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is of course a matter of personal opinion), I have no hesitation in endorsing
the professor’s plan, since it would be no less important in terms of practical
applications than my own.’ The die was cast.
Twenty-eight years later, Ernst Krelage publicly questioned De Vries’s good
intentions for the fi rst time. ‘My father and I had suggested founding an institute
for research on heredity’, he wrote in 1921. 29 ‘That was in 1893. The rediscovery
of Mendel [i.e. Mendel’s Laws] was not until 1900, and it could not be
foreseen in 1893 that the question of heredity would soon come to play such a
dominant role that the State itself would open an institute for it.’ Where plant
diseases were concerned, quite the opposite applied, which was why this had
not been their fi rst choice.
‘My proposal was passed on to Professor Hugo de Vries for his appraisal,
and he immediately dismissed it on the basis that no suitable director could be
found for a research institute on heredity. Since a phytopathological laboratory
also fulfi lled the requirements, I resigned myself to this plan. … The effort to
establish a relationship with the University of Amsterdam, where Willie C.S.
had studied, was bolstered by the hope that Professor Hugo de Vries would be
a powerful source of support for the foundation. You noted in your own letter
how briefl y Professor De Vries served as chairman.’
Hugo de Vries chaired the executive committee of the Willie Commelin
Scholten Phytopathology Laboratory for exactly fi ve years. In that period he
completed his proof for the mutation theory. In 1899 he wrote that he needed
more time for his scientifi c work, and resigned. In 1901 he published the fi rst
volume of his Mutation Theory, placing Mendel’s Laws once again in the limelight
of the science community.
Remarkably, while De Vries’s unpublished memoirs contain detailed discussions
of matters such as phytopathology, yellow disease in hyacinths, the
General Bulbgrowers’ Association, and his relations with the Krelage family,
they say not a word about the laboratory that was established almost entirely
at his insistence. 30
29 Ernst Krelage to F.A.F.C. Went, 5 February 1921, iiav, archives of Westerdijk, no. 5.
30 Hugo de Vries, Knipsels en Herinneringen, vols. i-iii, unpublished autobiography of De Vries,
archives of Hugo de Vries, library of Anna’s Hoeve Biology Centre, uva.
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