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The single chapters deal with the
beginnings of astronomy in Kiel (1770-1820), Schrader's giant telescope from
the late 18th century, Altona Observatory (1823-1850), the first years of the
Astronomische Nachrichten, the last years of Altona Observatory
(1850-1872), Bothkamp Observatory (1870-1914), the genesis of Kiel Observatory
(1874-1880), the era of Krueger (1880-1896), the Kiel Chronometer Observatory
(1893-1913), the era of Harzer (1897-1925), the era of Rosenberg (1927-1934),
the decline of Kiel Observatory (1935-1950), and the Astronomische
Nachrichten under Kobold (1907-1938). The book is concluded with a
glossary of technical terms, biographical sketches of known and unknown
dramatis personae, as well as a list of references.
The author outlines
lively sketches of people that were astronomically active in Altona, Kiel and
its surroundings over a time interval of 200 years. To achieve this task, he
has studied many files from the Secret State Archive Preussischer Kulturbesitz
(Berlin), the Schleswig-Holsteinisches State Archive (Schleswig) and the
Hamburg State Archive, from which he quotes extensively. He also has evaluated
private documents and has interviewed surviving witnesses of the 1930s and
1940s. He has located remote sources: for example, the son of the founder of
the Astronomische Nachrichten, Richard Schumacher, served for
some years as an assistant at the Chilean National Observatory, and had married
Marie Bulling, a girl of German descent. From her "meagre diary entries" of
that time (published in Valparaiso in 2004), the author suspects a "convenience
marriage''.
Nevertheless, unreliable sources can provide a false picture: the interviewed
custodian notes that the wife of the last official observatory director, Hans
Oswald Rosenberg, was "Verena Borchardt, a Jewess from St. Petersburg'' (p.
583). This is more than incorrect. The family lived for some years in Moscow
(not St. Petersburg), because her father was a representative of various
companies, especially his grand-father's Königsberger
Thee-Compagnie. In 1880, his daughter Helene was born there - who later
married the Kiel astronomer Wirtz. In 1882, the Borchardt family moved to
Berlin, where the father became a banker, and where Verena was born. The family
was "of reformed confession, of Jewish origin'' (Borchardt, Heymel,
Schröder: Marbacher Katalog Nr. 29, 1978): she was "a Jewess'' in Nazi
terminology only.
On page
583 too, Wirtz' capricious political views are quoted: "The day when the French
troops entered Strasbourg was the happiest one in my life'', for which Theiss'
paper of 1999 is quoted, and it is stated "source not given''. Now, Theiss uses
a study of Duerbeck and Seitter (1990), where the precise reference in the
Kiel Acta is given. Another overlooked (although not very
informative) source is the voluminous edition of the collected letters
(München 1994-2002) of Rudolf Borchardt, the poetical brother of "Vera''
Rosenberg and "Lene'' Wirtz.
Another series of peculiar statements refer to the
Astronomische Nachrichten (p. 666): Neither did they publish,
after 1945, "sometimes only Russian articles'', nor after 1983 "only articles
in English'': some "German'' astrometric articles appeared after that year,
which will presumably stand the test of time better than the plethoria of
"English'' articles, dealing mainly with cosmology. Totally fabricated is the
author's statement that the journal is now published by "the Astronomical
Computing Centre [sic] in Heidelberg''.
In spite of these slightly critical
notes on some irrelevant details, I can wholeheartedly recommend this book: it
is an indispensable source of information for anyone who is interested in the
history of astronomy in German-speaking lands in the 19th and the first half of
the 20th century.
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