Erinnerungen von Howard Howland

These two pictures were taken in the winter of 1963-64. The lady in the picture of Helga, who, I think is wearing my hat, is Ariane Ettiene, a graduate student of Horst Mittelstaedt's

Dear Silke, Annettte, and Dorothea,

I was very saddened to hear of your mother's death, and I feel very guilty in not responding sooner. Judging by my own depression, I cannot imagine what a loss this must be for you. However, even at the distance of so many years, I can well imagine how she would have chided me for grieving over such a natural occurrence.

I first met your mother and father in the Spring of 1960 when my brother Brad and I came over to visit Horst Mittelstaedt and work on the centrifuge. Wolf and Helga were working on sun orientation of fish, and I was looking at the otolithic organs and semicircular canal function of blind and blinded fish. Wolf had just returned from Wisconsin where he had worked with a very difficult professor, T. J. Hassler. (There is a paper by them entitled "Sun orientation and homing in Fishes" Limnology and Oceanography 3:353-361, 1958 by T. J. Hassler, R.M. Horall and W. Braemer 1958.) I had just had a terrible fight with my major professor at the University of Pennsylvania who opposed my coming to Germany, so I think we swapped stories about our awful bosses. I remember several times drinking wine with him in a cafe on the shore of the Starnberger See while Helga was probably home taking care of you kids. Wolf, Helga and I all attended the Seewiesen seminars together that summer and I recall a number of conversations that stemmed from them. I think Helga probably spoke more than Wolfgang in those seminars. Your dad thought quite a while about things before voicing his opinion, and I think the rather fast-paced and very aggressive style of those seminars did not suit him well. (Though he was certainly fearless. You probably know the story that when von Holst showed him the new plans for his Seewiesen Institute and asked him for his opinion, Wolfgang replied something to the effect of "I noticed that you have more closet space than I have laboratory space." Whereupon von Holst said "Sie sind enlassen!" and left for six weeks at the Marine lab in Naples, while your dad did not know if he was fired or not. He wasn't.)

I had come to Seewiesen shortly after Easter and left at the end of the summer to take up an instructor's job on Long Island in the little college that became Stony Brook University, now the largest member of the NY State colleges. I returned to Seewiesen on the invitation of Horst Mittelstaedt after my marriage broke up in the fall of 1963, I had my two older boys, Frank and Jacob aged 4 and 3 with me. I was living in the Holst Boden and I saw Helga frequently. I think that her lab was right next to my room on the 1st (American 2nd) floor. I was extremely fond of your mother, but she was emotionally in deep mourning during the entire year. I went back to Long Island and returned in the summer of 1965 financed by the U.S. Airforce to work on a centrifuge project with fishes, in the new Mittelstaedt Abteilung. I brought wife-to-be, Monica, with me as a technician. I should remark that Horst Mittelstaedt was very kind to some people, in particular: your mother, Evelina von Holst, and,me, giving all three of us employment and/or shelter in times of need.

One of the experiments that your mother did had quite an effect on my own work. However, through an accident, her experiment was never published. She had raised fish in the Seewiesen centrifuge in order to see if the mass of the otolith was controlled by its weight. The idea was that, if the mass was so controlled, then fish raised on a centrifuge would have smaller otoliths than the controls raised under normal conditions. Unfortunately the technician who was carrying all the otoliths in a welled dish tripped, and mixed all the experimental and control otoliths together on the floor. (I thnk I would have almost murdered the technician, but your mother was very controlled and philosophical about it.) It was an ingenious experiment and almost 20 years later I ran the same experiment on the otoconial membranes of chicks (while they were in the egg), and found that there was no difference between centrifuged and non-centrifuged chicks. A similar experiment along the same line showed that the growth of the eye, however, is controlled by an environmental parameter, namely the location of the image. The eyes of chicks raised with negative lenses become longer and they become myopic, while those raised with positive lenses fail to grow in length and become far sighted. This is just to testify to the fact that your mother was a fine scientist and that your father was extremely fortunate in his wife.

The nice thing about e-mail is that it doesn't show the tears. (Helga could have said this.)

I do hope you are all well and prospering. Frank and Jake are both professors (Philosophy at Tulsa and Economics at Wabash College), Frank has two daughters in college, and third in the last year of highschool. Both of Jake's boys have graduated from college, and Monica's and my son, David, a journalist who is now in academia has three little ones 4,6 and 7 years. He and his wife, who is a professor at the University of New Hampshire are now on sabbatic leave in Bristol, England.

We have lots of room in our house, and if any of you get near Ithaca, we would love to see you. We plan to be in Germany next summer for an International Myopia Conference in Tuebingen. Perhaps we will have a chance to get together then.

With sincere condolences and all best wishes for your futures.

Yours, Howard