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The Social Politics of Karl Escherich’s 1933 Inaugural Presidential Lecture

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Abstract

The essay offers a close reading of the inaugural address Termite Craze by the entomologist Karl Escherich, the first German university president to be appointed by the Nazis. Faced with a divided audience and under pressure to politically align the university, Escherich, a former member of the NSDAP, discusses how and to what extent the new regime can recreate the egalitarian perfection and sacrificial predisposition of a termite colony. The paper pays particular attention to the ways in which Escherich tries to appease the various factions in his audience (faculty, students and the Nazi party); in doing so, it also discusses how Escherich depicts his address in the altered versions of his later memoirs.

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Notes

  1. Schneider 2004, p. 80. For an excellent analysis of Anilin against the background of the German synthetics industry, see Wagner 2022.

  2. See Sleigh 2007; Rodgers 2008; Werber 2013; and Johach 2020. For a survey of the cultural construction of ants in particular, see Sleigh 2004.

  3. Unbeknownst to his many anglophone readers, Stephenson extended his pre-war story into a post-war novel (Stephenson 1958). Leiningen is given a background, the racism of the original is softened, and in a bid for scientific respectability Stephenson references the myrmecological literature he had used, including Karl Escherich’s work (see Winthrop-Young 2021, pp. 343, 351).

  4. In fairness to the city, the relationship between Munich and Nazism was a complex matter, as Hitler himself realized. On the one hand, he declared that Munich was to National Socialism what Mecca was to Islam and Moscow to communism, but when the microphones were off, he tended to be less laudatory, specifying that Munich was “a city of National Socialism but not of National Socialists” (quoted in Heusler 2008, pp. 110, 199). In his study of Hitler’s political beginnings, Thomas Weber makes the astute observation that if in the immediate aftermath of World War I Munich had been more like the rest of Germany, Hitler would not have risen to prominence, but if in the early 1930s the rest of Germany had been more like Munich, Hitler would not have risen to power (Weber 2017, p. 327).

  5. See Weber 2019, p. 93; Schmitt 1996, p. 36; and Maeterlinck 1927. For Rosenberg, see the section below on “Parasite Politics’’. On Schmitt’s and Weber’s take on Escherich’s analysis of eusocial insect societies, see the elegant analysis in Werber 2013, pp. 51–74 and 183 − 85. On the Maeterlinck/Escherich connection, see Kisser 2019. For a recent Maeterlinck update in Leiningen-type insect horror territory, see Lillemose and Meyhoff 2015.

  6. Sawyer 1996, pp. xvii and 215, with reference to anon., 1913.

  7. On the wartime research straddling entomology and military science, see Jansen 2000.

  8. For the following I am relying on the work of Dieter Langewiesche, the foremost expert on this topic, especially Langewiesche 2016. For a more general overview of the medial self-staging of European universities, see Guhl and Hürlimann 2021.

  9. See Heidegger 1985. It is possible that Escherich was familiar with Heidegger’s lecture, especially given the fact that at the time of Escherich’s installation Heidegger was being courted by the LMU to replace the prominent Neo-Kantian philosopher Richard Hönigswald. As a Jew, Hönigswald was forced to resign from the LMU, though in a hypocritical attempt to maintain a certain decorum the university requested negative external reviews, one of which was written by none other than Heidegger himself. For an analysis of Heidegger’s lecture within the context of comparable presentations, see Grün 2005.

  10. The orientalist Carl Heinrich Becker, quoted in Grüttner 2003, p. 68.

  11. I will not be discussing Escherich’s second presidential lecture “Biologisches Gleichgewicht” (“Biological Balance”), given at the LMU on January 30, 1935, though the principal points developed in this paper apply to that lecture as well (further see Escherich 1935).

  12. Closer to home, the Munich Ortsgruppe or local party branch of the NSDAP was in permanent disarray. Marked by infighting and organizational incompetence, it had lost much of its early radical glamour and faced considerable difficulties trying to convince prominent former members like Escherich to rejoin. By 1928 it appeared to be in such a desolate state a travel guide scoffed that Munich had “swallowed and digested” Hitler: “He is now no more than a piece of historical excrement” (quoted in Rösch 2002, p. 533).

  13. The Bavarian journalist Erwein von Aretin, quoted in Kühnel 1985, p. 384. Schemm rose to the top echelon of the Bavarian Nazi party despite being a Franconian Protestant, and in all likelihood would have ascended further onto the national level had he not been killed in an airplane crash in early 1935. Despite or because of Schemm’s dubious performance as a teacher, he was the founder and first leader of the National Socialist Teachers Association (Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund) (further see Schaller 2002; Miller and Schulz 2012, pp. 97–117).

  14. The Third Reich’s penchant for infighting meant that Rust had to contend with more cunning and ruthless rival actors and agencies like Alfred Rosenberg (“Amt Rosenberg”), Joseph Goebbels (Ministry of Propaganda) and Martin Borman (Reich Chancellery) when it came to senior university appointments (further see Nagel 2012).

  15. The party, however, was worried by the fact that almost one third of the faculty eligible to vote had chosen to skip the election. They subsequently had to account for their absence (Böhm 1995, p. 537).

  16. Here and throughout “science” is to be understood in the broad sense of German Wissenschaft, covering the entire academic spectrum from the natural sciences to the social sciences and the Humanities.

  17. Escherich 1934, p. 5. All further quotes are to this edition and will follow the quotation in brackets (TC). For direct access, the LMU has made all its Rektoratsadressen available online. For Termite Craze, see https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/22399/ .

  18. On the trope of German academic excellence in troubled times, see Paletschek 2010.

  19. Cf. Escherich’s 1936 treatise on wood pests, which hails forest ecology as the “example and pacemaker (Vorbild und Schrittmacher) of ecology, that is, of the science of the overall economy of nature” (Escherich 1936, p. 22).

  20. Ironically, the year 1933 spelled a decline for the institute. The geneticist Fritz Lenz (1887–1967) left for Berlin and despite strong faculty resistance was replaced as chair of the institute by Lothar Tirala (1886–1974), a political appointee of such incompetence he was fired in 1936. See Böhm 1995, pp. 507 − 514.

  21. For a thorough analysis of Uexküll’s right-wing umwelt politics, see Schnödl and Sprenger 2021.

  22. Cf. Escherich 1944, p. 210 (die alles sich unterordnet); and Escherich 1949, p. 241 (der alles sich unterordnet).

  23. Johach 2020, pp. 200-203; see also Jansen 2003, pp. 245 − 249. Jansen offers a memorable reading of the rather unconventional photo Escherich chose to include in his memoirs. Striking the “pose of a hands-on conqueror,” it shows him bent over in profile hacking away at the termite colony. Because the face is obscured by a tropical helmet, the viewer’s gaze is drawn towards Escherich’s prominently displayed posterior. The scientist about to enter the apex of female fecundity is keen to emphasize his masculine physicality (see Jansen 2003, p. 246; and Escherich 1944, p. 129).

  24. Schickedanz 1927a; 1927b. For the best analysis of the history of anti-Semitic parasite trope up to and including Nazism’s use of it, see Bein 1965.

  25. Escherich 1917, pp. 10, 197. A few changes are intriguing. In the 1906 edition Escherich described the presence of symphiles in ant colonies as a “social disease similar to alcoholism in human societies” (1906, p. 171). In 1917 it was likened to “opium addiction” (1917, p. 246). It is tempting to assume that the switch was related to the war-related increase of morphine addictions among wounded soldiers, but according to Escherich all textual revisions were completed by the eve of the war. The 1917 opium simile makes more sense within a racist xenophobe discourse: symphiles are guests, foreigners, interlopers, just as opium (unlike alcohol) is an imported substance.

  26. On this point see Jansen 2003, p. 268. See idem., p. 276, for possible connections between Schickedanz and Escherich.

  27. Escherich specifically requested that the fraternity representatives (Chargen) attend his lecture decked out in their full traditional attire, which was not in line with what the new powers wanted (Zedler 2016, p. 168).

  28. If there is one red thread running through the many public accolades and birthday greetings penned in Escherich’s honor, it is his youthful vitality and ability to inspire students. 50th birthday: Karl Escherich is an “enthusiastic sportsman, in particular, an alpinist and motorcyclist, who can compete with the young,” as well as an “excellent teacher” with “youthful sensibility and selflessness” [Karl Künkel, “Karl Escherich zu seinem 50. Geburtstage,” Zeitschrift für Angewandte Entomologie 8 (1922), III-IV]. 60th birthday: He is “able to inspire” and “calls with youthful enthusiasm upon the young generation” [F. Stellwar, “Karl Escherich zum sechzigsten Geburtstag,” Zeitschrift für Angewandte Entomologie XVIII: 3 (1932), 423 and 432]. 70th birthday: Escherich’s zest for life has always been “the source of his strength, a strength that allowed him to win over the hearts of the young. Escherich has maintained his youthful heart, he feels with and for the young” [W. Frickhinger-Planegg, “Zum 70. Geburtstag von Prof. Dr. Karl Escherich,” Zeitschrift für Angewandte Entomologie 28:2/3 (1941), 192]. Escherich “stands before us as an organizer and researcher who possesses to an extraordinary degree the ability to enthuse his students” [Chr. Hofmann, “Karl Escherich zum 70. Geburtstag,” Forstwissenschaftliches Zentralblatt 1941 (November-December), 243]. 80th birthday: His “youthful vitality grants him vigorous creativity into old age” [Günther Becker, “Karl Escherich 80 Jahre,” Holz als Roh- und Werkstoff 9:10 (October 1951), 1].

  29. On examples of right-wing student unrest at the LMU before 1933, see Behrendt 2006, pp. 15–42. For a general overview, see Erickson 2012, pp. 74–84.

  30. Escherich 1933, p. 23; and Kolbenheyer 1952, pp. 56, 62, 73, 87. It is not necessary, as some have done, to conjure up Heidegger’s (highly questionably translated) Plato quote at the conclusion of his rectorate address: “Alles Große steht im Sturm” (“all that is great stands in the storm”) (Heidegger 1985, p. 502). For further revealing instances of concluding storm metaphors in university addresses in the first years of the Third Reich, see Platt 2007, pp. 46–53.

  31. For Beurlen, see Rieppel 2012; for Schindewolf, go straight to the source: Schindewolf’s Basic Questions in Paleontology, with an afterword by Wolf-Ernst Reif and a foreword by Stephen Jay Gould (Schindewolf 1993). The combination of Reif and Gould offers the best overview. Unfortunately, nobody has yet written a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between paleontology and Oswald Spengler’s cultural morphology.

  32. Kolbenheyer was sentenced to 180 days of labor and placed in Group Two, Aktivisten, the second highest category of Nazi criminals. Publication of his works was banned until 1953. The sentence was reduced on appeal, placing him in group three (Mitläufer). See Tourlamain 2014, pp. 299–303.

  33. See Schultz 2013. For details on the appointment of Schultz, whose fortunes took an upward turn when Heidegger, Hans Schemm’s preferred candidate, dropped out of the race, see Böhm 1995, pp. 514 − 28. On the scandal surrounding the Zarathustra lecture, see ibid., pp. 573 − 579; and Zedler 2016, pp. 172–176.

  34. Escherich’s post-1945 self-assessment, quoted in Böhm 1995, p. 534.

  35. See https://www.dgaae.de/en/escherich-medal.html .

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Acknowledgements

Early versions of this paper were first presented at the German Department at Princeton and the UBC STS colloquium series. Belated thanks to Katie Joel, Dieter Langewiesche and David Sepkoski. I am especially grateful to the JHB reviewers for their extensive and extremely helpful comments.

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Winthrop-Young, G. The Social Politics of Karl Escherich’s 1933 Inaugural Presidential Lecture. J Hist Biol 56, 65–95 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-023-09702-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-023-09702-2

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