{"id":9398,"date":"2014-11-08T03:10:35","date_gmt":"2014-11-08T10:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/?p=9398"},"modified":"2017-01-12T14:00:42","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T21:00:42","slug":"making-up-post-mortem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/08\/making-up-post-mortem\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Up, Post Mortem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gustav Hartlaub<\/a>, collector, ornithologist, and founder with Cabanis<\/a> of the Journal f\u00fcr Ornithologie<\/a><\/em>, was born two hundred years ago today, on November 8, 1814.<\/p>\n

\"Johann_Gustav_Hartlaub_-_pre_1900\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Scion of a wealthy Bremen merchant family, Hartlaub studied medicine, but, as Stresemann would later put it<\/a>, \u201cfinancially independent, he devoted himself chiefly to his zoological interests, among which exotic ornithology was pre-eminent.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the more exotic, the better, it seemed.<\/p>\n

\"Dodo,<\/a><\/p>\n

On finishing his medical studies, Hartlaub immediately left Germany to set out on a museum tour that took him to Vienna, Leiden, Paris, and Edinburgh<\/a>, where he had access to specimens from around the world. Over the rest of his long career, Hartlaub published extensively<\/a> on the birdlife of Africa<\/a>, Madagascar<\/a>, Asia, even Polynesia<\/a>, often enough working from specimens taken on expeditions the good doctor himself had financed.<\/p>\n

\"Sulphur-breasted<\/a><\/p>\n

Hartlaub was also a careful and critical bibliographer, the author of decades\u2019 worth of reports and reviews of ornithological literature<\/a>. \u201cThe character of this remarkable man,\u201d writes one of his many eulogists, \u201cwas reflected in these bibliographic overviews: there was no holding back when it came to criticism of inaccuracy or superficiality; but he praised with almost childlike enthusiasm excellence and sound research. He was a critic to dread.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hartlaub brought some of that fearsome criticizing with him when he visited Hungary in 183<\/a>9.<\/p>\n

In Pest, we got to know the director of the zoology museum, [Salamon J\u00e1nos] Pet\u00e9nyi<\/a>, very well. He fawningly asked to be permitted to join our expedition as an extra hand. But alas, only too soon were we convinced of our new traveling companion\u2019s perfidious nature, and we counted ourselves lucky to manage to get rid of him. Pet\u00e9nyi was an unpleasant man of ridiculous sensitivity, very presumptuous, and we finally broke off all ties. He didn\u2019t seem to know the very words \u2018decent\u2019 or \u2018trustworthy\u2019. I experienced this at first hand.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well.<\/p>\n

Hartlaub had written those not very measured words in a private letter to Paul Leverk\u00fchn, who then quoted\u00a0them in the\u00a0long obituary he published. Obviously, that passage did not shine the most favorable of lights on the dear departed or on Pet\u00e9nyi, and both ornithologists’\u00a0friends leapt into action.<\/p>\n

Otto Herman, Pet\u00e9nyi’s biographer and a leading figure in the world of Pannonian ornithology, promptly rushed to the defense of\u00a0the Hungarian scientist. Writing in\u00a0Aquila<\/em><\/a>, Herman — who described the matter as one\u00a0of honor and duty — demonstrated clearly that Hartlaub’s opinion of Pet\u00e9nyi had not been shared by the other participants in the 1839 expedition, none of whom ever betrayed “anywhere any trace of ill will<\/a>” for Pet\u00e9nyi. Herman continued:<\/p>\n

Obviously, Dr. Hartlaub’s words, no matter how subjective they must have been, could not have come out of thin air. Thus, it is my task to seek their origins in the area of psychology.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Herman’s explanation was a simple one and persuasive: in 1839, Pet\u00e9nyi was a mature man of\u00a0significant responsibility, upright and moral, and he demanded respect from the\u00a0younger people around him. A half century later, Hartlaub\u00a0was still in some way the frustrated boy of 25 who had found Pet\u00e9nyi’s sense of propriety so stifling.<\/p>\n

Herman concluded with a stern rebuke<\/a>\u00a0of Leverk\u00fchn and a strong hint to the editors of the Journal f\u00fcr Ornithologie<\/em>:<\/p>\n

whoever is not in possession of indisputable evidence based on facts and nevertheless writes [such things], as in this case Mr. Paul Leverk\u00fchn has done, opens himself to the charge of carelessness…. I hope that the editors of the\u00a0Journal\u00a0<\/em>will take note of the correction I have offered, concerning as it does two men who stood close by at the birth of the German Ornithologists’ Union.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That hint was taken. In the very next volume of the\u00a0Journal f\u00fcr Ornithologie<\/em>, Otto Finsch<\/a>, Hartlaub’s colleague and a fellow Bremer, himself gently — in fact, not so gently — chided Leverk\u00fchn<\/a> for talking out of school, and for publishing remarks\u00a0that<\/p>\n

so starkly contradict the thoroughly positive image of Pet\u00e9nyi sketched for us by his biographer,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Otto Herman. And those same remarks, Finsch pointed out<\/a>,<\/p>\n

written casually in a private letter, do not in the remotest correspond to the benevolent character of their author [Hartlaub], and indeed are likely to severely distort his reputation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Finsch cited Herman’s\u00a0Aquila\u00a0<\/em>article approvingly, noting especially the positive impression of Pet\u00e9nyi held by all his contemporaries and the other members of the Hungarian expedition. But Finsch did\u00a0not accept Herman’s explanation for Hartlaub’s so long-lived bitterness. Instead, he observed that Hartlaub’s<\/p>\n

lively temperament was easily moved to annoyance and irritation. In those moments he used to blow up violently, and words fell that were not always suitable for parliamentary debate, though in truth they were not meant to be so bad. Once he had vented his spleen, the episode passed quickly without leaving any negative feelings or grudge behind. His unfortunate impatience also caused him considerable trouble, particularly when in old age he was beset by physical ailments…. He\u00a0took life harder than might perhaps have been necessary.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thus, it was not the young Hartlaub’s squirming under\u00a0authority but rather the old Hartlaub’s inability to control a volatile temper that led him to write so indiscreetly. True, Finsch writes<\/a>, Hartlaub didn’t particularly like<\/em> Pet\u00e9nyi, but<\/p>\n

if an insulting word did slip from his pen, one should still not forget that the writer was then 86 years old, and, I would add, suffering from the effects of painful afflictions…. And just by chance, he took that\u00a0out on someone he didn’t particularly care for, someone whose memory somehow came to the surface\u00a0at that moment in the darkest colors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After 37 years of friendship, Finsch claimed not only the right but the duty, as a matter of honor, to declare that Hartlaub would never have intentionally insulted<\/a> the memory of Pet\u00e9nyi or anyone else. As to the passage\u00a0in the letter so indiscreetly published by Leverk\u00fchn, Finsch pronounced it\u00a0henceforth “ungeschrieben,” never written, and banished the offending words into nothingness.<\/p>\n

Herman responded in July 1902.<\/p>\n

I, and I believe anyone who gives serious thought to the matter, must agree that Finsch’s noble approach to settling it is the only way that an end can be put to the controversy between Leverk\u00fchn and me. In any event, continuing it could only harm\u00a0the respectability\u00a0of our science and, even more, those who, eternally silent, are no longer here to defend themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A grudging reconciliation, but a reconciliation all the same. The only one left out was Leverk\u00fchn.<\/p>\n

So far as I know, Leverk\u00fchn maintained a discreet silence while Finsch and Herman walked\u00a0on eggshells. Three years later, however, Leverk\u00fchn himself was dead, succumbing at the age of 38 to a lung infection.<\/p>\n

In his\u00a0brief and rather badly composed\u00a0obituary in\u00a0Falco<\/a><\/em>, Otto Kleinschmidt devotes more space to the affaire\u00a0<\/em>Hartlaub than he does to any of Leverk\u00fchn’s accomplishments as an ornithologist and museum director.<\/p>\n

Might not the cause of the ill feeling between Pet\u00e9nyi and Hartlaub have been the obvious one…. The protector of his homeland’s fauna [Pet\u00e9nyi] would rather not expose it to the collecting lust, or scientific zeal, of the visitor [Hartlaub], and that reluctance is misinterpreted. And another thing: Hartlaub was not the type to fully appreciate men like Brehm and Pet\u00e9nyi and their accomplishments in their home countries…. Pet\u00e9nyi and Hartlaub were opposites from birth, on the one side research at home, on the other research that looked far beyond home and into distant lands. And there is a third factor…. Pet\u00e9nyi in 1839 was hoping to see his work on the birds of Hungary published soon…. What if he saw himself faced with the question whether he should reveal to the others discoveries that had cost him years of effort, discoveries that the foreign visitors might take home from their expedition as if they were their own?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With this explanation\u00a0—\u00a0which, unsurprisingly, casts decidedly more blame on the Hungarian than on the German — Kleinschmidt hoped<\/a> to “eliminate the bitter misunderstanding still in some people’s minds, and thus to reconcile not just the three dead men, but to reconcile the living with the dead as well.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gustav Hartlaub, collector, ornithologist, and founder with Cabanis of the Journal f\u00fcr Ornithologie, was born two hundred years ago today, on November 8, 1814. Scion of a wealthy Bremen merchant family, Hartlaub studied medicine, but, as Stresemann would later put it, \u201cfinancially independent, he devoted himself chiefly to his zoological interests, among which exotic ornithology … <\/p>\n

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