AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Summary

I lived far apart from my best friend, actually the only close friend I ever had, for the greater part of my life. (Maybe that is why I have often been accused of flirtatiousness instead of true friendship.) He studied biology (botany to be exact); I physics. And many a night we would stroll back and forth between Gluckgasse and Schlüsselgasse engrossed in philosophical conversation. Little did we know then that what seemed original to us had occupied great minds for centuries already. Don't teachers always do their best to avoid these topics for fear that they might conflict with religious doctrines and cause uncomfortable questions? This is the main reason for my turning against religion, which has never done me any harm.

I am not sure whether it was right after the First World War or during the time I spent in Zurich (1921—7) or even later in Berlin (1927-33) that Fränzel and I spent a long evening together again. The small hours of the morning found us still talking in a café on the outskirts of Vienna. He seemed to have changed a lot with the years. After all, our letters had been few and far between and of very little substance.

I might have added earlier that we also spent our time together reading Richard Semon. Never before or after did I read a serious book with anyone else. Richard Semon was soon banned by the biologists, since his views, as they saw them, were based on the inheritance of acquired characteristics.