3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

12 1 Childhood and Youth
Fig.1.3. The three Mayr brothers in Kempten (Allgäu, Bavaria), August 1907. From left to
right: Otto (*1901), Hans (*1906) and Ernst (*1904). (Photograph courtesy of O. Mayr.)
When Ernst was nearly 4 years old his father was transferred as District Prosecuting
Attorney to Würzburg on 1 May 1908 and, in December 1913, to Munich as an
Associate Justice at the Supreme Court of Bavaria.
Although a jurist by profession, the father was an enthusiastic naturalist and
“took the family out on a hike just about every Sunday. We usually took the train
somewhere away from Würzburg and then walked cross-country to some other
train station or to the terminal of the electric tram near Würzburg. It was on
these trips that we collected flowers, mushrooms, fossils in some quarry, or did
other natural history studies. When my father heard of a heron colony north of
the Aumeister near Munich we also visited it. Otherwise, perhaps more through
the interests of my mother, we visited old towns, castles, and villages on weekends
and during vacations. The family attitude was rather academic and very much that
of upper middle class Germans that one should never stop trying to add to one’s
‘Bildung’.”
Through these nature walks, Ernst became a naturalist at an early age, and his
father’s interests in history and philosophy broke through in later years when Ernst
turned to the study of the history and the philosophy of biology. Holistic philosophies
associated with the ideology of “Bildung” (learning and a general knowledge
of culture) formed the basis of the educational system of upper middle class Germans
who sent their children to the “Humanistisches Gymnasium” (high school)
None of the ancestors reached an age of 90 or higher, the average age at time of death
was 63 years.