Anne Harrington

^^^^^•p

Reenchanted Science

HOLISM IN GERMAN CULTURE

FROM WILHELM II TO HITLER

ANNE HARRINGTON

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON. NEW JERSEY art

Copyright © 1996 by Anne Harrington Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex All Rights Reserved To Godehard, whose deep engagement in the life worlds of this time and place helped transform what was "just a book project" into a challenging partnership of mutual Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data discovery. The experience was a gift I could not have requested, and will never be able to fully reckon. Harrington, Anne Reenchanted science : holism in German culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler / Anne Harrington. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-691-02142-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Life (Biology)—Philosophy. 2. Medicine—Germany—Philosophy—History. 3. Science—Germany—Philosophy—History. 4. Mind and body—Philosophy. 5. Holism—Philosophy. I. Title. QH501.H37 1996 574'.01—dc20 95-48463

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13579 10 8642 CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IX ACKNO WLEDGMENTS X i INTRODUCTION XV

CHAPTER ONE The "Human Machine" and the Call lo "Wholeness" 3 The Original Goethean Vision of "Wholeness" 4 A Fractured Nation and the Mechanists' Quest for Unity in Nature 1 Necessary Ways of Knowing and the Mechanization of Mind and Brain 12 Wholeness Betrayed: Political Unification and the Rise of the "Machine" Society 19 The Place of "Wholeness" in the Fin de Steele Upheavals 23 World War I and Its Aftermath: Science as Cultural Critique 30 CHAPTER TWO Biology against Democracy and the "Gorilla-Machine" 34 On the Way to a Biology of Subjects 38 Scientists in Their Soap Bubbles: Uexkull's Kantian Challenge to Science 44 Revitalizing Life; Umweltlehre and the Vitalist-Mechanist Controversy 48 The Shocks of World War I and Weimar 54 Toward a "Biology of the Stale" 56 Uexkull on the "Jewish Question" 62 The Fight against the "Gorilla-Machine" 63 Uexkull's Relationship to National Socialism 68 CHAPTER THREE World War I and the Search for God in the Nervous System 72 Shock, Recovery, and the Localization of Time in the Brain 11 World War I: Degeneration and Renewal 82 The Biology of Instincts and the Evolutionary Arrow 88 The "World of Orientation" versus the "World of Feeling" 92 Morality in the Cells: The "Syneidesis " or Biological Conscience 96 An Answer to "fgnorabimus": Monakow's Neurobiology of Scientific Knowledge 98 CHAPTER FOUR "A Peacefully Blossoming Tree": The Rational Enchantment of Gestalt Psychology 103 Gestalt versus Chaos: The Voice of Houston Stewart Chamberlain 106 Gestalt versus Chaos: The Voice of Christian von Ehrenfels 108 Vlll • CONTENTS • Max Wertheimer: Claiming Gestalt for Science and Rational Enchantment 111 The Mind's Laws of "Immanent Structuralism " 114 ILLUSTRATIONS "A Peacefully\Blossoming Tree": Wertheimer's Vision for Weimar 117 Attacks on the Berlin Gestalt Vision 123 The Rise of National Socialism and Wertheimer's Emigration to America 128 Wolfgang Kohler 's Case to Americans for the Reality of Values in a Figure 1. Gerd Arntz, Fabrik [Factory], 1927. 2 World of Facts 130 Figure 2. Goethe's vision of wholeness and teleology: "Sketches of the Wertheimer's "Gestalt Logic " as an Antidote to Demagoguery 132 construction [Aufbau] of the higher plants," 1787. 6 CHAPTER FIVE Figure 3. The "atomistic" human brain: localization map by Karl Kleist, 1886. 17 The Self-Actualizing Brain and the Biology of Existential Choice 140 Figure 4. The "machine" brain: associationist-connectionist schema of The Imperative of Regeneration in the Clinic and Society 142 mind and brain functioning. Insights from Brain-Damaged Soldiers: Actualization and Wholeness 145 Figure 5. George Grosz, Friedrichstrasse in Berlin, 1918. 22 Changing Theoretical Orientations: From Reflex Theory to Gestalt 151 Figure 6. Fritz Lang, Metropolis, film still, 1927. 23 Reason, Courage, and the Making of a Weimar Hero 154 Figure 7. The Wandervogel movement, youth celebrating nature in pagan The Call for a Holistic Clinical Practice 159 Germanic ritual, date unknown. 26 The Goethean "Schau": Toward a Holistic Epistemology 162 Figure 8. "Transformation Panorama" set design, Act III, from Richard Goldsteins Persecution and the Biology of Fascism 164 Wagner's opera, Parsifal, 1904. 26 Goldstein in America: The "Wholeness" in the Human Encounter 169 Figure 9. Jakob von Uexkull (1864-1944). 35 The Lessons of Goethe in the Post-Hiroshima Age 171 Figure 10. Uexkull's "functional circle" that creates the Umwelt, or unified organism-environment system, 1934. 43 CHAPTER SIX Figure 11. The Umwelt of the astronomer looking through his telescope Life Science, Nazi Wholeness, and the "Machine" in Germany's in a tower, demonstrates the Kantian implications of a new Midst 175 biology, 1934. 47 49 Gestalt, Goethe, and the Fuhrerprinzip 178 Figure 12. Hans Driesch (1867-1941). The "Jew " as Chaos and Mechanism 181 Figure 13. Driesch's embryo experiments that gave new credence to vitalism 50 Holistic Medicine and the Sick Man as "Machine" 185 in biology, 1891. Holistic Opposition: The Case of Hans Driesch 188 Figure 14. Constantin von Monakow (1853-1930). 73 Nazi Mechanism and the Decline of Nazi Holism 193 Figure 15. The human brain compared by Constantin von Monakow to the Ambiguous Legacies: The Case of Viktor von Weizsacker 200 functioning of a music box, 1928. 81 CONCLUSION 207 Figure 16. Culturally stylized photograph of the Swiss Alps emphasizes their capacity to serve as a sanctuary from modern life, 1899. 84 Figure 17. Monakow's schema of the Horme's progress through the various NOTES 213 instinct levels towards final reunification with the cosmos 91 BIBLIOGRAPHY 275 ("World-Horme"), 1928. 104 Figure 18. Max Wertheimer (1880-1943). 109 INDEX 303 Figure 19. Christian von Ehrenfels (1859-1932). 116 Figure 20. Wertheimer's illustration of various "Gestalt laws," 1921. 125 Figure 21. Felix Krueger (1874-1948). 141 Figure 22. Kurt Goldstein (1878-1965). Figure 23. Goldstein's toolbox that tested brain-damaged patients for loss of 167 holistic "abstract capacity" (separate tests for men and women), 1941. Figure 24. National Socialist workers with shovels salute en masse, photograph 176 supervised by Leni Riefenstahl, Nuremberg, 1934. Figure 25. Poster of the Fiihrer Principle, "March 13, 1938. One Folk, 180 One Reich, One FUhrer." Vlll • CONTENTS • Max Wertheimer: Claiming Gestalt for Science and Rational Enchantment 111 The Mind's Laws of "Immanent Structuralism " 114 ILLUSTRATIONS "A Peacefully\Blossoming Tree": Wertheimer's Vision for Weimar 117 Attacks on the Berlin Gestalt Vision 123 The Rise of National Socialism and Wertheimer's Emigration to America 128 Wolfgang Kohler 's Case to Americans for the Reality of Values in a Figure 1. Gerd Arntz, Fabrik [Factory], 1927. 2 World of Facts 130 Figure 2. Goethe's vision of wholeness and teleology: "Sketches of the Wertheimer's "Gestalt Logic " as an Antidote to Demagoguery 132 construction [Aufbau] of the higher plants," 1787. 6 CHAPTER FIVE Figure 3. The "atomistic" human brain: localization map by Karl Kleist, 1886. 17 The Self-Actualizing Brain and the Biology of Existential Choice 140 Figure 4. The "machine" brain: associationist-connectionist schema of The Imperative of Regeneration in the Clinic and Society 142 mind and brain functioning. Insights from Brain-Damaged Soldiers: Actualization and Wholeness 145 Figure 5. George Grosz, Friedrichstrasse in Berlin, 1918. 22 Changing Theoretical Orientations: From Reflex Theory to Gestalt 151 Figure 6. Fritz Lang, Metropolis, film still, 1927. 23 Reason, Courage, and the Making of a Weimar Hero 154 Figure 7. The Wandervogel movement, youth celebrating nature in pagan The Call for a Holistic Clinical Practice 159 Germanic ritual, date unknown. 26 The Goethean "Schau": Toward a Holistic Epistemology 162 Figure 8. "Transformation Panorama" set design, Act III, from Richard Goldsteins Persecution and the Biology of Fascism 164 Wagner's opera, Parsifal, 1904. 26 Goldstein in America: The "Wholeness" in the Human Encounter 169 Figure 9. Jakob von Uexkull (1864-1944). 35 The Lessons of Goethe in the Post-Hiroshima Age 171 Figure 10. Uexkull's "functional circle" that creates the Umwelt, or unified organism-environment system, 1934. 43 CHAPTER SIX Figure 11. The Umwelt of the astronomer looking through his telescope Life Science, Nazi Wholeness, and the "Machine" in Germany's in a tower, demonstrates the Kantian implications of a new Midst 175 biology, 1934. 47 49 Gestalt, Goethe, and the Fuhrerprinzip 178 Figure 12. Hans Driesch (1867-1941). The "Jew " as Chaos and Mechanism 181 Figure 13. Driesch's embryo experiments that gave new credence to vitalism 50 Holistic Medicine and the Sick Man as "Machine" 185 in biology, 1891. Holistic Opposition: The Case of Hans Driesch 188 Figure 14. Constantin von Monakow (1853-1930). 73 Nazi Mechanism and the Decline of Nazi Holism 193 Figure 15. The human brain compared by Constantin von Monakow to the Ambiguous Legacies: The Case of Viktor von Weizsacker 200 functioning of a music box, 1928. 81 CONCLUSION 207 Figure 16. Culturally stylized photograph of the Swiss Alps emphasizes their capacity to serve as a sanctuary from modern life, 1899. 84 Figure 17. Monakow's schema of the Horme's progress through the various NOTES 213 instinct levels towards final reunification with the cosmos 91 BIBLIOGRAPHY 275 ("World-Horme"), 1928. 104 Figure 18. Max Wertheimer (1880-1943). 109 INDEX 303 Figure 19. Christian von Ehrenfels (1859-1932). 116 Figure 20. Wertheimer's illustration of various "Gestalt laws," 1921. 125 Figure 21. Felix Krueger (1874-1948). 141 Figure 22. Kurt Goldstein (1878-1965). Figure 23. Goldstein's toolbox that tested brain-damaged patients for loss of 167 holistic "abstract capacity" (separate tests for men and women), 1941. Figure 24. National Socialist workers with shovels salute en masse, photograph 176 supervised by Leni Riefenstahl, Nuremberg, 1934. Figure 25. Poster of the Fiihrer Principle, "March 13, 1938. One Folk, 180 One Reich, One FUhrer." X . LiST OF ILLUSTRATIONS • A CKNOWLEDGMENTS Figure 26. Drawings demonstrating evidence of inferior perceptual depth capacity and spatial-compositional skills (holistic "seeing") in Jewish school children as compared to their Aryan peers ("Jewish" drawings are middle-left and bottom-left). 183 Figure 27. Anti-Semitic cartoon from Julius Streicher's DerStUrmer THIS BOOK has been a long time in conceptualization, research, and writing. representing "the Jew" as "chaos." 184 The process of producing it has also been an object lesson in the. ultimately Figure 28. Cover from holistic medical journal Der Heilpraktiker during collective and community nature of even apparently solitary practices of the Nazi years, extolling "earth-water-light-air" as "sources of scholarship. To say this is only a rather pedantic way of observing, with both healthy life," 1936. 188 humility and great gratitude, just how many different people over the past Figure 29. "Priests on the Plantation": priests working on the herbal years have stepped in and provided help and support for this project. plantation at Dachau concentration camp, part of the holistic The initial ideas for this book were conceived during a postdoctoral tenure naturopathic vision of Nazi medicine, early 1940s. 189 201 as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow based at the Institute for the History of Figure 30. Viktor von Weizsacker (1886-1957). Medicine of the University of Freiburg, Germany. I am indebted to the Alex- fl ander von Humboldt Foundation for its generous financial support of my work at that time and to the Institute's director, Eduard Seidler, and to my host and sponsor, Heinz Schott (now at Bonn), for welcoming me so warmly to the Institute and integrating me so thoroughly into its culture. Further financial support for research and writing was provided by a grant from the National Science Foundation in 1991 and by the Spencer Foundation in 1993. I am grateful for the vote of confidence shown me by all of these organizations. I hope they will be pleased with the results. Even though I may no longer recall all their names, I do remember with considerable gratitude the assistance of librarians and archivists in Germany, Switzerland, and the United States, many of whom went beyond the call of mere duty by drawing my attention to uncatalogued material in neglected boxes, giving me access to photocopiers and other tools, and taking a personal interest in the questions and issues I was pursuing. In researching this project, I also had the pleasure of speaking with a range of witnesses and actors from the era, all of whom who gave generously of their thoughts and memories: Roberta Apfel, Viktor Hamburger, Richard Held, Owsei Temkin, Norbert Mintz, Aaron Smith, Frederick Wyatt. Early on, Professor Thure von Uexkull made archival material that his family controlled available to me. Through our rich but not always easy discussions, he also took me on a layered and com- plex odyssey at the interface.of memory and values that came to inform my telling of the story of holism in Germany in a number of ways. I hope he will feel that, in the. end, I responded with integrity to both the challenge and the inspiration he embodied for me. I am grateful to a number of undergraduate and graduate research assistants who have stepped in to help with this project over the past several years: John Griffith, Stein Berre, Kalpesh Joshi, and Tracey Cho. These students gamely took on tasks ranging from the pedantic to the quite sophisticated, and through their own intellectual nimbleness and curiosity, often provoked me to rethink matters, sometimes more thoroughly than I otherwise would have. Gretchen Hermes brought both passion and critical discrimination to her work with me on the selection and development of the illustrations and in the process taught X . LiST OF ILLUSTRATIONS • A CKNOWLEDGMENTS Figure 26. Drawings demonstrating evidence of inferior perceptual depth capacity and spatial-compositional skills (holistic "seeing") in Jewish school children as compared to their Aryan peers ("Jewish" drawings are middle-left and bottom-left). 183 Figure 27. Anti-Semitic cartoon from Julius Streicher's DerStUrmer THIS BOOK has been a long time in conceptualization, research, and writing. representing "the Jew" as "chaos." 184 The process of producing it has also been an object lesson in the. ultimately Figure 28. Cover from holistic medical journal Der Heilpraktiker during collective and community nature of even apparently solitary practices of the Nazi years, extolling "earth-water-light-air" as "sources of scholarship. To say this is only a rather pedantic way of observing, with both healthy life," 1936. 188 humility and great gratitude, just how many different people over the past Figure 29. "Priests on the Plantation": priests working on the herbal years have stepped in and provided help and support for this project. plantation at Dachau concentration camp, part of the holistic The initial ideas for this book were conceived during a postdoctoral tenure naturopathic vision of Nazi medicine, early 1940s. 189 201 as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow based at the Institute for the History of Figure 30. Viktor von Weizsacker (1886-1957). Medicine of the University of Freiburg, Germany. I am indebted to the Alex- fl ander von Humboldt Foundation for its generous financial support of my work at that time and to the Institute's director, Eduard Seidler, and to my host and sponsor, Heinz Schott (now at Bonn), for welcoming me so warmly to the Institute and integrating me so thoroughly into its culture. Further financial support for research and writing was provided by a grant from the National Science Foundation in 1991 and by the Spencer Foundation in 1993. I am grateful for the vote of confidence shown me by all of these organizations. I hope they will be pleased with the results. Even though I may no longer recall all their names, I do remember with considerable gratitude the assistance of librarians and archivists in Germany, Switzerland, and the United States, many of whom went beyond the call of mere duty by drawing my attention to uncatalogued material in neglected boxes, giving me access to photocopiers and other tools, and taking a personal interest in the questions and issues I was pursuing. In researching this project, I also had the pleasure of speaking with a range of witnesses and actors from the era, all of whom who gave generously of their thoughts and memories: Roberta Apfel, Viktor Hamburger, Richard Held, Owsei Temkin, Norbert Mintz, Aaron Smith, Frederick Wyatt. Early on, Professor Thure von Uexkull made archival material that his family controlled available to me. Through our rich but not always easy discussions, he also took me on a layered and com- plex odyssey at the interface.of memory and values that came to inform my telling of the story of holism in Germany in a number of ways. I hope he will feel that, in the. end, I responded with integrity to both the challenge and the inspiration he embodied for me. I am grateful to a number of undergraduate and graduate research assistants who have stepped in to help with this project over the past several years: John Griffith, Stein Berre, Kalpesh Joshi, and Tracey Cho. These students gamely took on tasks ranging from the pedantic to the quite sophisticated, and through their own intellectual nimbleness and curiosity, often provoked me to rethink matters, sometimes more thoroughly than I otherwise would have. Gretchen Hermes brought both passion and critical discrimination to her work with me on the selection and development of the illustrations and in the process taught Xll ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XI11 me just how powerfully images can "speak" historical truths that cannot be so knows better than anyone else what conceiving and writing this book has easily captured in textual form. entailed for me. My debt to him along the way for support and assistance— A range of colleagues, too many to name, provided feedback on earlier practical, intellectual and emotional—is just incalculable. I can only hope he versions of the arguments made in this book, both as I presented them in understands how deep my gratitude goes. seminars and in written form. I feel especially indebted and grateful for the I am very proud and pleased that this book found a home with Princeton support and input of Garland Allen, Cathryn Carson, Gerald Geison, Richard University Press and grateful especially to Emily Wilkinson and her assistant Held, Larry Holmes, Gerald Holton, Lisbet Koerner, Susan Lanzoni, Edward Kevin Downing for their competent and humane support through the process. Manier, Jane Maeinschein, Everett'Mendelsohn, Diane Paul, Dorothy Porter, It's good now to "let go" of the project, knowing that it is in such good hands. Roy Porter, Robert Richards, Charles Rosenberg, Barbara Rosenkrantz, Sam Schweber, Skuli Siggurdsson, Paul Weindling, and Nicholas Weiss. For several years, Richard Beyler and I engaged in productive dialogue about our mutual interests in holistic science in the German context, and I am grateful to him for those exchanges, as well as for his generosity in sharing certain archival material he had collected for his own research. Erika Keller gave the book a rich "lay-per son's" read that identified still other avenues for clarification and expansion. Allan Brandt and I had some especially fruitful discussions about the introduction to this book that left a lasting imprint on its ultimate form. Evelyn Fox Keller was both a source of scholarly insights in her own right and a much-appreciated emotional support and sounding board during the tough spells. Mitchell Ash was an exceptionally generous and engaged colleague and critic during the earlier stages of this book's conceptualization and writing, even as he worked on his definitive history of Gestalt psychology in its institutional and cultural context. As a relative newcomer into an arena where he had already done such valuable work, I had the opportunity to learn a great deal from him. I am only sorry his own book was published too late to be incorporated significantly into the arguments made here. Robert Nye took particular pains to provide helpful feedback to the book as a whole at a late stage, inspiring me to make a number of additions and enhancements to the book that would otherwise not be there. Finally, I feel enormously indebted to the rich, frank, and detailed'comments of John McCole and Peter Galison on the book as a whole that came in the final hour and that resulted in some substantive revisions and enlargments in my overall argument and analysis. Their care when it counted saved me from committing some significant errors. Obviously, any remaining weaknesses or misunderstandings are my own responsibility. While I was fending off decompensation under a looming publication dead- line, my assistant Billie Jo Joy took on the onerous job of proofing and copy- editing the manuscript and organizing its final compilation for delivery, in the process providing steady emotional support and encouragement, for which I will always be grateful. At the same time, Meg Alexander navigated with elegance and humor the bewildering world of copyright permissions for the illustrations, taking over a job ably begun by Diane Ehrenpreis. My husband, Godehard Oepen, came into my life about the same time as I began turning my attention to the themes and material described here, and he Xll ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XI11 me just how powerfully images can "speak" historical truths that cannot be so knows better than anyone else what conceiving and writing this book has easily captured in textual form. entailed for me. My debt to him along the way for support and assistance— A range of colleagues, too many to name, provided feedback on earlier practical, intellectual and emotional—is just incalculable. I can only hope he versions of the arguments made in this book, both as I presented them in understands how deep my gratitude goes. seminars and in written form. I feel especially indebted and grateful for the I am very proud and pleased that this book found a home with Princeton support and input of Garland Allen, Cathryn Carson, Gerald Geison, Richard University Press and grateful especially to Emily Wilkinson and her assistant Held, Larry Holmes, Gerald Holton, Lisbet Koerner, Susan Lanzoni, Edward Kevin Downing for their competent and humane support through the process. Manier, Jane Maeinschein, Everett'Mendelsohn, Diane Paul, Dorothy Porter, It's good now to "let go" of the project, knowing that it is in such good hands. Roy Porter, Robert Richards, Charles Rosenberg, Barbara Rosenkrantz, Sam Schweber, Skuli Siggurdsson, Paul Weindling, and Nicholas Weiss. For several years, Richard Beyler and I engaged in productive dialogue about our mutual interests in holistic science in the German context, and I am grateful to him for those exchanges, as well as for his generosity in sharing certain archival material he had collected for his own research. Erika Keller gave the book a rich "lay-per son's" read that identified still other avenues for clarification and expansion. Allan Brandt and I had some especially fruitful discussions about the introduction to this book that left a lasting imprint on its ultimate form. Evelyn Fox Keller was both a source of scholarly insights in her own right and a much-appreciated emotional support and sounding board during the tough spells. Mitchell Ash was an exceptionally generous and engaged colleague and critic during the earlier stages of this book's conceptualization and writing, even as he worked on his definitive history of Gestalt psychology in its institutional and cultural context. As a relative newcomer into an arena where he had already done such valuable work, I had the opportunity to learn a great deal from him. I am only sorry his own book was published too late to be incorporated significantly into the arguments made here. Robert Nye took particular pains to provide helpful feedback to the book as a whole at a late stage, inspiring me to make a number of additions and enhancements to the book that would otherwise not be there. Finally, I feel enormously indebted to the rich, frank, and detailed'comments of John McCole and Peter Galison on the book as a whole that came in the final hour and that resulted in some substantive revisions and enlargments in my overall argument and analysis. Their care when it counted saved me from committing some significant errors. Obviously, any remaining weaknesses or misunderstandings are my own responsibility. While I was fending off decompensation under a looming publication dead- line, my assistant Billie Jo Joy took on the onerous job of proofing and copy- editing the manuscript and organizing its final compilation for delivery, in the process providing steady emotional support and encouragement, for which I will always be grateful. At the same time, Meg Alexander navigated with elegance and humor the bewildering world of copyright permissions for the illustrations, taking over a job ably begun by Diane Ehrenpreis. My husband, Godehard Oepen, came into my life about the same time as I began turning my attention to the themes and material described here, and he