3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

290 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man
unaware of the fact.” This sounds like a rather superficial evaluation of both
persons. Hardly any visitor to “The Farm” would have agreed with Ali’s impression
of Mayr as presumptuous and few, if any, German ornithologists would have
described Erwin Stresemann as “unassumingly modest.” In general Mayr was
friendly and easy going. Every secretary praised how pleasant it was to work for
him, because he never blew up but just laughed, when she goofed. As the director
of the MCZ, he had no visiting hours, his door was always open and anybody could
meet him any time. Many authors sent their manuscripts to him for review and the
acknowledgments of numerous relevant papers in the 1940s–1960s often include
a“Thankyou”notebytheauthor.
Mayr maintained fond memories and a “soft spot” in his heart for the Allgäu
region of Bavaria, where he was born, and for the Dresden region where he grew
up. This is shown by the choice of his Ex Libris (Fig. 9.1), an Alpine scene near
Einödsbach in the Allgäu region drawn for him during the mid-1930s by his friend
at the AMNH, the well-known painter Francis Lee Jaques (1887–1969) on the basis
of a photograph. Mayr used this Ex Libris extensively during the 1930s and 1940s,
but the glue his secretaries had available was of poor quality and many Ex Libris
have come off in later years, when the program of identifying his books in this
Fig.9.1. Ernst Mayr’s Ex Libris which he used during the 1930s and 1940s