Abstract
The initial period after the Dirichlets’ return from Italy was pleasant and hopeful. On his way back to Berlin, Dirichlet had stopped to visit Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and other family members and friends in Frankfurt. Felix had written to his sisters , who were still in Italy, that Dirichlet was lively and well, sported an enormous beard, and could hardly be recognized, not only because of the beard, but because he appeared younger, heavier, and generally healthier than he had been when they last saw him.
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Notes
- 1.
The theme of this chapter and the ending of Chap. 14 refer to Matthew Arnold’s last stanza of “Dover Beach.”
- 2.
For a detailed account see Harnack 1900:929–45.
- 3.
Ahrens, W., ed. 1907:219.
- 4.
Varnhagen, K., Tagebücher 5 (1862):349.
- 5.
Quoted in Feilchenfeld 1979:56–57.
- 6.
Hensel, S. 1904:115, quoting from a letter of Rebecca, dated April 20, 1850.
- 7.
Schurz 1906:302ff., quoted in Feilchenfeldt 1979:58; also see Wersich, ed. 1979:50–71, which contains pertinent contemporary illustrations and bilingual excerpts taken from Schurz’s Lebenserinnerungen.
- 8.
Letter from Varnhagen to Rebecca quoted in Feilchenfeld 1979:67.
- 9.
After Johanna’s death in 1858, Kinkel remarried and, though by then settled in England, in 1866 accepted a call to the ETH in Zurich as professor of archeology and art history. Schurz had turned to the USA in 1852, where he would gain fame as a leading German-American liberal thinker and writer, coming to notice not only as an early supporter of Abraham Lincoln and fighting in some of the major battles of the Civil War, but subsequently serving as Senator from Missouri, Secretary of the Interior, and continuing to write and to speak with the oratorical skills that Kinkel had helped him develop.
- 10.
Rosenhain 1851.
- 11.
Königsberger 1904:448.
- 12.
Königsberger 1904:454.
- 13.
Euler 1849.
- 14.
Ahrendt, W., ed. 1907:205.
- 15.
Contemporary rumors concerning a dissolute lifestyle, which led to at least one official query, were subsequently discounted by the reliable twentieth-century historian Kurt-R. Biermann. On the other hand, Rebecca Dirichlet, not given to repeating groundless gossip, appears to have had undocumented information that led her to express regrets in writing to Sebastian at the time of Eisenstein’s death that he had been a tragic, hopelessly wasted genius who had followed his worst instincts since youth.
- 16.
For their dissertation topics, see Biermann 1988:350.
- 17.
Chebyshev Oeuvres 2.
- 18.
Chebyshev 1851 and 1852.
- 19.
31 Oct 1852. For a biographical sketch and additional excerpts from Hirst’s diary see Gardner and Wilson 1993.
- 20.
See Merzbach 1981 for further details concerning this manuscript portion.
- 21.
Biermann 1977.
- 22.
Gauss 1849.
- 23.
Gauss 1799.
- 24.
Dedekind 1876:546.
- 25.
Biermann 1959:73.
- 26.
Quoted in 1853a; see Werke 2:229.
- 27.
[where Gauss had lived].
- 28.
Berlin. Staatsbibliothek. Handschriftenabteilung. Dirichlet Nachlass. Correspondence. Weber.
- 29.
Letter of April 20, 1855, quoted in Hensel, S. 1904:186–87.
- 30.
Kuhschnappel is the fictional site of one of Jean Paul’s most popular novels (...Siebenkaes), especially widely read by the generation of Sebastian Hensel. I was recently informed by Meredith McClain of the existence of a real (not horrible) Kuhschnappel in Saxony and its local historian, Andreas Barth.
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Merzbach, U.C. (2018). A Darkling Decade. In: Dirichlet. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01073-7_12
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