3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

Friendships at School and University 33
the mistakes he had found in the book, for his work on the Serin finch had made
him quite familiar with the faunistic literature. When he finally sat down after
his review, the president of the DOG, Herr F. von Lucanus, and other members
protested against such a young student criticizing the master. Heinroth and Stresemann
had to quiet the troubled waters, but Dr. Stresemann later took him aside
and advised him always to say something favorable at the beginning (advice that
Mayr passed on to his students in later years).
The graduate students had noticed that Stresemann occasionally reviewed
a book that he had had no time to read. However, while introducing the author
and the title of the book, he studied the table of contents and made a few remarks
on it. Meanwhile he opened a few pages that appeared interesting. Reading a page
“diagonally” with one glance, he then picked out several important sentences, especially
those that he could criticize. Someone who had studied the book from
cover to cover could not have done better. Mayr continued (pers. comm.):
“I was an equally quick reader as Stresemann, and bold as I was already in those
days, I bragged to my fellow graduate students that I could do the same. When
I was assigned again a book for review, (probably) Kattinger seized it immediately,
before I could take a look at it. He sat next to me during the following session and
gave me the book the moment that Stresemann called me up. My heart was beating
to my neck but, strictly following his example, I managed to do the review and
Stresemann didn’t notice anything. We never confessed to him.”
The student home in Borsig Street run by the widow of a Protestant minister was
rather primitive to say the least. There was no real vacancy when Mayr arrived but
he and 6 or 7 others were permitted to sleep in dormitory-style “housing” directly
under the slanting roof in the attic. Each student had a camp bed separated from
the next one by a hanging sheet. Several months later he got his own room, but
it was alive with bedbugs so that he could hardly sleep. When he complained, he
got another room and the first one was fumigated. He stayed in this place until
his PhD examination and during one semester shared the room with his younger
brother Hans who studied law. Since they always got along splendidly, this was
a very enjoyable time.
Friendships at School and University
At the gymnasium in Dresden, his classmates Robert Hensel and Karl Baessler
were Ernst’s best friends. They remained in contact throughout their lives. Mayr
visited Baessler 60 years later in Bamberg where, after having left Leipzig at the end
of World War II, he had established a publishing company, and they corresponded
until shortly before Baessler’s death in 1990. Hensel became a metallurgist and
later went to America where he lived in Indianapolis. However, they saw each
other only once or twice after his arrival in the States. In Greifswald, during his
first semesters, Ernst met one friend for life, Martin Hennig, and commented: “It
is somewhat ironic that the best friend of my student days should be a theologian.
But except for a few Christian dogmas, our thinking about man’s obligations, about