44 Otto Warburg, artisan of cell chemistry 



dation-reaction of fermentation the phosphate concentration was raised 20-fold 

 The energy cycle and one-quantum reaction of photosynthesis was discovered 

 when the light-dark time intervals measured in manometry were shortened from 

 5 minutes to 1 minute. Or, to mention an earlier classic example: the discovery 

 of Planck's energy quanta was initiated when in 1899 Lummer and Prings- 

 heim placed Kurlbaum's bolometer before a black body heated to different tem- 

 peratures. 



Although Otto Warburg endeavors to advance science mainly through his own 

 experimental works, it cannot be said that he fails to look out for the future of 

 scientists. Thus, he very early recognized the native gifts of Richard Kuhn and 

 Adolf Buten andt, and assisted notably in their obtaining research institutes of the 

 Kaiser Wilhelm Society at relatively youthful ages; he is at present similarly 

 concerned for younger colleagues. For all positions obtained by Otto Meyerhof 

 in Germany — in Kiel, in Berlin, and in Heidelberg — he labored, successfully, 

 against widespread Opposition. After 1933, he helped scores of political refugees 

 to leave Germany and to obtain haven and positions elsewhere. 



But, like the Cowardly Lion of Oz, he was no "resistance-fighter" : he was not 

 prepared to die as a defenceless scientist in combat with political dictators. Yet he 

 has been ever ready to lose his life as a soldier in the army. In World War I, as an 

 officer in the Prussian Horse Guards on the Russian front, he rode in many field 

 patrols in advance of the infantry, and was eventually wounded in action. In the 

 early years of this fighting, he was, by the by, armed with both pistol and — less 

 effective but more sinister — mediaeval lance ! 



He has spent the greater part of his life in Berlin, the most restless city in a rest- 

 less world. Here he was ever favored with luck. In World War II, during the years 

 1939 to 1945, he and his entire staffenjoyed the singular privilege of continuing to 

 work on purely scientific problems without reference to war work. In 1943, as 

 Berlin became dangerous because of air attacks, Prince von Eulenberg placed at 

 his disposal the nearby Castle of Liebenberg, where he and his staff lived and 

 worked, with transported equipment, undisturbed until 1945. In that year the 

 Red Army took possession of the Island of Rügen in the Baltic, and immediately 

 provided a military guard for his estate there, making it possible for him to con- 

 tinue his studies still undisturbed. 



His only misfortune was that in June 1945 the Russians removed all the equip- 

 ment from his institutes. It appears that this took place at the instigation of the 

 local Dahlem communists, for shortly thereafter Marshai Zhukov, Commander-in- 

 Chief of the Russian-occupied zone, invited Warburg for a visit to teil him, in the 

 name of the Russian government, that the dismantling of his institutes had been a 

 mistake, and a misfortune for science. The Marshai issued an order that the 

 apparatus and books be returned, but alas, everything had already been scattered 

 to the four winds. 



After the Yalta-Teheran agreement it became doubtful whether Warburg 

 belonged to the Russian or to the American occupation zone, since he was domi- 

 ciled partly in the Russian zone, on the Island of Rügen, and partly in the American 

 sector of west Berlin; and, furthermore, his Liebenberg institute lay in the Russian 



