A Woman’s Life Alongside Chemistry:The Memoirs of Theresa Kopp Baumann

Abstract

As her second and third names suggest, Theresa Kopp Baumann (1856–1944) was the daughter and subsequently the wife of eminent German academic chemists. Her substantial unpublished autobiography, written ca. 1910 and presented here in English translation in an edited and considerably abridged form, provides unique insight from a privileged female perspective into the socio-cultural aspects of German academic science in its period of greatest international reputation and influence. In the two cases-in-point that are vividly recounted there – her life as daughter and then as wife – it also gives shape and colour to the many ways in which gendered domestic roles invisibly condition and assist scientific activity.

Acknowledgments

I am extremely grateful to Ulrich Baumann, Françoise Baumann, Annemarie Baumann, Jennifer James, Christopher von Bartheld, and Dieter Grotepass (see details in the first two references above) for their most generous assistance and advice, and for their kind permission to publish. I also heartily thank William Brock, David Cahan, Ann Hibner Koblitz, Bruce Moran, and Peter Ramberg for many helpful comments and discussions.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2020.1867785

Notes

1 Theresa Baumann's holograph manuscripts were inherited by her oldest son Hermann, a zoologist, and subsequently by Hermann's son Ulrich, a Ph.D. chemist. They are now held by Ulrich's widow Françoise Baumann and their daughter Annemarie Baumann. Ulrich (before his passing in 2019), Françoise, and Annemarie generously gave me permission to transcribe, edit, translate, and publish these documents. I am particularly grateful to Jennifer James—great-granddaughter of Theresa through the latter's daughter Margaretha—who first drew my attention to these manuscripts, and facilitated my access to them.

2 A large majority of the 1910 document was transcribed into typescript by Dieter Grotepass in 1999. Much assisted by his good work, I prepared a corrected full German transcription of both the 1910 and the 1931 documents, and a full English translation of the latter. Readers may access these unabridged documents as supplementary material to this article, https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2020.1867785. Theresa's elegant nineteenth-century hand was usually easily readable, but some of her less careful interlineations and marginalia caused difficulties in transcription for both Grotepass and me; in addition, the interfilings and organizational annotations sometimes made the intended order opaque. I am grateful to Ulrich Baumann and Christopher von Bartheld (Hermann Baumann's grandson) for helpful corrections and commentary on the transcriptions and translations.

3 Deborah Coen, “A Lens of Many Facets: Science through a Family's Eyes,” Isis 97 (2006): 395–419, on 396. A more recent example, which, like Coen's work, also provides an excellent entrée into the burgeoning literature on gender and domesticity in the history of science, is Staffan Bergwik, “An Assemblage of Science and Home: The Gendered Lifestyle of Svante Arrhenius and Early Twentieth-Century Physical Chemistry,” Isis 105 (2014): 265–91. Simon Werrett has a stimulating treatment of science in the home: Thrifty Science: Making the Most of Materials in the History of Experiment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), esp. chapter 2. Finally, the landmark collection cited in the next reference provides many excellent studies of the subject, as well as cogent historiographic analysis.

4 Donald Opitz, Staffan Bergwik, and Brigitte van Tiggelen, “Introduction: Domesticity and the Historiography of Science,” in Domesticity in the Making of Modern Sc\ience, ed. Opitz, Bergwik, and van Tiggelen (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 2.

5 For Kopp's life and work see A. W. Hofmann, “Hermann Kopp,” Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft 25 (1892): 505–21; Max Speter, “‘Vater Kopp’: Bio-, Biblio- und Psychographisches von und über Hermann Kopp (1817-1892),” Osiris 5 (1938): 392–460; A. J. Rocke, Image and Reality: Kekulé, Kopp, and the Scientific Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); and A. J. Rocke, “Introduction: The Molecular World of Hermann Kopp,” in Kopp, From the Molecular World: A Nineteenth-Century Science Fantasy, trans. and ed. A. J. Rocke (New York and Heidelberg: Springer, 2012).

6 For Baumann's life and work see Albrecht Kossel, “Eugen Baumann,” Ber. Deutsch. Chem. Ges. 30 (1897): 3197–3209, and especially Beatrix Bäumer's definitive monograph Von der physiologischen Chemie zur frühen biochemischen Arzneiforschung: Der Apotheker und Chemiker Eugen Baumann (1846-1896) (Stuttgart: Deutscher Apotheker Verlag, 1996).

7 “I knew him for thirty years,” Bunsen told an acquaintance, tongue firmly in cheek, “but I never understood a word he said” (quoted in Rocke, “Introduction,” 8).

8 Similarly, in his description of the professor's residence in the palatial new Chemical Institute then under construction in Bonn, Hofmann mentioned with approval that it included a large ballroom, “amply satisfying the social requirements of a chemical professor of the second half of the nineteenth century;” Hofmann, The Chemical Laboratories in Course of Erection (London: Clowes, 1866), 36.

9 For examples and citations to Kopp's unpublished correspondence, see Rocke, “Introduction,” 5-6.

10 In his Helmholtz, A Life in Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 473–81, David Cahan vividly describes the “salon culture” that arose around German universities during the 1860s and 1870s, which allowed for “relaxed conversation in elegant settings,” often instigated by the wives or daughters of university professors.

11 Details are in A. J. Rocke, The Quiet Revolution: Hermann Kolbe and the Science of Organic Chemistry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 357–58.

12 For details, see Rocke, “Introduction,” 17–18

13 Ann Hibner Koblitz, “Careers and Home Life in the 1880s: The Choices of Mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaia,” in Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1789-1979, ed. P. Abir-Am and D. Outram (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 172-90; Ann Hibner Koblitz, A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia: Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993); Mary Creese, “Early Women Chemists in Russia,” Bulletin for the History of Chemistry 21 (1998): 18–24.

14 For an introduction to this literature, see references in notes 3, 4, and 13 above.

15 Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862): “Zu steh’n in frommer Eltern Pflege / Welch’ schöner Segen für ein Kind! / Ihm sind gebahnt die rechten Wege / Die vielen schwer zu finden sind.” Translated by A. J. Rocke.

16 Hermann Kopp's homeland was the Electorate of Hesse (Kurfürstentum Hessen, Kurhessen, or Hessen-Kassel); the Kurhessian university was Marburg, and its capital was Kassel. Hanau was in the extreme south of that country, close to Frankfurt. “Geheimer Medizinalrat” (privy medical counsellor) was a coveted honorific bestowed by the Prince Elector.

17 In 1832, Friedrich Wöhler (1800-1882) was teaching at the Polytechnic School of Kassel; he became Friedrich Stromeyer's successor at the University of Göttingen from 1836 until his death.

18 The autocrat was evidently Wilhelm I (1743–1821), Prince Elector of Hesse. August Wöhler subsequently became Grand Ducal Equerry in Frankfurt, where his son Friedrich grew up.

19 In April 1836, age 18½, Kopp matriculated at the University of Heidelberg; 2½ years later, one day after his 21^st birthday, he earned the Dr.phil. degree at the University of Marburg. Kopp became Privatdozent at Giessen in 1841, and ausserordentlicher Professor there in 1843. When Liebig left for Munich in 1852, Kopp was promoted to “Ordinarius.” In the same year he married Johanna Tiedemann, whom he had met in Liebig's home; she was cousin of the wife of one of Liebig's colleagues (as we will see below).

20 Kopp, Geschichte der Chemie (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1843–1847). Kopp was indeed 26 when the first volume of this pathbreaking work appeared, and 30 when the fourth and final volume was published.

21 Josef Hyrtl (1810–1894); August Wilhelm (von) Hofmann (1818–1892), in London and from 1865 Berlin; Adolf Strecker (1822–1871) at Tübingen; Justus Liebig (1803–1873) at Munich; Heinrich Buff (1805–1878) at Giessen; Robert Bunsen (1811–1899), Gustav Kirchhoff (1824–1887), and Georg Quincke (1834–1924), all at Heidelberg.

22 Johanna Kopp's father's brother was the eminent Heidelberg anatomist and physiologist Friedrich Tiedemann (1781–1861). The latter's daughter Kunigunde (1809–1889) married Theodor Bischoff (1807–1882), anatomist and physiologist at Giessen and Munich, and close friend of Liebig. Inter alia, Friedrich Tiedemann is remembered today for having argued from anatomical data for the physiological equality of the races.

23 Georg Gottfried Gervinus (1805–1871), Heidelberg historian and politician; Eduard Zeller (1814–1908), philosopher and theologian at Heidelberg and Berlin. Gervinus was one of the “Göttingen seven,” who in 1837 had been dismissed and banished from the Kingdom of Hanover for defying King Ernst August's nullification of the state's new constitution; this event became a cause célèbre in the German states for the principle of academic freedom.

24 This sentence derives from Theresa's 1931 memoir. The house was the residence of the prominent and prosperous physician Wilhelm Balser (1780–1846), a friend of Kopp's father. At the time of Theresa's childhood he was deceased, the house still owned by his daughter. It neighbored the laboratory where Kopp worked—formerly Liebig's—just outside the city ramparts on what was then Universitätsstrasse, and is now Liebigstrasse.

25 A private postal service held in fief by the Princely House of Thurn und Taxis, Regensburg.

26 This and the following three sentences derive from Theresa's 1931 memoir.

27 Karl Vogt (1817–1895), a scientific materialist active in leftist politics, was professor of zoology at Giessen. In the aftermath of the 1848 Revolution he was the delegate from Giessen to the Frankfurt Parliament. In the reactionary period following the dissolution of the Parliament he emigrated to Geneva in 1852.

28 In a letter to Liebig (quoted in Rocke, “Introduction,” 5n.), Kopp described in derogatory terms this unheated spare bedroom, where he succeeded in carrying out impressive experimental investigations over many years.

29 One of the two universities of the Grand Duchy of Baden; the other was Freiburg. Baden was historically one of the most progressive of the dozens of German-speaking lands of the German Confederation. The political environment thus contrasted starkly with that of Kopp's homeland, where he had received his Marburg doctorate, and which until 1871 was ruled by a succession of repressive Prince Electors.

30 These three Kopp family addresses, confirmed by the university's Adressbuch of the day, are all a short walking distance from Kopp's laboratory in the then-new Friedrichsbau, on the Hauptstrasse at Akademiestrasse.

31 Possibly Heinrich Friedrich Weber (1839–1928), later at the University of Berlin and subsequently at the Zürich Polytechnic.

32 These are references to the popular works of James Fennimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Ottilie Wildermuth (author of German children's books).

33 This refers to the works of Edmond de Pressensé, and to Swiss Family Robinson (Der Schweizerische Robinson) by Johann Wyss (1812).

34 Washington Irving, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1820); Frederick Marryat, Children of the New Forest (1847).

35 Justus Liebig's famous Fleischextrakt, still sold today, and in modified forms as bouillon cubes such as Oxo and Bovril. Liebig had been called from Giessen to Munich in 1852.

36 The widow of Friedrich Tiedemann. Prior to Friedrich's death, the couple had moved from Heidelberg to Munich in retirement.

37 The opera by Carl Maria von Weber.

38 A friend from Kopp's student days in Heidelberg, Pompejus Bolley (1812–1870) was professor of chemical technology at the Zürich Polytechnic, which he had helped to found. His political activities on the left had induced him to abandon his German identity and adopt Swiss citizenship. The full significance of Theresa's phrase “einen 48ger Freund von Papa” is difficult to determine, but it surely suggests Kopp's approval of the antimonarchical or republican political ideals animating the ultimately unsuccessful Revolution of 1848.

39 Heinrich Buff (1805–1878), professor of physics at Giessen.

40 In German academia the Rektor is elected from the faculty to represent and conduct the affairs of the university as a whole for a one- or two-year term. In Baden the title varied slightly: the Grand Duke had taken the permanent title of rector, so the Heidelberg office that Kopp represented was called Prorektor. There was little operational difference.

41 All were Heidelberg colleagues. In addition to Zeller and Kirchhoff, they were Wilhelm Wattenbach (1819–1897), medieval historian, and Hermann Helmholtz (1821–1894), physicist.

42 In 1889 Sofia Kovalevskaia (1850–1891) became a full professor at the University of Stockholm. Her cousin the chemist Iuliia Lermontova (1846–1919), also a cousin of poet Mikhail Lermontov, studied and worked with Bunsen as well as Kopp, subsequently with Hofmann in Berlin. See the introduction for more details.

43 The issues referred to were political rather than moral, for the handful of female students in Zürich were generally politically active, and some had contact with revolutionary circles.

44 The brief Austro-Prussian War of 1866 understandably created divisions between the various German states. The partiality of the Hessian states toward Austria was due more to opposition against their inveterate rival Prussia than any particular love for Austria. As Theresa notes, these internecine German rivalries were sharply diminished when war with France began.

45 After his service in the 1870–71 war, Bernhard III (1851–1928) became the last reigning Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, a Thuringian duchy.

46 “Turcos” (tirailleurs algériens, Algerian sharpshooters) and Zouaves were units of the French army linked to North Africa.

47 Friedrich I, Grand Duke of Baden (1826–1907); his spouse, Grand Duchess Luise (1838–1923), was the daughter of Kaiser Wilhelm I.

48 Hermann Köchly (1815–1876), Heidelberg philologist.

49 Kuno Fischer (1824–1907), philosopher and historian.

50 Roderich Benedix (1811–1873), “Die Hochzeitsreise.”

51 Leo Königsberger (1837–1921), Heidelberg mathematician.

52 A brocken spectre is a phenomenon consisting of a magnified shadow and other effects, sometimes seen when a person on a high peak looks down onto the tops of clouds with the sun to his or her back.

53 In his book Aurea catena homeri (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1880) Kopp demonstrated that the author of this influential anonymous novel published in 1723 was Anton Josef Kirchweger (d. 1746).

54 Georg Forster (1754–1794), naturalist; Samuel Thomas von Sömmering (1755–1830), scientist and polymath; Therese Forster-Huber (1764–1829), writer; all figures of the late Enlightenment.

55 Hofmann's handwriting is often excruciatingly difficult to read.

56 “Thérèse, when you dance, / how goes your petticoat? / It goes this way and that, / like the tail of our pussy-cat.”

57 In the nineteenth century common middle-class investment instruments were bearer bonds with physically separable interest coupons printed on the certificate. They were clipped monthly or annually and exchanged for interest payments.

58 Although Theresa did not use the explicit language of “coming out” as a “debutante,” the phrase “first winter” presumably refers to the custom that from the age of 18 young women of elite social classes began to participate in the annual winter-spring season of balls, looking toward marriageability.

59 Robert Bunsen was a lifelong bachelor, and was probably Hermann Kopp's closest friend in Heidelberg.

60 More Heidelberg colleagues: Achilles Renaud (1819–1884), professor of jurisprudence; Carl Gegenbaur (1826–1903), comparative anatomist; Kurt Wachsmuth (1837–1905), philologist. In this sentence Theresa wrote the phrase “last not least” in English.

61 Bertha Hofmann, geb. Tiemann (1854–1922), was married to Hofmann from 1873 until the latter's death in 1892. Theresa was two years younger than Bertha. Bertha's brother, Ferdinand Tiemann (1848–1899), was professor of chemistry at the University of Berlin from 1882 until his death. Theresa's future husband Eugen Baumann and Ferdinand Tiemann were close friends, as we will see in multiple contexts below.

62 Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1811–1890) was Queen of Prussia, then Empress, as Consort of Wilhelm I.

63 Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903), another political progressive among the Berlin professoriate.

64 Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896), eminent physiologist and director of the Physiological Institute of the University of Berlin.

65 Werner Siemens (1816–1892), Berlin electrical engineer and industrialist, a principal founder of the German electrical industry.

66 The Siemens villa was located on Berliner Strasse (today Otto-Suhr-Allee) in Charlottenburg, then an independent town west of Berlin.

67 Hermann von Fehling (1812–1885), pharmaceutical chemist at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, and Baumann's former mentor there.

68 In addition to his duties as professor of medicinal chemistry, Baumann was also the Grand Duchy's Circuit Court Assessor for Forensic-Chemical Investigations (Sachverständiger für gerichtlich-chemische Untersuchungen). The Landesgerichtsbezirken Freiburg, Konstanz, und Waldshut comprised the administrative region of Upper Baden. See Bäumer, Von der physiologischen Chemie, 24.

69 Martha and Lisa (Elisabeth) never married; Hermann (1889–1970) became a zoologist; and we see below that a fifth surviving child, Margaretha Eugenie (1896-ca. 1920) would later be born. Some information about Theresa's and Eugen's children is provided in Bäumer, Von der physiologischen Chemie, 20n. Although the couple was “very prosperous” at the time of Eugen's death, by 1924 the family's assets were exhausted—presumably by the tremendous hyperinflation of 1923—and Lisa was obliged to apply for financial assistance from the state to pay her mother's hospital bills (Bäumer, 26 and 26n).

70 Josef von Mering (1849–1908), professor of physiology at Strasbourg, with whom Baumann shared a former Doktorvater in Felix Hoppe-Seyler (1825–1895). “Koch” is presumably Robert Koch (1843–1910), the distinguished Berlin microbiologist.

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Alan J. Rocke

Alan Rocke is Distinguished University Professor and Henry Eldridge Bourne Professor of History Emeritus at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio 44106, USA. Email: [email protected]. He has published widely on the development of European chemistry in the nineteenth century.