Carl Schorlemmer

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The obituary “Carl Schorlemmer“ was published, besides the Vorwärts, by the Hessische Volksstimme (Darmstadt), No. 158,July 7, 1892, the Arbeiter-Zeitung (Vienna), No. 29, July 15, 1892, and the Bulgarian magazine /fewb (Day), Book 7, 1892.

Not only science in all countries, but also German Social Democracy, mourn at the grave earthed in today at the Southern Municipal Cemetefry in Manchester. The great chemist who lies there was a Communist before Lassalle appeared in Germany; far from making any secret of his convictions he was, until his death, an active and regular dues-paying member of the Socialist Party of Germany.

Carl Schorlemmer was born on September 30, 1834 in Darm-stadt, attended gymnasium in his home town, and then studied chemistry in Giessen and Heidelberg. After completing his studies he moved in 1858 to England, where at that time more than one career opened up for talented chemists from the Liebig school. Most of his young colleagues plunged into industry, but he remained true to science, first becoming the assistant of Angus Smith, the private chemist, and then of Roscoe, who shortly before had been appointed professor of chemistry of the newly founded Owens College. In 1861, having previously been Roscoe’s assistant, he was engaged as an official laboratory assistant at Owens College.

The sixties were the time of his remarkable chemical discoveries. Organic chemistry had finally reached the point at which it could develop, from a large number of isolated, more or less incomplete statements about the composition of organic substances, into a real science. Schorlemmer selected the simplest of these substances as his object of investigation, convinced that the foundation of the new science was to be laid here: substances originally consisting only of carbon and hydrogen which become the most manifold and most varied other substances when part of their hydrogen is replaced by other simple or complex substances; these are the paraffins, the best known of which are to be found in petroleum, and from which are derived alcohols, fatty acids, ether, etc. We owe our knowledge about these paraffins today mainly to Schorlemmer. He investigated the existing substances belonging to the paraffin series, separated each one from the others, and produced many of them for the first time in pure form; others, which should have existed theoretically but were not yet known in practice, he discovered and also produced. Thus he became one of the founders of the scientific organic chemistry of today.

Apart from this speciality of his, however, he also devoted a great deal of attention to what is called theoretical chemistry, i.e. to the basic laws of this science, and the way it fits in with related sciences, that is to say physics and physiology. He was particularly capable in this field. He was probably the only important scientist of his time who did not disdain learning from Hegel, at that period despised by many, but esteemed by himself. And rightly so. Anybody who wants to achieve anything in the field of theoreticl integrated science must regard natural phenomen a not as invariable magnitudes, as most do, but as variable and in a state of flux. And this may be most easily learned, even today, from Hegel.

When I got to know Schorlemmer at the beginning of the sixties—within a short time Marx and I became intimately acquainted with him—he often visited me with a bruised and battered face. The paraffins are no playthings, these often still unknown bodies exploded in his hands all the time, and he thus acquired a number of honourable injuries. It was only due to his glasses that he did not lose his sight.

At that time he was already a complete Communist, and all he had to learn from us were the economic grounds for a conviction he had gained long ago. Once he became familiar through us with the progress made by the workers ‘ movement in the various countries, he always followed these events with great interest; but in particular the movement in Germany, after it advanced beyond the first stage of pure Lassalleanism. After I moved to London at the end of 1870, the greater part of our lively correspondence was concerned with the sciences and party affairs.

To that date Schorlemmer, despite his world-wide reputation, had remained in Manchester, a man of very modest status. This now changed. In 1871 he was proposed as a member of the ROYAL SOCIETY, the English Academy of Sciences, and immediately elected, which does not often happen; in 1874 Owens College finally established a new professorship in organic chemistry, specially for him, and soon after the University of Glasgow made him an honorary doctor. But these public honours made absolutely no difference to him. He was the soul of modesty, since his modesty was based upon a correct assessment of his own worth. For this reason he regarded these honours as self-evident, and therefore immaterial.

He regularly spent his holidays in London with Marx and myself, except for the time he spent in Germany. Four years ago he accompanied me on a “whirlwind trip “ to America. But his health was undermined even then; in 1890 we were still able to travel to Norway and the North Cape, but in 1891 his health collapsed at the beginning of a joint journey we attempted, and after this he never came to London again. From February this year he was almost entirely confined to the house, and from May to his bed; on June 27 he succumbed to cancer of the lung.

It was the lot even of this man of science to experience in person the effects of the Anti-Socialist Law. Six or seven years ago he travelled from Switzerland to Darmstadt. Around this time a trunk full of the Sozialdemokrat from Zurich had fallen into the hands of the police somewhere. Who could the smuggler be other than the Social Democratic professor? After all, in the eyes of the police a chemist is a scientifically trained smuggler. So there were raids on the homes of his mother and his brother; but the professor was in Höchst. Immediate telegrams: a domicilary search there too, in which something quite unexpected was found — an English passport. After the promulgation of the Anti-Socialist Law Schorlemmer had had himself naturalised in England. This English passport stopped the police in their tracks; they shied away from diplomatic complications with England. So the upshot was a big scandal in Darmstadt, which was worth at least 500 votes to us at the next election.

In the name of the Party Executive I laid upon the grave of our true friend and comrade a wreath with a red streamer inscribed: “FROM T E EXECUTIVE OF THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF GERMANY”.

London, July 1, 1892

Frederick Engels