Professor Johnson Continues Research in Germany

Following a trip to Holland last year, Professor Dirk Johnson continued his research (the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and its relationship to the science of Charles Darwin) in Frankfurt, Germany this year.

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Over the summer, my family and I spent a month in the city of Frankfurt, Germany, which many only know for its bustling international airport. But Frankfurt is in fact a very interesting city in the heart of Germany that symbolizes both the country?s turbulent past as well as its more promising and dynamic future.

Rich in culture, Frankfurt was the birthplace of Germany?s greatest poet, Wolfgang von Goethe. Born in 1749 to a wealthy patrician family in the former Imperial city, Goethe grew up in a world of privilege with an impressive collection of books at his disposal. In his memoirs, ?Poetry and Truth,? Goethe recounted his childhood years in Frankfurt and cast some of his memories in a romantic glow. He describes, for example, how he used to play with his children?s puppet theater ? the inspiration for his dramatic masterpiece, ?Faust.? A tour of the ?Goethe House,? completely restored after Allied bombings in World War II, gives the public an intimate glimpse into the poet?s early years and reveals how wealthy burghers might have lived in eighteenth-century German towns.

Before the rise of National Socialism, Frankfurt was a cosmopolitan city. It was a world-wide banking center and had a Jewish population of over 30,000. The Rothschilds, one of the richest families in history, began their ascent in Frankfurt: they succeeded in building a banking dynasty that extended to Paris, London, Vienna and Naples. In 1841, a French journalist stated: ''There is but one power in Europe and that is Rothschild? ? and that was no exaggeration. Measured in relative terms, the Rothschilds? fortune would even exceed the wealth of today?s Saudi royal family! This was a remarkable feat, considering that the family, less than one hundred years earlier, had started as coin dealers in the obscurity of Frankfurt?s Jewish ghetto.

Nothing remains of that vibrant Jewish life now except for a memorial. And it is a moving one. Along the walls of the ancient Jewish cemetery, thousands of small tiles are arranged in perfectly symmetrical rows. They establish the individual identity of the Frankfurt family victims of the Holocaust, a chronology of their lives and the death camps in which they perished. For many, the date of death is left blank ? a life with a beginning but no known end. And though many stood in the prime of their lives, others were barely at their beginning.

The university building where I did my summer research offered a further perspective into that tumultuous past. Completed in 1931 for IG Farben, the world?s fourth largest company and biggest chemical cartel, the corporate headquarters was Europe?s largest and most up-to-date office building. Whereas buildings in New York were built to impress through height, the IG Farben complex was meant to overwhelm through sheer monumentality: it is composed of six seven-story wings connected by a massive cross-structure. It is famous for its (still-functioning) paternoster ? elevators similar to dumbwaiters or vertical cable cars that have no doors and run continuously.

After the War, the IG Farben cartel was disbanded for its association with Hitler?s Third Reich. Not only did the company employ Jewish slave labor; it was also linked to the manufacture of Zyklon-B poison used in the gas chambers of Nazi death camps. In a further twist of fate, the US Army commandeered the ?Farben building? after the war. It held meetings here that led to the formulation of the West German constitution and the implementation of the highly successful Marshall Plan. In 1995, the Army restored it to the German government and in 2001 the complex became the new campus of the Goethe University in Frankfurt. It now houses the philosophical and social science faculties of the university as well as a permanent exhibition that promises to recount truthfully the building?s checkered career.

But only to underscore the vicissitudes of modern German history, the site of the ?Farben building? was once the location of a state mental hospital run by Dr. Heinrich Hoffman. Frankfurt-born Hoffman was the world-famous author of the beautifully illustrated children?s classic, ?Der Struwwelpeter? (?Slovenly Peter?). Espousing progressive notions in the psychiatric treatment of mental patients, Hoffman improved the conditions of his charges. He was also actively involved in nineteenth-century liberal politics. As member of the freemasons, he quit the organization in protest over its anti-Semitic politics. Hoffman also hired Alois Alzheimer to help run the institution, who initiated a policy of ?non-restraint? that did away with repressive measures and allowed patients greater freedom. At the turn of the century, Alzheimer diagnosed the first patient with that dreaded ?illness of forgetfulness? that now bears his name.

Modern Frankfurt is a city that has regained its stature as financial and banking capital. It is home to the German stock market and European central bank. It has once again become a truly cosmopolitan city, with a large international contingent working at its various banks and corporate headquarters and a sizeable population of foreigners who has lived and worked in the city for decades. The Frankfurt suburb of Offenbach has the highest population density of foreigners in the nation, and its main street is a bustling thoroughfare of the new multicultural Germany. There has even been a modest influx of Jews returning to the city, although the 2,000-member community represents only a fraction of its former glory.

The Frankfurt of today is a multi-layered metropolis with many lineages. But as a city that once stood at the center of the democratic aspirations of 1848 ? Germany?s first parliament was formed in St. Paul?s Church ? Frankfurt is also a city that is attempting to move toward the future with a view to recapturing what was best and most promising in its past.

Summer 2005