3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

38 2 The Budding Scientist
bodies and I was able to dissect every part of the human body. I spent every day
several hours in the dissecting room and only in retrospect did I become aware of
how quickly one became adjusted to work on preserved human bodies. Very soon
we were virtually oblivious to the fact. The chief professor of anatomy was Karl
Peter [1870–1955], who had a strongly adaptationist concept of body structures.
He published a book and a book-length monograph on the adaptationist aspects
of ontogeny [Die Zweckmäßigkeit in der Entwicklungsgeschichte, Springer, Berlin,
1920]. As everyone in Germany at that time, he was of course a Lamarckian, and
this perhaps was the reason why his splendid interpretative analysis has been so
completely ignored. Peter was very much impressed by my knowledge of and interest
in anatomy and tried to persuade me to become an anatomist. He would give
me a thesis and there would be no problem about a splendid future. I was flattered
and slightly tempted but not very much. However, I greatly revered Peter and was
in touch with him again after the war when he had retired to a small village at the
foot of the Alps and studied polymorphism in insect populations. This was quite
typical for him. He was not one-sided but his interests ranged from natural history
to the most philosophical aspects of form and function.
The botanist was Buder who soon afterwards moved to one of the large universities.
He gave me a solid foundation in this field based on the standard text
of Strasburger revised by his successors. The old professor of zoology had just
retired when I got to Greifswald. His temporary successor, F. Alverdes, was very
much interested in behavior and sociology. Also he was a prominent Holist, having
even published a book on the subject [Die Totalität des Lebendigen, Leipzig,
1935]. We students were not too sure at the time that he was on the right track
becauseHolismtoussoundedtoomuchlikemetaphysics.However,nodoubthe
stimulated our thinking. With the fall semester came Paul Buchner, from Richard
Hertwig’s school. In contrast to nearly all the other zoology professors appointed
at that time, he was not an Entwicklungsmechaniker but a specialist of cytology,
chromosomes and particularly of intracellular symbiosis. His wife was Italian, the
daughter of a well-known professor of zoology, and their house was a place of real
culture and the cultivation of art. We admired Buchner for his splendid anatomical
drawings on the blackboard, since he was able, as some other masters of this art,
to have chalks of different color in his two hands and to draw with both of them
simultaneously. Buchner was a convinced Lamarckian and strongly defended his
views in his otherwise excellent textbook of zoology published in 1938 [Allgemeine
Zoologie. Leipzig, Quelle and Meyer 1938, 372 pp.].
For people like Peter and Buchner the Mendelian mutationism was contrary
to Lamarckism. For them, it seemed impossible to explain gradual evolution by
mutations. Since they were quite convinced, and rightly so, that most evolution was
gradual, they were forced into opposing mutationism and to adopt Lamarckism
and naturally so did I. In the botany department I actually took a special course in
genetics but the teacher strictly followed one of the standard texts and most of the
class consisted of Mendelian exercises. It certainly helped nothing to improve my
understanding of modern genetics or the relations between genetics and evolution.
Of course I also took some courses outside of my curriculum, for instance one on