My Night Among the Stars

30 April 1865 - Göttingen, Hanover

Yesterday I explored Göttinger Wald or Göttingen Forest to the west of town. The spring flowers were everywhere. I got a bit carried away and spent more time than I had planned. The sun was creeping behind the hills, so I headed back to town before it got dark.

I made it out of the forest before nightfall, but not before reaching the Inn I was staying at. I was taking a shortcut across Göttingen University campus when I noticed lights in the window of one of the buildings. Bit odd for a Saturday night for anything other than a dorm. I then recognized the building as the Royal University Observatory.

Royal University Observatory

I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t resist going up and peering through the window. There was a chap with a teddy bear build dressed in a rumpled coat. He looked up and saw me, but instead of shooing me off, smiled and nodded. He then motioned for me to stay, and left the room.

The front door at the portico opened. “Hallo!” He called.

I went up and introduced myself. I told him I was an English visitor and my German was not “wunderbar.” He just grinned and said his English really “sticken” but I was welcome to butcher his language if I wasn’t opposed to him butchering mine.

Ernst Klinkerfues

He introduced himself as Dr. Ernst Friedrich Wilhelm Klinkerfues and I was welcome into his observatory.

“So you are the director?”

Klinkerfues made a face. “No, I guess I’m the assistant. Back in '16 when they finished the observatory, Carl Friedrich Gauss was made the director. By '51, Gauss was getting on in years, so I was hired as his assistant. I had been studying mathematics and astronomy at the University of Marburg, but was able to get my PhD while I worked here.”

“I thought Gauss was an mathematician.”

“Yes, but what good is math if you don’t apply it. He was very interested in astronomy, geophysics, statistics, analysis, gravity, optics--I don’t know what all. A brilliant man. I was privileged to have worked with him. Pity our time together was short.”

“He left?”

“Passed away in ‘55. That’s when they made Weber the director of the observatory.”

“Wilhelm Eduard Weber, the physicist? Yes, I met him. I didn’t know he was an astronomer.”

“He’s not.”

“Then why did they make him Director of Astronomy?”

Klinkerfues shrugged. “University politics, I suppose. I’ve been told I don’t dress well enough. I see no reason to be uncomfortable. And I have a sense of humor they don’t appreciate. I just think a paper should be entertaining as well as informative, so students will read it.”

I looked down at my clothes. I dress more like an absent minded professor than a dandy. I have bachelor written all over me. “I’m a history researcher from Cambridge myself. I suppose if I tried to become Head of the History Department, I would get laughed out of the Board of Directors meeting.”

Klinkerfues nodded. “That’s what happens when you let people who aren’t really part of the academic life make decisions. I don’t think they ever talk to students and other faculty. They just judge you by your cover. Well, I suppose it’s just a title. Weber lets me run the observatory and I’m allowed to live in the east wing. I’m the real astronomer here. By the way, are you interested in astronomy, Dr. Howe?”

“I’m a historian by profession, but who isn’t interested in the stars?”

“Would you like to have a peek through my telescope?”

I spent a couple of hours peering at celestial bodies while my host gave me a lecture on astronomy. My later research on the man showed I was nothing special. Klinkerfues was known for giving lectures to any size audience, even if it was only one student. The man is mad about the stars, and eager to share his passion. He has already discovered six comets and will eventually catalogue 6900 stars.

It was getting late, and I had taken up far too much of Klinkerfues’s time. I thanked him and wished him luck.

I discovered later that he will be made “director of practical astronomy” in 1868. It will be a shallow victory. Director of Theoretical Astronomy will be Ernst Christian Julius Schering, again another mathematician and not an astronomer. He and Klinkerfues did not get along.

I found Klinkerfues to be a friendly and kind--and it breaks my heart to report the end of this wonderful man’s life. Ill-advised financial blunders, losing battles with university politics, failing health and other disappointments will drive the poor fellow to shoot himself in 1884. His memorial will be an asteroid and six comets named in his honor. Most fitting that his name be forever among the stars he loved.

Might Is Not Right

Thursday, 20 April 1865 - Gottingen, Hanover

My last blog I spoke of the “Gottingen Seven.” These were seven professors here at Gottingen University who publicly protested King Ernestus Augustus’s rewriting the constitution without the approval of Parliament in 1837. All seven were sacked.

The public outcry must have had an effect, for ten years later His Majesty put the constitution back the way it was, and pardoned the Gottingen Seven. In the end I suppose they won. Two of them actually came back to Gottingen, Wilhelm Eduard Weber, the physicist; and George Heinrich August Ewald, orientalist and theologian.

I was able to corner the latter after one of his lectures. He prefers to go by Heinrich Ewald. In fact he introduced himself as Henry Ewald, when he noticed my English accent.

Heinrich Ewald

Ewald is considered one of the greatest Bible scholars of the nineteenth century. His eight volume History of Israel I think is already a classic. His writings are being translated into numerous languages, and he is famous throughout the world. One would never know that on meeting him. He is very down to earth chap.

Ewald is now sixty-one and shows no signs of slowing down. He told me he had visited England three years ago to copy Oxford’s collection of Hebrew manuscripts. He said he always enjoyed his visits to my country.

I asked if I would be too bold to ask about the Gottingen Seven. His soft eyes flashed. “I am not sorry I stood up to that tyrant. His father, King William, had signed the new constitution into law in 1833. Ernestus had no right to revoke it. My only regret was that I had to leave my beloved Gottingen.”

“You are fond of the University?”

“I was born in this town. My father was a weaver here and I was raised here, educated here, wooed and married my wife here. It was elated to teach at the University here. I hope to die here. It broke my heart that I had to leave.”

I can only imagine how he must have felt. I was born in Cambridge, where my family has always lived. Indeed, my DNA shows I had Bell Beaker Folk ancestors living in the Cambridge area.. For years, Harvard (the “other Cambridge” as I call it) has been wooing me to cross the pond, but I could never leave my Cambridge. To be booted from my alma mater would break my heart, too.

“Where did you go?” I asked.

“I went to England and spent a year and a half gleaning your two biggest libraries: the Bodleian in Oxford, and the British Museum in London. A year and a half later, the King of Würtemberg invited me Tubingen University to teach. I was grateful to His Majesty but to be honest I was never happy there. Tubingen and I did not always see eye to eye.”

I’ve heard horror stories of college politics. Cambridge has always tried their best to work with me, so I’ve been lucky. Or maybe I’m never around on campus long enough to become a thorn in anyone’s side.

Ewald shrugged. “I will say one thing. I was so unhappy, I buried myself in my studies. I wrote a lot to escape. I can’t tell you how overjoyed I was when Gottingen asked me back in ‘48. I didn’t bear them any ill will. It was the King who fired me, not them, after all. I came back and have been teaching here ever since.”

“So you get along with the staff here?”

“Well, there was that incident in ’56.”

“Oh?”

“Minister von Borries’s policy was unconstitutional, so I protested publicly.”

“Ah,” I nodded. “Another Gottingen Seven?”

“More like Gottingen One. I was the only one that protested. I nearly got fired again. I suppose they didn’t want another incident, so they decided to ignore me.” Ewald looked rather disappointed.

“I’m glad to see you don’t ignore political injustice.”

Ewald smiled. “More than one Biblical prophet got in trouble doing just that. It’s hard to study them and not follow their example.”



King Wilhelm of Prussia
soon to be
Kaiser Wilhelm I, Emperor of Germany

 I thanked Professor Ewald and wished him luck. The feisty gent has one last confrontation in him. Next year when Prussia conquers and annexes Hanover, King Wilhelm of Prussia will demand all government officials, including college professors, swear allegiance to him. Only one man will refuse, declaring “Might is not right.” A stronger country did not have the moral right to rule a weaker one by using force. Ewald had sworn allegiance to King George V of Hanover and will not forsake his king for another.

Ewald will be threatened with expulsion, but won’t back down. The Prussian Government will be stuck with a dilemma--how to punish the rebel without looking like the bad guys. They will deprive Ewald of the right to teach in any Prussian school. However, in acknowledgement of his years of service as a teacher and writer, they will give him a pension equal to his current salary--a very generous “punishment.”

Ewald will be allowed to live the rest of his life in his beloved Gottingen. Rather than retiring, he will use his time produce new books as well as revise old ones. He’ll die of a heart attack at 71, working up until the end. I can’t tell him his fate, but I think he would probably be pleased to know he will die in Gottingen doing what he loves.


History of Israel
Third Millennium Library website with links to all eight volumes.

More works by Heinrich Ewald at Internet Archive.

Two Members of the "Gottingen Seven"

Tuesday, 18 April 1865 - Gottingen, Hanover

Original Gottingen University Library

Today I visited the Gottingen University Library. Built in 1734, it predates the opening of the University by three years. It quickly became one of the leading libraries of the world. Currently it’s ranking has dropped due to under-funding. Fortunately the Prussian will rectify that next year when Gottingen University becomes their responsibility. It will again become one of the leading research libraries.

Its most famous librarians were a couple of brothers named Grimm. Jacob and Wilhelm were also professors at the university. They began work here back in 1834.


Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm

 We think of the Brothers Grimm as children’s writers, like Hans Christian Andersen, but that was hardly the case. They were in fact anthropologists, what we would today call folklorists. Jacob, the more robust one, would go into the countryside collecting folk tales, before the oral traditions disappeared. Little brother Wilhelm, more the story teller, would record them.

They called their collection Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales). Although Wilhelm, being a devout Christian, cleaned up the earthier elements, many complained the stories were too violent for children. The first edition to render a selection of the tales into something more suitable for youngsters, were the Grimm Brothers themselves, so in essence, they did become children’s writers.

The Brothers also studied linguistics. One of their forgotten works was the first German Dictionary. Unfortunately the chaps never got the chance to finish it, only getting as far a “F” before the Grim Reaper took them. (No pun intended.)


The Göttingen Seven.
Top row: Wilhelm Grimm, Jacob Grimm.
Middle Row: Wilhelm Eduard Albrecht, Friedrich
Christoph Dahlmann, Georg Gottfried Gervinus.
Bottom Row: Wilhelm Eduard Weber,
Heinrich Georg August Ewald.

Here is something else you probably did not know about the Brothers. They were members of a radical group called the “Gottingen Seven.” As I explained in my last blog, Hanover finally got a king of their own in 1837. Not everyone was thrilled with having an interfering king now underfoot. When King Ernest Augustus I came to power, he decided to rewrite the constitution to reflect his own personal values.

Seven Gottingen University professors publicly protested and refused to swear allegiance to the new king. The king fired all of them. Two of them, the Grimm brothers, were given three days to leave the country!

The Gottingen Seven were lauded as heroes by the public. Generations of college students would follow their example, protesting wars and social evils. The Grimms were invited to Berlin, by the King of Prussia, where they lived happily ever after.

Twenty seven years ago was able to meet the Grimm Brothers in 1851 before they died--Wilhelm in 1859 and Jacob in 1863. I needn’t tell you how excited I was to meet these pioneers of anthropology. It was like a fairy tale come true. (Erm--again, no pun intended.)

Download an English translation of the Original Grimm’s Fairy Tales: Volume I and Volume II
(May not be suitable for children)

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The Walt Disney Company currently has a trademark application pending with the US Patent and Trademark Office, for the name "Snow White.” Open letter to Disney

Snow White is an old German tale recorded by the Grimm Brothers in 1812. If they were alive today, would Disney Studios sue them for publishing the fairytale that Walt borrowed? And would these two members of the Gottingen Seven take it lying down?