3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

44 2 The Budding Scientist
he always took it seriously. Even though he was not terribly impressive as a person,
I admired him greatly for a number of reasons. One was his breadth of knowledge,
secondly, he had ideas—he had plans; he thought of the future. He was placed
in charge of the exhibition halls of the museum, and organized perhaps the most
modern exhibits any museum had. It always illustrated basic biological principles
and did not just show interesting exceptions or particular things. From his 1929
book, I undoubtedly learned more than I ever actually learned from Stresemann.
And I often have said that in a way, at the Berlin Museum, Rensch was perhaps
more my teacher than Stresemann. Later on he published a manual of taxonomy
(1934), which I thought was really quite admirable, and it inspired me to write
my own textbook one day, which actually later on I did, although it was finally
combined with a parallel manuscript of Linsley and Usinger (1953a).
OneofRensch’sinterestswasbiogeography.Hewroteawholebookonthe
biogeography of the Sunda Islands and eastern Indonesia (1936), which I think
wasinferiortohisotherwork.Hewasaninveteratelandbridgebuilder.When
I did my papers on Wallace’s Line and on Timor, I disagreed with almost all of
his conclusions. Later on in life, he wrote a good deal on philosophy. Here again,
I rather disagreed with him. Since he did not accept emergence, he had to assume
that such phenomena as mind and consciousness occurred already at the lowest
levels (molecular) and I suspect that his philosophical writings found few followers.
Rensch was quite an artist. He painted excellently, and many of his paintings
are in German art galleries. He also could write poetry, and wrote a very nice
autobiography. He had a rather tough time during the Nazi period, because he
was anything but a Nazi. He had married the daughter of the president of the
province of Brandenburg in Germany, who was a social democrat, and, of course,
his daughter probably as well. So when the Nazis came to power, he was going to
be dismissed a few years later, but Stresemann and the director of the museum
interfered successfully. Nevertheless Rensch left the museum, when he had found
a position at the museum in Münster owing to the great generosity of the local
Nazi leader, who was a good man and did not take the Nazi laws too seriously.
Rensch continued to publish almost up to his death. He died a couple of weeks
after his 90th birthday.”
After Mayr’s PhD examination, Stresemann introduced him to systematics and
suggested that he study certain groups of Palearctic songbirds such as accentors
(Prunella), snowfinches (Montifringilla) and Rosy-Finches (Leucosticte). Mayr described
a couple of new subspecies of Prunella (1927e) and wrote a detailed revision
(1927f) of the other two groups of songbirds mentioned above which Hartert (1910)
in his great work on birds of the Palearctic fauna had combined in one genus. However,
Mayr was able to show that these two groups differ conspicuously in their
molt patterns. The species of Montifringilla change not only the body feathers but
also wing and tail feathers during their first (juvenile) autumn molt (“complete
molt”), whereas the young of Leucosticte species change only their body feathers
at that time retaining wing and tail feathers for another year (“incomplete molt”).
Two different and unrelated genera are involved; Montifringilla is related to the
sparrows (Passer)andLeucosticte to the finches (Carduelis group). Peter Sushkin