,,Ehrende Auszeichnung“ oder ,,Aufforderung zur Leistung eines Geldbeitrages“?

Abstract

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many prominent German and Austrian scientists declined the election as a member of the Kaiserliche Leopoldinisch-Carolinische Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher (in short: Leopoldina) because they were not willing to pay the entrance and membership fees of about one fifth of the monthly salary of a full professor. Many of theses candidates simply did not answer to the president’s notification of being elected. Some of them came up with ,,various reasons not to be discussed”, or referred to their individual financial situation.The physicist Heinrich Hertz, who had become famous by the discovery of electromagnetic waves in the late 1880ies, was the only elected candidate who protested bluntly against what he considered as an unworthy procedure. Although it would not have been a much of a burden for him to afford the requested entrance and membership fees, he refused to adhere to an association whose statues combined the award of an academic distinction with the obligation of financial support. In two letters addressed to Leopoldina President Carl Hermann Knoblauch,Hertz gave his reasons for declining his election to the academy. In the present article, Hertz’s letters to Knoblauch are fully published for the first time.