3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

Erwin Stresemann—Teacher and Friend 39
European archeology, a description of all the various cultural levels represented
by different kinds of ceramics, etc. I may have taken some course in history of
literature but have no recollection. In my last semester in Greifswald, to get a real
feeling of medicine, I attended classes in small surgery and pathology occasionally.
After I arrived in Berlin, I left medicine entirely behind me. As a graduate student,
I was given a table in the room for PhD candidates in Erwin Stresemann’s
department. With him I primarily discussed my thesis. He contributed mainly
references to relatively unknown local faunas. I don’t think I discussed species and
speciation with him at all in this period. Neither did I do with Rensch at this time,
although after I came back from New Guinea and after he had published his 1929
book, I got more from him than I did from Stresemann.
In Berlin, I had the good fortune to take the famous Karl Heider’s last lecture
course on Vermes. It was a superb analysis of structure, comparative anatomy and
phylogenyofmostofthelowerinvertebrates.TheBigCoursewasgivenbyErnst
Marcus. He was a delightful Berlin Jew, patriotic as any German, who owing to
his conspicuous courage had received the Iron Cross First Class in the First World
War. He was married to the granddaughter of Du Bois Reymond. His lectures and
presentations were lots of fun because he always spiced his explanations with some
typical Berlin witticism. However, all the teaching was strictly classical in the style
of the best of comparative anatomy. Adolf Remane, who had recently received his
degree in Berlin, showed up in the institute occasionally and we chatted with him.
The Big Lecture in Special Zoology was given by Carl Zimmer and it was rather
a disaster. He simply paraded endless facts before us, practically a recital of the
big Claus-Grobben textbook. I don’t think I learned much from either Marcus or
Zimmer that couldn’t have been found in a traditional textbook. The botany course
was given by Kniep but I had to travel all the way to Dahlem for his lectures. An
outstanding researcher he had discovered the life cycles of many fungi and lower
plants. Finally, I had to take philosophy to satisfy the Berlin requirements for a PhD
I took the major systematic philosophy course of Dessoir, a mass course with about
800 students, very often only standing places being available. But I also took some
additional courses and a seminar on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Somehow,
I rather suspect that at that time I was not able really to connect what I learned in
my philosophy courses with what I was doing and thinking” (see also Mayr 1980k
and 1980n).
Erwin Stresemann—Teacher and Friend
Erwin Stresemann (1889–1972) was curator of ornithology at the Museum of Natural
History of Berlin, secretary general and later president and honorary president
of the Society of German Ornithologists from 1921 to 1972, and one of the outstanding
ornithologists of the 20th century (Fig. 2.1). During the 1920s, he initiated the
transformation of former ornithology that had been primarily systematic and faunistic
in scope, into a branch of modern biological science, a “New Avian Biology,”
and influenced a large circle of contemporaries (the “Stresemann revolution”). He