Down The Rahbit Hole or

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Down The Rahbit Hole or

Abenteuer im Wunderland

by Constance Reid

When I set out to write a nontechnical life of David Hilbert, I did not conceive of an audience of Germans or of mathematicians, nor did I realize how totally unprepared I was for the German and mathematical world that I was about to enter. I did not know the language, the history, the culture, or the educational system. I had almost no knowledge of the mathematical history of Germany. I was not a mathematician.

Yet I pursued the legendary figure of David Hilbert into this unfamiliar world as matter-of-factly as Alice followed the White Rabbit into Wonderland.

Initially I had in mind only abrief sketch of Hilbert's life in a book about twenty-four modern mathematicians. I expected to write his life, as I would write the lives of the others, largely on the basis of what had already been written. But I hoped to add a sense of personality and drama that would appeal to readers of the successful books, such as From Zero to Infinity and A Long W ay From Euclid, that I had already written for the Thomas Y. Crowell Co. (since ab- sorbed into Harper-Collins).

Some of the mathematicians I intended to treat were German and others had important Connections with Germany, so I enrolled in a dass of Beginning Ger- man. I did not expect to learn to speak, read, or write German. I merely wanted to be able to find my way through German references. I had seen a short film about Göttingen, and I arranged to spend several days there during an already planned trip to Europe with my sister, the mathematician Julia Robinson.

In fact, it was Julia, recalling the inspirational im- portance of E.T. Bell's Men of Mathematics for her in her college days, who had suggested I write such a book.

In the fall of 1964 Volker Strassen, then a young prob-

Constance Reid in 1967

abilist whom Julia had met in Berkeley, introduced us to the mathematical history of Göttingen on an extensive tour of the relevant places in the city and the surrounding countryside. In no time at all -back in the United States- I was informing my publisher, Robert Crowell, that instead of the book about Men and Women of Modern Mathematics, for which I had previously signed a contract, Iwanted to write the life of a singular German mathematician named David Hilbert.

I had earlier read what Hermann Weyl, Richard Courant and Max Born had written (all in English) about Hilbert, and I now employed a German- born friend to translate the Lebensgeschichte of Otto Blumenthal. But even for such a life as I planned, I realized that I would also have to make personal contact with Courant and Born.

In addition, I would have to contact Paul

Bernays, who had been Hilbert's longtime assistant for logic and his collaborator.

Only one of these three pointed out my total lack of qualifications for the task I was undertaking. That was Max Born. He would welcome a life of Hilbert, he replied, but by a woman who had never known Hilbert? who was not German? who was not a mathematician? Although I now see that he wrote more

*Photos: Reid/Robinson: C. Reid; all others: Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach

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gently than I have always remembered, his response so devastated me that I did not contact him again until after I had finished the writing of the book.

Courant was polite but characteristically indecisive;

ultimately, however, I managed to pin him down to an appointment for an interview when I was next in New York.

I had been most hesitant about contacting Bernays, since he had not lived for a long periodinan English- speaking country; but he responded in a kindly fashion and in English: "When your manuscript is roughly accomplished, you might send me a copy and I could regard if there are some details which it is de- sirable to add."

In the next two years I wrote to every student, assistant, and colleague of Hilbert that I was able to locate, as well as to anyone who was suggested to me as having been familiar with the Göttingen mi- lieu. To my surprise, but to be expected given the international nature of the Hilbert school, compar- atively few of these were German-born and most of those who had been born in Germany had emigrated in the 1930s.

Only two people to whom I wrote failed to respond.

One was Otto Volk, who had been a student of Fer- dinand Lindemann, under whom Hilbert had written his dissertation. Volk - I had been told by Robert König - had in this possession letters from Hilbert to Lindemann. The other was Arnold Schmidt, Hilbert's last assistant, who was widely reputed to have made a collection of "Hilbert stories". Such stories were not simply anecdotes. An authentic "Hilbert story" - one might say, whether true or not - was so typical of Hilbert's personality, character, and mathematical approach that it could relate only to Hilbert. In the next two years other people also approached Schmidt on my behalf, but without success.

I made one particularly embarrassing mistake. I wanted very much to learn about Hilbert as student and young professor in Königsberg, and someone told methat Kurt Reidemeister had known Hilbert when he was in Königsberg. I knew nothing about Reide- meister, who had been a professor in Königsberg in the early 1930s when Hilbert had returned to the city to be made an Ehrenbürger. Misinterpreting the ref- erence of the pronoun "he", I wrote eagerly: "You are perhaps the only person from whom information about the Königsberg period of [Hilbert's] life can now be obtained." "I am very unhappy that I can't help you", he replied. "But when Hilbert [left Königs- berg for Göttingen] I was 2 years old!"

To balance these failures, there were delightfulletters like those of the Polish mathematician Hugo Stein- haus, who sent me four lively pages of his recollec-

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tions of Hilbert and Göttingen. The German mathematician whose letters were most helpful was Hel- mut Hasse. I cannot now, so much later, reconstruct the mixed emotions I had about contacting Hasse. I know that I was reluctant, having heard from Julia of the violent objections of American mathematicians to his speaking at the memorial service for Emil Artin.

Nevertheless I wrote to him, my last name inadver- tently serving as a mathematical introduction:

I suppose you are a relative of Dr. Legh Wilber Reid whose Dissertation of 1899 "Tafeln der Klassenzahlen kubischer Zahlkörper", written under Hilbert's Super- vision, is on my bookshelf ...

I had earlier received from Gabor Szegö a newspaper clipping from 1934 that an- nounced the support of German scientists for Hitler. Among the names listed was that of David Hilbert. This was the same Hilbert who in 1914 had refused to sign the German government's Aufruf an die K ulturwelt. In the next

few years I showed this Helmut Hasse

clipping to many people who had known Hilbert. All, with one exception, were bewildered to find his name there. The exception was Hasse, who wrote:

Hilbert is in excellent company. Scientists like Ab- derhalden, Bier, Esau, Harne!, Hartmann, Heidegger, Jaensch, Kisch, Kruess, Martius, Panzer, Schmeidler, Tamman, Trendelenburg, Valentirrer have been patri- otic Germans but are above all suspicion of leaning toward national-socialism.

Hasse always replied forthrightly to my questions;

for example, in regard to his personal reaction to Hilbert's number theory work, which he had edited for the Gesammelte Abhandlungen:

Whereas he was always interested only in questions of pure existence, I am much in favour of all possible sorts of detail. This shall not mean that I do not understand and even value rather high an attitude like Hilbert's. But I cannot be very enthusiastic about it.

I should mention here that Julia, to assist me in my project, had recently made me a gift of the three vol- umes of the Gesammelte Abhandlungen. When people asked about my qualifications for writing a life

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of Hilbert, she told them I was reading his collected works!

By early 1967 I had a first draft based on the many letters I had received, a quite satisfactory interview with Courant, long talks in Berkeley with Hans Lewy and briefer conversations with Polya and Szegö down at Stanford. But in spite of my efforts I did not feel that I had been able to bring Hilbert to life.

Julia Robinson

out that you are a hoax."

Of course I was.

The turning point came when Julia told methat Carl Ludwig Siegel was at Stanford. I knew ab- solutely nothing about Siegel - his name had never come up - and I was somewhat hesitant about approaching a German mathematician in person. "You're afraid," my mathematical sister scolded. "You think that he will find

But goaded by Julia, who had already mentioned my project to him, I phoned for an appointment.

Siegel had reviewed his contacts with Hilbert in preparation for our interview, and he was able to provide me with a dozen vignettes from the period following the First World War, when he hirnself had come to Göttingen, and also from 1940, when he left Germany.

The old Hilbert came so vividly to life in Siegel's words that I decided I Carl Ludwig Siegel must talk to people who had known a younger Hilbert - the man in his prime. Most especially I wanted to talk to Bernays. I wanted also to go to Poland and learn more from Steinhaus, maybe even to go from there to what had once been Königsberg. Then I would return to Göttingen and try to locate Hilbert's Nach- lass, which - unlike Klein's - was not in the Uni- versity's library. I might even contrive to see Arnold Schmidt and his alleged trove of Hilbert stories.

On my way to Europe I stopped to talk with Paul Ewald and Alfred Lande, who had been Hilbert's ear-

liest Hauslehrer für Physik. But the most important result of the American portion of my trip was two days sperrt with Lily Rüdenberg, Minkowski's elder daughter, whom I had located through Szegö. An un- seasonable storm had left her intermittently without electricity, and by candlelight I read a packet of type- written copies of letters that Hermann Minkowski had written to Hilbert during the years of their long friendship.

It seemed that when Mrs. Rüdenberg's mother had left Germany, she had entrusted the letters to the Mathematics Institute in Göttingen after having had copies typed by a young relative. Since the end of the war Mrs. Rüdenberg had endeavored to retrieve the originals but had received no response as to their whereabouts or condition. She generously lent me a set of the copies for my book, and I promised to do what I could to help her.

My first stop in Europe was Zürich. There I found Bernays, who had been described to me as stiff and nervaus in his Göttingen days, a sweet and charm- ing man. He was happy to talk about Hilbert. But like most mathematicians, he preferred to talk while walking-in his case around the Züricher See, which made taping impossible. Where I do have tapes of our conversations they run something like this:

CR When Hilbert wanted to give a lecture on foun- dations - did he prepare what he wanted to say ahead of time, or did you prepare it?

PB It was so that we spoke on this and disputed on it, and then it came about what should be clone, and I also made some texts.

CR Like an outline?

PB For some things. Some things he took from me in formulations, then others he made of course indepen- dently. It was so very free way of working together.

CR During the period when you were Hilbert's assistant, did you become closer to him ... ?

PB There were some times of not quite - CR Getting along?

PB But it was by some Oppositions in the scientific - I didn't agree with some things, and so this gave a bit of uneasiness.

CR But then would you see less of each other? What whould happen?

PB It was not just that one was seeing less but it was - there was some time where he was a bit angry with me because I made so much Opposition.

In Zürich I also saw B.L. van der Waerden. My tech- nique in interviewing was always to begirr by asking, How did you happen to come to Göttingen? With van der Waerden the question brought us immediately to Amsterdam and L.E.J. Brouwer. He told me that Brouwer, whom he described as "a fanatic," had never cared for him personally, even when he was a student

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But he recommended that you go to Göttingen.

Yes- but I think he was just trying to get rid of me.

What van der Waerden really enjoyed describing for me were the weekly Mathematical Colloquia. Al- though Hilbert had been diagnosed that year (1924) with pernicious anemia, he regularly attended the Colloquia and still made "interesting remarks," ac- cording to van der Waerden.

"But the most interesting remarks were made by Os- trowski and Runge," van der Waerden told me. The latter's name I knew, but I had never heard the name Ostrowski. "At that timehe was a Privatdozent," van der Waerden explained, "and he knew everything. He knew all the important books that had been written, he knew all the important papers, not only the contents of the papers but also the year and the page numbers. He knew everything by heart."

It happened that Os- trowski now lived in Lugano and, urged by Bernays as well, I made an appointment to see him when I returned to Zürich for my flight home. Unfortunately I was not able to follow up on Bernays's other recommendation, which was that I talk to Paul Scherrer, a Swiss who had worked with Hilbert on phys- ical questions through- out the First World War. I already had Paul Bernays an appointment on my last free day to go to Lucerne to see Andreas Speiser, who had been Minkowski's assistant. I went with high hopes, but Speiser's son had not warned me that his father would no longer be of much assistance. As a result I missed talking to Scherrer, who died in a street ac- cident before our correspondence got well under way.

From Zürich I flew to Warsaw and then to Wroclaw, where Steinhaus lived. (Of course I never got even close to Kaliningrad. Many years later I mentioned to Jürgen Moser, who grew up in Königsberg, how much I had wanted to see the city, but he told me that it wouldn't have looked the same. "I know, but I just wanted to smell it." - "It wouldn't smell the same."

I arrived in Warsaw just as the six-day war between Israel and Egypt began. Everyone I met thought that the Third World War was imminent. In Wroclaw it

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was as if I were in one of those old spy movies where people sidle up to you in a dark, old, once elegant hotel and ask in a whisper, because you have just come from Warsaw, "Have you been to the Embassy?"

But at Steinhaus's house there were roses in the gar- den and Mrs. Steinhaus at the piano playing Chopin. Their daughter and her family were in San Francisco at the time. Would they stay in America? I asked Steinbaus. "Not one of them would ever emigrate!"

Nine months later, when the Polish government was cracking down on Jews because the Polish people had sided with Israel, I received a hurried note from Stein- haus: "Of course: none of four your [sie] friends are invited to Poland. As to Wlodekjpupil of my daughter/ I do not know where he is. Tell it to all four."

Since Steinhaus had written in his letters most of what he recalled of his days in Göttingen, my book might have been better served if I had gone to Am- sterdam instead of Wroclaw and talked to Peter De- bye, with whom Scherrer had worked. Then, though, I would have missed dancing with Hugo Steinhaus to the tunes of the American 1940s at the old Hotel Metropol, or was it the Hotel Monopol? - I have forgotten.

"You look so serious when you dance," I admonished.

"It's as if you are not enjoying yourself."

"I dance as a primitive man dances."

On a Sunday evening at the beginning June 1967, I arrived in Göttingen. I had written ahead, and I met Siegel the next morning at the Mathematics Institute. He was upset, embarrassed, and quietly angry that inquiries from a daughter of Hermann Minkowski had been ignored. He called for Martin Kneser, then the Director of the Institute, and Kneser summoned the Hausmeister. Yes, the latter recalled, there was a box in the attic, the contents of which were unidentified. He brought it down to Siegel's office and operred it, and there were Minkowski's letters

to Hilbert. It was agreed that I could take them back to Mrs. Rüdenberg with the Stipulation that after she had them copied she would return them to Göttin- gen. They have since been edited by Hans Zassenhaus and published by Springer.

Seven disorganized boxes of Hilbert's Nachlass were then retrieved from a cupboard in the Institute library, and I was given a room in which to work. The first thing I did was to go quickly through the boxes to see if they contained the Hilbert half of the correspondence with Minkowski, but they did not. Their absence is hard to explain when the Nachlass contained even such trivia as the prescription for the liver treatment of Hilbert's pernicious anemia. Dur- ing the remainder of my trip and after I returned home, I tried in every conceivable way to locate the

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Hilbert letters, even following the trail of Blumen- thai to Holland, since from the Lebensgeschichte it was clear that he had read both sides of the correspondence. (Courant later assured me that in the Minkowski letters I had got for my purposes by far the more useful half.)

Since everything I wanted copied had to be ready to first thing Friday morning, I had just three and a half days to examine Hilbert's Nachlass. Ill equipped as I was for reading German, especially handwritten Ger- man, I set out to examine the contents of the boxes.

I didn't have time even to glance at letters from such people as Frege, Russell, and Einstein. Instead I con- centrated on what was relevant to the kind of book I was writing - and there were treasures.

By this time I had become involved in a correspondence of sorts with Reidemeister. It had begun after I had written to Elisabeth Reidemeister for a photograph she had taken of Hilbert on his 75th birthday.

Later, when she was ill, he had answered my letters. I planned to see him in Göttingen, but Siegel discour- aged me, saying that both the Reidemeisters were by then unwell. Actually, as I learned later, she was dying and he was devoting all his time to caring for her.

Friday, while my selections from the Nachlass were being copied, I rented a car and drove in the morning to the places in the surrounding countryside that had played a role in the recollections of the mathematicians with whom I had talked. In the afternoon I met Brigitte Rellich, to whom I had an introduction through van der Waerden, her brother-in-law.

She had arranged to take me to the Hilbert house on Wilhelm Weber Strasse. The house had been left by Mrs. Hilbert to the Hilberts' langtime housekeeper on the condition that Franz Hilbert would always have a home there. By 1967 Franz was in a sani- tarium; but in 1964, when I first visited Göttingen, the name "Hilbert" was still on one of the doorbells.

I had looked questioningly at Volker Strassen, but he had shaken his head: "You don't want to go in there."

Some mathematicians thought I should not even mention the tragic case of Franz Hilbert, but I felt - as did Courant - that it was part of the story.

He died before my book was published; and, in an effort to obtain an accurate medical diagnosis of his lifelong condition, I contacted Dr. Günther Koltze, who had been hislegal guardian as well as the execu- tor of Mrs. Hilbert's estate:

Daß David Hilbert sehr darunter gelitten hat, daß sein Sohn Franz geistig nicht in Ordnung war, ist mir als jahrzehntelangem Nachbar vom Hörensagen bekannt.

Andererseits glaube ich nicht, daß David Hilbert je- mals damit einverstanden gewesen sein würde, daß

diese Tatsache der Öffentlichkeit vorgetragen wird.

[ ... ] In meiner Eigenschaft [ ... ] denke ich, daß es nicht im Interesse der Familie Hilbert liegt, dieses Unglück in der Biographie zu erwähnen und exakte Unterlagen zu unterbreiten, insbesondere die medizi- nischen Befunde.

Mrs. Rellich was able to arrange what I had begun to think an impossibility - an opportunity to talk to Arnold Schmidt. The next day Schmidt and his wife welcomed me quite pleasantly in their home in Marburg. Since they had a social engagement later that afternoon, our conversation was somewhat hurried. Of all the European-born mathematicians I interviewed, Schmidt had the least command of English and, perhaps embarrassed by the fact, refused to be taped. It was also clear that he would not talk freely if I took notes so, as soon as I left his house, I jotted down everything I could remernher that he had said.

Schmidt disclaimed having made any "collection" of Hilbert stories, but he did tell me that Mrs. Hilbert always denied the often repeated story about Hilbert's being sent up- stairs to change his tie and proceeding to re- move the rest of his clothes and get into bed. For some inexpli-

cable reason I did not • Arnold Schmidt ask Schmidt about the

equally common story of Hilbert's response to Bern- hard Rust regarding the state of mathematics in Göttingen after the government had removed the Jewish infl.uence:

Mathematik in Göttingen- die jibt's doch gar nicht mehr.

The first anecdote is a generic absentminded professor story; the second sounds like an authentic

"Hilbert story".

At first, [as I wrote in my book,] both the Hilberts had spoken out in such a forthright way agairrst the new regime that their friends remairring in Göttingen were frightened for their safety. But they did not trust many of the people who were left, nor the new people who came, and after a while they too fell silent.

Schmidt had played a role in arranging for the sculpt- ing of a bust of Hilbert (from photographs of all sides of his head), which is now in the lobby of the Math- ematics Institute. He promised to send me a copy of

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his remarks at the dedication ceremony, hut he died three months later.

On my return to Zürich, I left my luggage at my hotel, stuffed my toothhrush and my nightclothes into my handhag, and set off for Lugano. Alexander Os- trowski was indeed the inexhaustihle source of information that van der Waerden had promised. Our conversation (at lunch hy a lovely lake) ranged over the personalitites of many mathematicians, their work, and their relative positions in the history of mathematics. Most striking, and unusual in mathematicians I had talked to, was his interest in psychology.

His wife was a Jungian analyst, and Ostrowski proh- ahly had undergone an analysis. The suhject that interested him, in the case of Hilhert hut also in the case of such colleagues as Klein and Landau, was how a gifted person learns or fails to learn the way to con- duct hirnself in a society of those less gifted. Usually, in Ostrowski's view, such people do not learn until it is too late. I had the feeling that he considered hirnself one of those who had not learned early.

On my return to San Francisco I tore up what I had already written und started over. Strassen was spend- ing a year in Berkeley, and Christa Hohl-Strassen, then his wife, gave hours of her time to translating Minkowski's letters for me. By the summer of 1968 I had another manuscript, one that I felt I could send out. As I deposited the packages at the post office, I still remernher saying to myself, Weil, I've done the best I could and if that 's not good enough -

In a few months I hegan to receive comments, enthusiastic comments. Courant, who had said that he had no idea how I "intended to proceed", wrote that he was impressed hy the manuscript "which reminded mein a touching way of old days."

Bernays commented from Zürich:

When I then received the copy I was much pleased and, though I indeed knowed already the contents, I liked to read anew in your book. [ ... ] [But] at the new reading I became aware of some points that I had neglected tobring to your attention, (failing to notice them at the first reading), and a few others related to your last additions.

As he finished each section, heginning first with the periods with which he was personally familiar, he wrote long, detailed letters, sensitive as always to the reputation of others and even the feelings of those de- ceased.

I arranged to discuss Courant's comments in more detail with him in New York and, on my way, to see Ewald again. He was delighted with the manuscript and said that I must send a copy to Max Born. (They had heen students together.) Remernhering Born's

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letter, I dernurred- as far as I was concerned, Born could read the hook when it appeared in print. But no, Ewald insisted, Born was old and sick. I must send it now.

Born responded almost immediately:

I must confess I approached [your manuscript] with some diffidence. But after I read a chapter I was already convinced that it is a brilliant book, in which the spirit of the time, the locality and the personal- ities are most efficiently described [ ... ] I am looking forward to the rest. As I am 86 it will take some time.

A week later, having finished the manuscript, he was demand- ing: "How did you man- age to penetrate so deeply into the spirit of that period and of those men?"

(Born died in 1970, never having seen the puhlished hook.) In New Rochelle, staying overnight at

Courant's house, I was Max Born ahle to talk more freely

with him. To my surprise, really to my amazement, he insisted that the hook should he puhlished hy Springer. Almost alone, he told me, Springer had carried on scientific puhlishing in Germany hetween the two world wars and had always had strong personal contacts with Hilhert and the Göttingen group. In a short time he "had taken the liherty" of show- ing my manuscript to Klaus Peters, the mathematics editor at Springer. Peters, he wrote, was eager to puhlish the hook, "which would seem to me the hest that could happen." (As I learned later, Peters had already read the manuscript, which he had received from John Addison, the chairman of the Berkeley mathematics department.)

Things moved very fast. I had heen thinking of a title to attract the general reader. David Hilbert, Pied Piper of Modern Mathematics was suggested hy Weyl's description of "the sweet flute of the Pied Piper [ ... ], seducing so many rats to follow him into the deep river of mathematics." But I had never heen comfortahle with Weyl's metaphor and preferred The Legend of David Hilbert. In the end I settled simply on Hilbert. Rohert Crowell generously released me from my contract with him, and hy the end of 1969 Springer was heralding to the international mathematical community "a new hiography of David Hilhert hy Constance Reid".

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As to the general reaction of German mathematicians to my book, I can say only that during the first year the sales in Germany were the same as they were in the United States.

Richard Courant

The personal reactions of German mathematicians came most often in letters to Pe- ters, who forwarded them to me. In the case of the few histor- ical criticisms Peters and his colleague, Wal- ter Kaufmann-Bühler, stood by me. The misunderstanding arose from the fact that "the rise of German nation- alism" meant something quite different to me from what it meant in more recent Germany. Kaufmann- Bühler, however, did tellmethat he found my expla- nations of things German "patronizing" . They may well have sounded so, although they were not meant to be. I had been explaining Germany to American readers who (I was sure) were as uninformed as I.

It was not, however, this quality in the book that decided Springer against a German translation, ac- cording to Peters, but rather an incorrect view on his part at the time as to the prevalence of the ability to read English among German mathematicians, which arose from his own increasing contact with American mathematicians.

Otto Volk, who had never answered my question about Hilbert's relationship with Lindemann, now criticized the book to Springer for its Verneinung of Lindemann's influence on Hilbert and Hilbert's ad- miration for Lindemann:

Ich besitze eine grössere Anzahl von Briefen Hilberts an Lindemann, die davon Zeugnis ablegen; Hilbert hing sehr an Lindemann; er widmete seine Dissertati- on "Herrn Professor Dr. Ferdinand Lindemann"; Lin- demann war für Hilbert sein "Professor"; und selbst in späteren Briefen, als Hilbert schon der ganz Große war, lauten die Briefüberschriften: "Lieber Herr Pro- fessor". Ich besitze auch das Protokollbuch des mathematischen Kolloquiums in Königsberg von 1884- 1893; darin befinden sich "propria manu" geschrie- bene längere Vortragsauszüge von F. Lindemann, D.

Hilbert, H. Minkowski, A. Hurwitz, E. Wiehert [sie], A. Mayer, F. Cohn, A. Sommerfeld u.a. Später un- terblieben die ausführlichen Berichte. Von 1889-1893 führte Hilbert das Protokollbuch; vorher geschah es durch Lindemann [ ... ] Lindemann führte auch seit 1877 eine Liste von ungelösten Problemen, woraus manches Dissertationsthema entnommen ist; so z.B.

steht unter Nr. 47 das Thema von Hilbert.

Hasse, who found the book "quite excellent," sent his objection directly to me:

I somehow resent your statement that I 'had long been a convinced nationalist.' This term has nowadays a deteriorating sound, and I do not think it applies to me at any time of my life. My feelings have always been, and still are, those of a truly national citizen. I have never belonged to any political party, but like the great majority of my countrymen I resented deeply the injustice done to us by the Treaty of Versailles.

[ ... ] I was however strongly opposed to all national- istic excesses, particularly Hitler's antisemitic policy.

For this reason the students revolted agairrst me when I came to Göttingen in May 1934 on the proposal of Hermann Weyl who then left for your country.

I replied "that I meant by this to denote exactly the position which you described in your letter."

I had also sent Reidemeister a copy of the book. Com- plimenting me on a "refreshing" style and the many details I had assembled, he marveled that I "could grow sure about the totality of the picture" I had presented. In a letter to Springer, however, he described his many connections with Hilbert and concluded:

Ich komme mir wie der unsichtbare Mann von [H.] G.

Wells vor und frage mich umsonst, woher ich diese überraschende Gabe gerade in den Augen von Con- stance Reid zu besitzen scheine.

He had "kept his ears open" and had found that even people who were interviewed by Mrs. Reid, or had been present at such interviews, mentioned important discrepancies. These people are easily identifi- able. Brigitte ReHich objected (in a letter to me) to my statement that at the begging of Franz Hilbert, a woman, a friend but not one who had known the splendid old days, had said some appropriate words.

To Mrs. Rellich it "sounded as if Franz Hilbert had brought someone in off the street". Edith Schmidt objected - also in a letter to me - that in referring to her husband's statement - in regard to Hilbert's name being among those of scientists sup- porting Hitler-I had omitted "the nuances" of what he had said. I asked her to write in German exactly what she thought her husband had said and promised I would have it professionally translated for the second printing, but I never heard from her again.

The only person to whom Reidemeister could have been referring was Siegel, who shortly published a review in the Zentralblatt für Mathematik, Vol. 192, No. 2:

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Die Verf. hat sich viel Mühe gegeben, durch Bespre- chungen mit ehemaligen Schülern und Mitarbeitern Hilberts so wie durch das Studium von Briefen und gedruckten Schriftstücken ein deutliches Bild von der Persönlichkeit Hilberts zu gewinnen. In ihrem Buch ist es ihr im Großen und Ganzen gelungen, einen weiteren Kreis von Gebildeten, auch wenn sie keine spe- ziellen mathematischen Vorkenntnisse haben mögen, durch eine lebendige Darstellung eine Idee vom aka- demischen Leben in Deutschland während der Zeit von etwa 1880 bis 1930 zu geben. Bei den erheblichen Änderungen, die im weiteren Verlauf des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts in der gesellschaftlichen Struktur und insbesondere im Aufbau der Universitäten eingetre- ten sind, auch vielleicht noch weiter eintreten werden, dürfte daher dieser Bericht von besonderem Wert sein. Allerdings ist anzumerken, daß das Buch nicht den Anforderungen genügt, die man an ein geschicht- liches Werk zu stellen hat, und das gilt zunächst von den zahlreich eingestreuten Anekdoten, bei denen mitunter einiges abgewandelt zu sein scheint. Fer- ner wird zwar über die Lebensumstände Hilberts und das allmähliche Reifen seiner Entdeckungen einwand- frei und eindrucksvoll berichtet, doch findet man da- bei zahlreiche geringfügige Unrichtigkeiten, von denen nur ein paar Beispiele angeführt seien.

At this point he began abruptly: "Auf S. 2 ist eine Erläuterung von Kneiphof als 'beer gar- den' offenbar ein stu- dentischer Ulk, und wenn, wie ebenda angegeben wird, die sämtlichen 7 Königs- herger Brücken auf diese Insel geführt hätten, so wäre die bekann- te Feststellung Eulers kaum für die Topologie Kurt Reidemeister von Nutzen gewesen."

Other errors followed, each specified by the page on which it occurred. Since these were all corrected in the second printing of the book I will not repeat them here.

I was tremendously embarrassed, especially by my misstaterneut of the problern of the Königsberg bridges. But Klaus Peters was pleased: "Siegel would not have reviewed the book if he hadn't considered it important."Several years later, however, I heard from Herbert Busemann that Siegel had told him that he didn't need to bother to read the book - it simply presented "Courant's view" of Hilbert.

Reidemeister's criticisms in his continuing letters to Peters became more general than merely his umbrage at my having neglected to mention his connections

DMV-Mitteilungen 1/99

with Hilbert and his presence at various Hilbert cel- ebrations:

Sie neigt, wie ich finde, zum Anekdotischen und präsentiert es doch als Wesentlich. Ähnlich äußert sich Courant im forword. Es zeigt sich etwas von dem Mysterium der Entstehung eines großen Wissen- schaftlers in unserer Gesellschaft. Davon kann aber gewiss nicht die Rede sein. Viel deutlicher treten die gesellschaftlichen-politischen Veränderungen im Um- kreis Hilberts hervor, bedrückend aber nicht unbe- kannt und im Stil der Verfasserirr auch für mich gefärbt, der ich niemals "braun" war. Was nach 1934 erschütternd wirkt, ist vorher durch Moralin dem sachlichen Blick unzugänglich und unzulänglich dar- gestellt, da der Druck, der auf allen lastete, nicht spürbar gemacht, und jede Handlung, die unter die- sem Druck gestanden haben könnte, mit Tadel be- dacht wird.

Courant ist wohl zu alt, sowohl zu einer neuen Ur- teilsbildung als auch zur Abhilfe. Den Interviews von Mrs. Reid nachzugehen, ist niemandem zuzumuten.

Und für ein kühleres Auge werden sich nur "disjecta membra" der Gestalten finden, die Mrs. Reid ihrem Freskogemälde mit der persönlichen Phantasie eines Historienmalers aus der Zeit der großen "Schinken" - wenn Sie für einen Augenblick diesen Malerausdruck mir erlauben- in Anschauung bringt.

He and Peters ultimately agreed upon a "Gedenk- band an David Hilbert," to be edited by Reide- meister and published by Springer. "Schließlich,"

Reidemeister commented with satisfaction, "sollten auch Deutsche ihres großen Meistergelehrten würdig gedenken."

At this point I was able to write directly to him and suggest that he might want to include in the Gedenkband the text of an unpublished talk by Hilbert titled "Über meine Tätigkeit in Göttingen"

that I had found in the Nachlass. I added that I was sorry he was unhappy with the book and that I appre- ciated his taking the time to write out his feelings.

There was a prompt response thanking me for my

"nice letter" :

What bothers me is the impossibility to give a cor- rect impression of the German inner situation from 1930 to 1950. I was anti nazi, one of the three "found- ing fathers" of the Phillippa university in Marburg, 1946 clean and so on. But although I know much, I am not able and fearing misunderstanding not writing to report some things. For that goal you have to be a historian. I regret to see that you are evidently sincere - that a myth about this time exists for the emigrants, which I don't appreciate.

Later in this same letter he came back to the fact that so much of my information had come from German expatriates:

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Who left also Hilbert alone? And the many people who helped the Hilberts in the years 1934 to 43 arenot mentioned. The relation between Hasse and Hilbert was good. And Siegel (who had returned to Germany after the war] changed from Frankfurt to Göttingen for better understanding in mathematics as it was possible in Frankfurt - with Hasse!

That Christmas I received a greeting from Reidemeis- ter with a note that I did not then understand- and do not understand even now:

You don't know in how many ways you have helped me to do the right thing. It's too complicated to ex- posing it. But thanks ( ... ] You are a very nice person, if I may say so.

On the back of the card - a reproduction of a Chi- nese landscape with an imposing peak in the fore- ground - he had written:

All people see the same MOON But we see the same MOUNT D. Hilbert

When I returned to Göttingen in 1971, I went to see him. He was ill and confined to his bed by then. His Gedenkband an David Hilbert was in print, but we no longer spoke of Hilbert or of my book Hilbert. He showed me some poems he had been writing and a photograph he had cut from a magazine because he thought it was the way I looked. He died that year.

"Oh, I've had such a curious dream!" said Alice, and she told her sister as weil as she could remernher them, all these strange adventures that you have just been reading about; and when she had finished, her sister kissed her, and said, "It was a curious dream, dear, certainly."

Adresse der Autorin Constance Reid

70 Piedmont Street San Francisco CA 94117