ERNST MAYR AT 100: A LIFE INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF ORNITHOLOGY

Auk, The, Jul 2004 by Bock, Walter J

EARLY BEGINNING

Ernst Mayr was the second son born to a welleducated, middle-class family in which Bildung (education and a general knowledge of culture) was important; books were a significant part of their life. His father was a successful judge in the Bavarian State system, with broad interests outside of jurisprudence. Most significantly, both of Mayr's parents had general interest in natural history and took their three boys on frequent walks in the countryside. Emphasis was placed on the identification of local fauna and flora. By the time he was a teenager, Ernst had become a dedicated and proficient bird watcher, knowing all the local birds by call as well as sight. After the father's death at an early age, Frau Mayr moved with the three boys to Dresden, where Ernst attended the Gymnasium from 1917 to 1923 and completed the examinations for his Abitur in March 1923. he was given a new pair of binoculars by his mother as a present for passing these examinations, and spent the next days bird-watching. On 23 March 1923, he observed a pair of Red-crested Pochards (Netta rufina) in Moritzburg, Sachsen; that species had not been reported in Germany since 1846. This was the first big, and perhaps the most important, accident in his life. Ernst was unable to show the pair of ducks to any of the older members of the local nature club, because the birds had disappeared by 25 March when some adult members were able to accompany him to Moritzburg. But one of the members knew Erwin Stresemann (who had started as an Assistant in the Zoological Museum in Berlin on 15 April 1921, having received his Ph.D. the previous year) and provided the young Ernst with a letter of introduction to Stresemann.

Following the tradition in the Mayr family in which the boys went into law or medicine, and with his older brother, Otto, having decided to become an engineer, Mayr chose a career in medicine. His younger brother, Hans, followed their father's footsteps, went into law and became a public prosecutor (Staatsanwalt). Ernst decided to study at the University of Greifswald, located close to the southern coast of the Baltic Sea in northeastern Germany, almost directly north of Berlin. He had made that choice not because the university had any outstanding reputation for the teaching of medicine, but because Greifswald was located in one of the more interesting regions of Germany ornithologically. And by good fortune, Berlin lay almost directly in the path of the train between Dresden and Greifswald. Armed with his letter of introduction, Mayr broke his journey in Berlin and visited Erwin Stresemann to report his sighting of the pair of Red-crested Pochards. Stresemann read Mayr's field notes carefully and quizzed him on the identity of other species of ducks, using specimens in the collection. he was satisfied with the sighting and, impressed with the enthusiasm of this young student, invited him to work as a volunteer at the Berlin Museum during his university holidays. Mayr accepted immediately. he remarked later that "It was as if someone had given me the key to heaven" (E. Mayr unpubl. manuscript). Stresemann also invited Mayr to publish his report on the Redcrested Pochard (Mayr 1923a) and must have written the manuscript himself, because the published date of 1922 is incorrect-the pair of ducks were observed in March of 1923. Mayr's second paper followed immediately, reporting observations he made soon after arriving in Greifswald on the Red-breasted Flycatcher (Ficedula parva) as a common breeding species in the beech forests near Eldena in the Greifswald region.