T. A. Lukina, 4 vols. (Leningrad: Nauka, Len-
ingradSection, 1970, 1975, 1976, 1978); H. von Knorreand H. Schierhorn,"Karl Ernstvon
Baer (1792-1876).Eine ikonographischeStudie," in Beitrdge zur GeschichtederNaturwissen-
schaftenundderMedizin,Festschrift fPrGeorqUschmann, ActaHistoricaLeopoldina[no vol. no.
given on reprint],1975, No. 9, pp. 227-268.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, VOL. 134, NO. 2, 1990

75

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76 JANEM. OPPENHEIMER

1. KarlErnstvon Baer,1834,at 42 yearsofage. Engraving

FIGURE byFriedrich
Leonhard
Lehmann(1787-c.1840),aftera drawingfromlifeby CarlWilhelmHubner(1814-1879).
Photographic
reproduction courtesyof NationalLibraryof Medicine,USA.
pearancein 1864 when he retiredas an academician.His changein
appearancedid notreflect a changeofcharacter;one ofhispursuitsafter
he wentto Russiawas exploration in the farRussiannorth,in a cold
climateunkindto humanskin.
KarlErnstvon Baerwas bornin Estonia,he was educatedin Estonia,
he went thereto live afterhe retired.He was a loyal and patriotic
Estonian.He spokethevernacular language,buthe wroteexclusively in
German throughouthis life. He was a sixth-generation German-
speakingBalt;the firstof his Prussianancestorsto come to theBaltic
provinces,a Westphalian, arrivedin 1597.KarlErnst'sfamilywished
himto attenda Germanuniversity buthe preferred to be educatedin
Estonia;theconditionuponwhichhisfather permittedhimtodo so was
thathe learnRussian.He did learnRussian,but he feltveryinsecure
about using it, even when he lived in Russia later.One of the main
reasonshe movedfromPrussiato Russiawas thathis family'sestate
was in Estonia.His brotherLudwighad owned it;he was unmarried,
and whenhe diedin 1834,vonBaerwishedtomaintain itforhisfamily;
it seemedto himthatit wouldbe easierto administer an estatein this
regionifhe livedin St. Petersburg
thanifhe had remainedfarther away
in Prussia.TravelbetweenPrussiaand St. Petersburg involvedthena
longand arduousjourney.VonBaer'swifealwaysdislikedtheidea of

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 SCIENCE AND NATIONALITY 77

2. KarlErnstvonBaer,1864,at 72 yearsofage. Lithograph

FIGuRE byA. Miinster,
aftera
drawingfromlifeby P. Borell.Frontispiece
ofvon Baer'sSelbstbiographie,
reproduced
herefromtheauthor'scopyofthe1886editionoftheSelbstbiographiie.

movingto St. Petersburg; she feltthatto travelfromPrussiato thispart

of Russia would be frightening because voyagerswould be subjectto
attackby robbersand bears.
VonBaertaughtinKdnigsberg from1817to 1834and itwas therethat
he concentrated on beingan embryologist. He performed themostim-
portant work in embryology that has ever been done; he startedem-
bryology offin thedirection which it still
follows. In Russiahe spent33
years as an academician at the ImperialAcademy of Sciences.During
thoseyearshe was an explorer, a geographer, an ethnographer, a phys-
icalanthropologist, an ecologist,indulging in manyoutdooractivitiesin
additionto zoology.He becamea highlyrespectedpatriarch withinthe
Academyitself.
Whileteachingin Prussia,he was also a verypatriotic Prussian.At
one pointhe was interested in theracesofman,and he classified them

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78 JANE M. OPPENHEIMER

much as Blumenbachhad done. Like Blumenbach,he did not thinkthat

any one race was superior to any other. Yet he did say in 1834, in a
lecture in Prussia, that he considered all most recent culture to be
Germanic.3This was one evidence of his patriotismforPrussia. Perhaps
anotherwas thathe took a Prussianbride,much to his family'spleasure.
Estonia in von Baer's time was a Russian province. As a resident of
Estonia, and throughhis inheritance,he was a memberof the Russian
aristocracy,though fairlylow in the hierarchy.Thus he was also a very
patrioticRussian; he had intellectualconnectionswith many who were
involvedin determiningRussia's fatein criticalyears:N.J.Danilevski, P.
L. Lavrov, Grand Duchess Helena Pavlovna Romanova (wife of Grand
Duke Michael).4
When BentleyGlass wrote a chapteron earlymembersof this Society
forthe FestschriftforWhitfieldBell, he complained that von Baer had
not been elected a member of it.5 It is evident that he was thinkingof
him as an embryologist.But what some of our other members have
thoughtabout him is also on the record.
Alexander von Humboldt quoted, in Cosmos,some of von Baer's data
on what we call permafrost.6When von Baer was awarded a medal by
the FrenchAcademy in Paris in 1831,it was Humboldt who transmitted
it to him.
Charles Darwin, also like von Humboldt one of our members,added
a greatcomplimentto von Baer in the 4th edition of TheOriginofSpecies
appearing in 1866,7and it has remained in the subsequent editions.
AlbertEinstein,in 1926, wrote a littlearticle,published in Naturwis-
senschaften,on the meanderingof rivers;8in its titlehe named von Baer
as having been responsibleforthe theorythatthe configurationof river

3 K. E. von Baer, "Ueber das Verhaltnisdes PrussischenStaates zur Entwickelungsge-

schichte der Menschen," Hist. u. lit. Abh. kgl. Dtsch. Ges. Kdnigsberg, 1834, 3. Samml.:
229-248.
4 Danilevski, who traveledwith von Baer as an ichthyologist, was later a leading Pan-
Slavist;he became the owner of von Baer's microscopeafterthe latter'sdeath. Lavrov was
a noted Populist or Narodnik, sent into internalexile in 1867; von Baer wrote an articleon
anthropologyfor the fifthvolume of his Encyclopedic Dictionary,published in 1862. Von
Baer was tutorto the two daughtersofGrand Duchess Helena Pavlovna; althougha highly
rankingmember of the Romanov family,she held liberal ideas, and was influentialin
participatingin activitiesthatled to the emancipationof the serfs(as was Lavrov also).
5 B. Glass, "Foreign Membershipof Biological Scientistsin the AmericanPhilosophical
Society During the Eighteenthand NineteenthCenturies," in Scienceand Societyin Early
America:Essays in Honorof Whitfield J. Bell, Jr.,ed. R. S. Klein (Philadelphia: American
Philosophical Society,1986), 345-392.
6 F. W. H. A. von Humboldt, Kosmos,Entwurf einerphysischen Weltbeschreibung,Vol. 4
(Stuttgartand Leipzig: Cotta, 1858), 42.
' C. R. Darwin, OriginofSpecies. . . , 4th ed. (London: JohnMurray,1866), xx.
8 A. Einstein, "Die Ursache der Maanderbildung der Flusslaufe und des sogenannten
Baerschen Gesetzes," Naturwissenschaften, 1926, 14:223-224.

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 SCIENCE AND NATIONALITY 79

banks is due to the rotationof the earth [Coriolis forces]. The eastern
banks of Russian riversflowingfromnorthto south are high and steep,
and the westernbanks lower and flatter,von Baer pointed out.9
Anothergreat man who perhaps should have been a memberof the
Societybut who also was not chosen was VladimirVernadsky.It was he
who invented both the idea and the termof the biosphere, which we
hear about frequentlythese days. He wrote a littlebook called Biosphere
published in Russian in 1926, in French in 1929.10 In it Vernadskyat-
tributesthe originof the ideas of the carbon cycleand the nitrogencycle
to von Baer.
Five featuresof the Arcticlandscape were named forhim; so was an
Arctic sponge. If readers would like to think about him in terms of
somethingcloser at hand, while he did not discover them, in 1827 he
invented the word spermatozoall(he did not know exactly what they
were; he thoughttheywere parasites).
It is not possible, in a short time, even to list all he did, let alone
discuss it. So two of his interestsmay be chosen for special mention.
One is anthropology,the otheris travel.
He began to write about anthropologywhile he was simultaneously
becoming an embryologist.His firstbook, published in 1824, consisted
of lectures on anthropology that he delivered to members of all
faculties.'2It was designed as a sort of manual for self-instruction in
anthropology.In it he included only what we would defineas physical
anthropology:mostlyanatomy,a great deal on osteologyand muscles,
a lot about sense organs,but not much else. Volume II was supposed to
include embryology,psychology,races of man, past and present,arche-
ology, what von Baer called anthropologicalgeography. It never ap-
peared. As true forothergreat men, von Baer's characterhad flaws as
well as virtues; among his failingswas that he was a famous non-fin-
isher. (He did manage to complete 400 publications.)'3
In Russia, he was the initiatorof serious work in physical anthropol-
ogy. Vucinich,the true authorityon nineteenth-century science in Rus-
sia, has pointed out that Russia was one of the countriesin which this
was firstset up as a separate disciplineand he gives von Baer creditfor

9 K. E. von Baer, Kaspische Studien VIII. "Ueber ein allgemeines Gesetz in der Gestal-
tung der Flussbetten,"Bull. Imp.Acad. Sci. St. Ptsbg.,1860, 5:1-49; 218-50;353-82.
V. I. Vernadsky,La Biosphere(Paris: Felix Alcan, 1929), 85-86.
1 K. E. von Baer, "Beitrage zur Kenntniss der niedern Thiere. Ueber Zercarien, ihre
Wohnsitz und ihre Bildungsgeschichte,sowie uiber einige andere Schmarotzen der
Schnecken," Nova Acta Leopoldina,1827, 30:605-59;the passage referredto is on p. 640.
12 K. E. von Baer, Vorlesungen uiberAnthropologie,far den Selbstunterricht.
ErsterTheil
(Konigsberg:Borntrager,1824).
13 The bibliographyappended to von Baer's Selbstbiographie included 312 items; Stieda's
biographyof him included a list of 290 entries,and Raikov listed 413 items. A numberof
the items in all the listsrepresentduplicationsof sorts; some articlesappeared in several
languages, and von Baer sometimes wrote on the same subject in differentformsfor
differentperiodicals. Not all the items listed by von Baer and Stieda are included in
Raikov's list.

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80 JANE M. OPPENHEIMER

the accomplishment.In 1846,von Baer set up a craniologicalmuseum in

St. Petersburgthat was to become very famous. (To show that Russia
shared chauvinisticleanings even duringthatphase of its development,
therewere objections to the craniologicalcollectionbecause it included
Siberian skulls, the complaintbeing that Siberian skulls were not suffi-
cientlyRussian to be included, but theyremained.)
Von Baer also internationalizedphysical anthropology.In 1861, he
called a meetingin Gbttingen,where Blumenbach's collectionwas kept,
to standardize the method of skull measurements.Standardizationwas
not agreed upon, but the meeting was the beginning of the German
AnthropologicalSociety,and also of the German ArchivfurAnthropolo-
gie,which did not always remaineverybody'sfavoritejournal. As stated
above, von Baer adopted Blumenbach's classificationof races based on
skull measurements; he thought all recent culture to be Germanic,
hardlyan anthropologicaljudgment,but he did not findraces physically
superior one to the other. Eventually,he mellowed with respect to his
feelings on the races of man, and came to believe that they were all
derived froma single stock,and he feltthattheirdifferencesin character
were determinedby both inheriteddrives and aptitudes and also by
theirexternalenvironment.
The otheraspect of his lifethatI want to mentionbrieflyis his pursuit
of traveland exploration.As in the case of anthropology,while he did
not concentrateon such activityuntilafterhe had moved to Russia, his
interestin it went back into his earlylife.In 1819,he went to see another
of our formerForeignMembers, AdmiralKrusenstern,the firstRussian
to have circumnavigatedour planet (1803-06). (He was made a member
of this Society in 1824.) Von Baer wished to go to Novaya Zemlya, that
large northernArchipelagoin the ArcticOcean, in orderto collectspec-
imens there. Krusensternarranged it for him in 1819, but von Baer
marriedin 1820 and the tripwas postponed. It was finallymade in 1837.
Von Baer was the firstnaturalistto collect specimens there; complete
description of them was never published. Novaya Zemlya was then
uninhabited; it has rarelybeen inhabited, and is the place where the
Russians tested atom bombs fora time.
Von Baer's latertravelswere verywide. In addition to the usual places
in Europe, he visitedLapland, Lake Peipus, Finland,The Aland Islands,
and Sweden. During the years 1853-1857he made four trips to the
Caspian Sea and the Caucasus, studyingfisheries,fishmigrations,food
chains, verymuch in the sense of modern ecology. He was, by the way,
as people are now, alreadythenworriedabout the loweringofthe water
level in the Caspian Sea. When he was 70, in 1862, he went to the Sea
of Azov, and in 1863 he traveled to Kazan to study and report on the
universityfacilitiesthere.
He traveledvicariouslyin anotherway too, as a writerand an editor.
He published a long monograph on PetertheGreat'sContributions to the
ExtensionsofGeographical Knowledge, and in 1838, togetherwith Gregor

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 SCIENCE AND NATIONALITY 81

von Helmersen, he set up a series of volumes called Contributions

to the
Knowledge
oftheRussianEmpire
and Bordering
AsianLands,and he was
co-editorof and contributorto this formany years. He was especially
interestedin the Russian explorationsin Siberia and in Alaska, which
was then still Russian territory.He even wrote about Alaska in one of
the firstvolumes of the Contributionsjust mentioned.
Such activitieswere obviously unrelatedto embryologyand this was
true formost of the pursuits that he concentratedupon in Russia. His
interestin geography led to speculation as well as to actual travel:he
wrote about the origin of tin in ancient bronze (he thoughtit to have
been in Chorassan, Persia), about the routesfollowedby Ulysses, about
the whereabouts of BiblicalOphir, which he located in Malacca (Malay-
sia). Von Baer's reputationas a geographerwas international:he became
a correspondingmemberof the Royal GeographicalSociety(London) in
1840 and a Foreign Honorary Member of it in 1845, and an Honorary
Member of the Austrian Geographical Society in 1857.
Now if we are historiansof science, we are supposed to talk about
science and society.I do not know how science and nationality,or sci-
ence and geography are related to that. How does geography affect
what one does? I always thinkof Prussia, beforethe days of the Empire
particularly,as much more closed in than Russia, lackingthen the much
more wide open spaces of Russia-even European Russia. We hear a lot
about space these days fromarchitectsand urban planners-I do not
mean out there where the ether used to seem to be, I mean space in
termsof elbow room. Is it possible that the physical space available to
him had an effecton von Baer?
I know that general conclusions cannot be drawn from one man's
experience.But an interestingfactis thatvon Baer as an embryologistin
Prussia was not the only person who was workingin thatdisciplinewho
emigrated from Prussia to Russia. He had two predecessors. Caspar
FriedrichWolff,born in Berlin, studied in Halle, performedhis main
embryologicalworkin Germany,thenat Euler's invitation,at the behest
of Catherine the Great, went to St. Petersburg.He did not go out of
doors as von Baer did, but he did no more embryologyin Russia; he
wrote a theoreticalbook, and he collected a lot of teratologicalmaterial
that was never writtenup.14 There was also Christian Pander, a con-
temporaryof von Baer's. Pander, also a Balt, was educated in Prussia.
He did his main embryologicalwork in Germany, then went to St.
Petersburgto the Academy in 1821; he resigned in 1827 fromthe Acad-
emy and then he went outside too. He became a geologist and a pale-
ontologist: he studied giant fishes and sloths; he discovered the

14 G. Uschmann, Caspar
FriedrichWolff.Ein Pioneerder modernen
Embryologie
(Leipzig/
Jena:Urania, 1955).

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82 JANE M. OPPENHEIMER

conodonts.15 Why did theyall abandon indoors foroutdoors?And there

is another sort of controlexperiment,perhaps the most famous of all,
Alexander von Humboldt, who left Europe to explore a world even
wider than Russia.
We mightspeculate thatone varietyofscience mightbe easier to think
about in one place and anothersomewhere else, but such consideration
could not sufficeto illuminatethe reason that someone becomes a sci-
entist at all, or why, having chosen to do so, someone like von Baer
seems to have been successfulat whateverhe chose to do. Geographical
factorswere hardlyresponsibleforthe qualityofhis investigations,their
philosophical depth (which we have lacked time to explore here), their
excellenceand theiroriginality.The ultimatebasis of scientificimagina-
tion remains to be explained.
But von Baer was a good scientist,and in closing, I should like to
suggest that if the Society opens a new class of membership,posthu-
mous should-have-beens,he should be considered as a candidate. He
could count on receivingthe votes of at least von Humboldt, Krusen-
stern,Einstein, and Darwin, some of our members who have already
spoken forhim.

HeinrichPander(Frankfurta. M.: SenkenbergischeNaturfor-

15 B. E. Raikov, Christian

schende Gesellschaft,1984).

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