August Hirt: Deadly Collector of the Victims

by Anne S. Reamey

S.S.-Hauptsturmführer Prof. Dr. August Hirt was born April 28, 1898 in Mannheim, Germany1 to an old Strasbourg family. Little is known of the life of August Hirt prior to his involvement with the Ahnenerbe leading up to and during World War II, but due to his role in several radical medical experiments and collections, his works during the war have been closely examined. He joined the Institute of Anatomy at the Reichsuniversität (initially the University of Strasbourg, overtaken and turned to the Anatomisches Institut der Reichsuniversität2) early in 1941 where he became the chairman of the anatomy department3. When Hirt became employed at the University4 he was already an established member of the S.S. and the Ahnenerbe Society5 (the Society for the Heritage of the Ancestors).6

August Hirt, like many Nazi doctors, is most closely associated with his role in the medical experimentation on and gassings of groups of Jewish prisoners. What makes him unique was motive: instead of seeing the gassing of prisoners as a quick and effective method of extermination, Hirt wanted to significantly expand the skull and skeleton collection for his institute at the University of Strasbourg.7 He wanted to create a museum of "sub-humans, in which proofs of the degeneracy and the animality of the Jews would be collected." Hirt considered it to be a task of upmost importance and extremely time-sensitive since soon the Jewish population would be completely exterminated, at which point Jewish "skeletons would be as rare and precious as a diplodocus… "." 8

The Report of Death: Catalyst for the Collection of Medical Research

Attached to a letter from Ostuf. (Obersturmführer - First Lieutenant) Wolfram Sievers (Reich Secretary of the Ahnenerbe Society) to Stbf. (Sturmbannführer - Major) Dr. Rudolf Brandt,9 was a report written by Hirt in February 1942 describing the minimal amount of Jewish skulls existing at the Strasbourg Reich University (Reichsuniversität Strasbourg), and how to best procure the desired number of additional skulls through the assistance of the field Military Police ("Feldpolizei").10 It should be noted that in the report, the skulls requested for procurement were those of "Jewish Bolshevik Commissars". Historian Heather Pringle points out in her book, The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust, that "by "commissars," the army actually meant "Jews." Nazi propagandists had skillfully portrayed Soviet political officers and officials as Jews for years, and so deeply engrained was this notion in the minds of many SS and Wehrmacht officers that they simply accepted it as fact."11

In addition to Hirt's personal interest in the collection of skulls he hoped to obtain, it has also been suggested that Hirt himself had considered getting into the skull mail-order business12 as an additional source of income.

Himmler's Response to Hirt's Deadly Proposal

Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler received Hirt's report with great enthusiasm. He was "prodigiously interested" in the project, considering it to be of "enormous value,"13 and according to Jean-Claude Pressac, he "unceasingly gave his entire support to Professor Hirt's proposal."14 Soon after his receipt of the report, Himmler sent Wolfram Sievers15 of the Ahnenerbe Society to meet with Hirt personally, and agreed to the importance of his research. Sievers then worked with Hirt to determine the best method of transportation of his victims.

         A letter used as evidence during the war crime trials at Nuremburg, includes an attachment with a report on "securing skulls of Jewish-Bolshevik Commissars for the purpose of scientific research," which initially allowed Dr. August Hirt to begin his gassings of Auschwitz Jews at Natzweiler - Struthof. A reproduction can be found here.

The Compounding of Hate: Multi-faceted Anti-Semitism Meets the "Final Solution"

So what was it in Hirt's report that caught the eye of Himmler and caused him to be supportive of the proposed "scientific" endeavor? While the Jews were on the top of Hitler's list for extermination, Himmler and Hirt brought together two strands of anti-Semitism: rumors of Jewish conspirators and racism. During the proceedings of the fourth Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, Robert Jay Lifton explained, "On one hand, there is the mystical tradition of anti-Semitism and racism as exemplified by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion - the notorious forgery around the idea of a Jewish world conspiracy involving Jewish Bolsheviks and Jewish capitalists. On the other, there is the "scientific" racism that his study of these skulls directly reflects."16

In the case of Hirt's proposed skull collection enhancement, timing was everything: Only a month prior to Hirt's proposal, a new policy had been secretly adopted at a villa overlooking Großer Wannsee17 that would be known as the "Final Solution." In addition to their decision to exterminate the Jews of Europe, and eventually the world, was the debate of what to do with the Mischlinge ("part-Jews"). "Himmler was keen to take action. He wanted the SS Race and Settlement Office (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt-SS (RuSHA)) to racially evaluate all children of mixed marriages and their progeny for three or four generations, just as agriculturalists did when attempting to breed superior varieties of plants and animals. Descendants who exhibited Jewish traits could then be at least sterilized, if not murdered. For this, the SS needed a much clearer picture of the Jewish Race." 18

The Beginning of the End for the Prisoners of Auschwitz

After receiving permission from Himmler, Hirt began the task of selecting his victims from the prisoners of Auschwitz (although there is some debate as to whether Hirt himself made the selection, or if it was done by SS members Dr. Hans Fleischhacker [Tübingen] and SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. Bruno Berger19 [Munich], who arrived in Auschwitz the first half of 1943 )20, as indicated by Tübingen Professor, Dr. Hans-Joachim Lang21, with the initial selection totaling 115 people - 79 Jewish men, 30 Jewish women, 2 Poles, and 4 "Asians" (most likely Soviet POWs). Once his selections were made, SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. Bruno Berger collected personal data and biometrical measurements from the prisoners, completing his task by June 15, 1943.22

Although the Ahnenerbe supported Hirt by instructing all members working in the concentration camps to collect "any particularly interesting and demonstrative"23 anatomical specimens, the only known victims for the Institute's skeleton collections came directly from Auschwitz-Birkenau. Robert J. Lifton explained that "there were apparently difficulties in rounding up Jewish-Bolshevik commissars and possibly in severing heads, so that it was decided to make use of full skeletons rather than merely skulls and to collect specimens in the place where any such task could be accomplished - namely, Auschwitz." 24

While there were killings in such substantial numbers at Auschwitz that an extra hundred here or there would make relatively little difference, the fate of Hirt's victims was not a well-kept secret among the camp doctors. "Dr. L. had seen enough of Auschwitz to suspect the terrible truth ("I told myself immediately,…. 'They are going to a museum' "), though she and others refrained in saying so because they "lacked the courage," felt it would be more kind to remain silent, and could not in any case be certain of their suspicion." 25

Meanwhile, the collection of potential victims wasn't the only problem to be dealt with. In a memo from Sievers to Brandt, Sievers quotes the concerns of Hirt: the preparations of Natzweiler-Struthof were going too slowly. More importantly, the camp's administration demanded that Hirt's Institute pay for the prisoners throughout their stay at the camp. This spurred great debates as to who was to pay for the project, and how payments were to be made.

The reproduction of a letter that describes the relationship between Dr. Hirt and the Natzweiler-Struthof camp administration, including the attempt to attach a price to each victim gassed as part of Hirt's "research" as compensation to the camp, can be found here.

Death at Natzweiler-Struthof

Following the initial selection, the prisoners were held inside of the quarantine office at Auschwitz due to the outbreak of a typhus epidemic26 before being relocated to Natzweiler-Struthof, the only extermination camp on French territory.27

Both prior to and following the second World War, Natzweiler-Struthof (31 miles outside of Strasbourg), perched 2,500 feet up on the top of a mountain in the Vosges Mountains, was used as a ski resort for tourists. It is only during WWII that the now-serene location (ironically one that mimicked the German Schwarzwald across the Rhine River) was used as a concentration camp. Originally the camp, known as "Le Struthof" to the French, was not intended as a death camp for mass exterminations, but rather to house Anti-Fascist resistance-fighters and convicted German criminals,28 often referred to as the "Nacht und Nebel" (Night and Fog) operation because fighters were arrested without warning, and without notification to their families, making them appear to simply disappear into the fog. 29

The camp itself, holding only about 1,500 prisoners at a time30 (one of the smaller camps constructed by the Germans), was run by the "brutality incarnate" Joseph Kramer 31 (condemned to death and executed, 10th Military Region archives). Instead of being located immediately within the camp, the building was located about a mile away off a small side road, making the location almost peaceful.32 Due to the local quarries filled with red granite, the prisoners of Struthof were subjected to manual labor in order to create new monuments for Germany.33

The building eventually used as the gas chamber was originally used as a refrigerator room with cold storage chambers by the Struthof hotel, and converted in April 1943 to a site to test the gas masks of SS recruits34 by filling the building with tear-gas35 to help prepare the recruits for the dangers of chemical warfare.

The gas experimentation chamber was modified in August of 1943 to allow for the gassings at the suggestion of Kramer. He considered the similarities of the tear-gas testing with the requirements of a building that was to use the "hydrocyanic salts" Hirt provided to Kramer for the killings. Already lined with white tiles and kept cool by blocks of ice, the SS works doctorate named the site "Bauwerk 10" or building site 10.36 The adaptation of the building was completed between August 3 and 12, 1943.37

The wall of the chamber was perforated below and to the right of the peep-hole. A metal pipe was passed through, with the inside end opening into a small porcelain basin, and the outside wnd consisting of a 1.5 litre fullel equipped with a tap flow and safety control. According to a plan drawn up when the camp was liberated, it seems that a protective housing was installed, hiding the equipment from view… Kramer proceeded as described in his 2nd deposition of the 6 December 1945. In fact, there was no other way to carry out the operation. Water poured into the funnel flowed onto a substance previously placed in the basin, triggering the release of hydrocyanic gas ("Gas Blausäure") .38

As knowledge of the camp spread to the United States, so did the awareness of Hirt's victims, according to The Simon Wiesenthal Center and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The Nuremberg IMT (International Military Tribunal) records indicate that an assistant to Dr. Hirt secretly noted the numbers tattooed on the arms of the 86 victims, making their identification possible.39

The Arrival of Hirt's Victims at Natzweiler-Struthof

Although there is little information regarding the time gap between June 15, 1943 when Dr. Bruno Berger completed his part of the record-keeping and the time of the arrival of the prisoners from Auschwitz to Natzweiler-Struthof, the records that are available indicated that the 2 month gap took place during the quarantine of prisoners during the typhus outbreak at Auschwitz. Once it was considered that the prisoners could be transported, they were moved to Natzweiler-Struthof in August of 1943. Joseph Kramer, commandant of Natzweiler-Struthof, recalled, "during the month of August 1943, I received from the Supreme S.S. Commandant in Berlin an order to accept about 80 prisoners from Auschwitz. I was to get in touch with Professor Hirt." 40

Once the prisoners did arrive, we have a clear account of the events that followed given at the Military Tribunal in Strasbourg by Joseph Kramer. Kramer was instructed to meet Hirt at the Institute of Anatomy. During their meeting, Hirt provided Kramer with instructions to gas the convoy using crystals Hirt supplied for their "treatment." There is some debate as to the exact contents of the flask given to Kramer by Hirt, but it usually falls within two possible answers:

Either the flask provided by Hirt, with a capacity of about 250 ml, contained an inert combination of sodium or potassium cyanide thoroughly mixed with a crystalline acid, such as citric, oxalic or tartic acid, these being two agents that react with one another only in an aqueous medium. Or the flask contained calcium cyanide, which has the peculiarity of decomposing in water with hydrocyanic acid release. It would be possible to determine exactly what substance was used by complicated calculations, based on the volume of the gas chamber (approximately 20m cubed), the quantity used (1/3 or ¼ of 250 ml), and the expected HCN release, as a function of the amount of water added, needed to bring the room's atmosphere rapidly up to a lethal concentration for man.41

During his conversation with Hirt, Kramer was also told he was to divide the bodies into smaller groups to be delivered directly to Hirt following the gassings.42

One evening, about nine o-clock, the eighty prisoners arrived. I led about fifteen women to the gas chamber. I told them they were going to be 'disinfected.' With the help of some of the S.S. guards, I got them completely undressed and pushed them into the gas chamber. When I closed the door they began to scream. I put some of the crystals that Hirt had given me into the funnel above the observation window. I would watch everything that was going on inside through it. The women continued to breathe for half a minute and then fell to the floor. I turned on the ventilation, and when I opened the door they were lying dead on the ground, full of shit. I told some of the male S.S. nurses to put the bodies in a truck and take them to the Institute of Anatomy at 5:30 the next morning.43

Following the initial gassing, the same procedure was repeated with four or five more groups over a period of three nights.44 In total, 86 people would fall victim to Kramer's gassings. It should be noted that the discrepancy in numbers by multiple sources (86 versus 87 bodies) was due to an incident that took place at Natzweiler-Struthof. As the victims were being herded into the gas chamber, one prisoner resisted and was shot by an SS officer. Due to the pistol's bullet wound, the body was not sent to Strasbourg with the others because it was considered "spoiled."45

   

Extract from interrogation of Josef Kramer by Major Jadin, military investigative judge with the Military Tribunal in Strasbourg on the 26 July 1945:

'As soon as I locked the door, they started to scream..Once the door was locked, I placed a fixed quantity of the salts in a funnel attached below and to the right of the peep-hole....

Biografia de Monteiro Lobato

Monteiro Lobato (1882-1948) foi um escritor brasileiro. "O Sítio do Pica-pau Amarelo" é uma de suas obras de maior destaque na literatura infantil. Foi um dos primeiros autores de literatura infantil em nosso país e em toda América Latina. Tornou-se editor, criando a "Editora Monteiro Lobato" e mais tarde a "Companhia Editora Nacional". Metade de suas obras é formada de literatura infantil.

Monteiro Lobato (1882-1948) nasceu em Taubaté, São Paulo, no dia 18 de abril de 1882. Era filho de José Bento Marcondes Lobato e Olímpia Monteiro Lobato. Alfabetizado pela mãe, logo despertou o gosto pela leitura, lendo todos os livros infantis da biblioteca de seu avô o Visconde de Tremembé. Desde menino já mostrava seu temperamento irrequieto, escandalizou a sociedade quando se recusou fazer a primeira comunhão. Fez o curso secundário em Taubaté. Com 13 anos foi estudar em São Paulo, no Instituto de Ciências e Letras, se preparando para a faculdade de Direito.

Registrado com o nome de José Renato Monteiro Lobato, resolve mudar de nome, pois queria usar uma bengala, que era de seu pai, que havia falecido no dia 13 de junho de 1898. A bengala tinha as iniciais J.B.M.L gravadas no topo do castão, então mudou de nome, passou a se chamar José Bento, assim as suas iniciais ficavam iguais às do pai.

Ingressou na Faculdade de Direito do Largo de São Francisco na capital, formando-se em 1904. Na festa de formatura fez um discurso tão agressivo que vários professores, padres e bispos se retiraram da sala. Nesse mesmo ano voltou para Taubaté. Prestou concurso para a Promotoria Pública, assumindo o cargo na cidade de Areias, no Vale do Parnaíba, no ano de 1907.

Monteiro Lobato casou-se com Maria Pureza da Natividade, em 28 de março de 1908. Com ela teve quatro filhos, Marta (1909), Edgar (1910), Guilherme (1912) e Rute (1916). Paralelamente ao cargo de Promotor, escrevia para vários jornais e revistas, fazia desenhos e caricaturas. Ficou em Areias até 1911, quando muda-se para Taubaté, para a fazenda Buquira, deixada como herança pelo seu avô.

No dia 12 de novembro de 1912, o jornal O Estado de São Paulo publicou uma carta sua enviada à redação, intitulada "Velha Praga", onde destaca a ignorância do caboclo, criticando as queimadas e que a miséria tornava incapaz o desenvolvimento da agricultura na região. Sua carta foi publicada e causou grande polêmica. Mais tarde, publica novo artigo "Urupês", onde aparece pela primeira vez o personagem "Jeca Tatu".

Em 1917 vende a fazenda e vai morar em Caçapava, onde funda a revista "Paraíba". Nos 12 números publicados, teve como colaboradores Coelho Neto, Olavo Bilac, Cassiano Ricardo entre outras importantes figuras da literatura. Muda-se para São Paulo, onde colabora para a "Revista do Brasil". Entusiasmado compra a revista e, transformando-se em editor. Publica em 1918, seu primeiro livro "Urupês", que esgota sucessivas tiragens. Transforma a Revista em centro de cultura e a editora numa rede de distribuição com mais de mil representantes.

No dia 20 de dezembro de 1917, publica no jornal O Estado de São Paulo, um artigo intitulado "Paranoia ou Mistificação?", onde critica a exposição de Anita Malfatti, pintora paulista recém chegada da Europa. Estava criada uma polêmica, que acabou se transformando em estopim do movimento modernista.

Monteiro Lobato, em sociedade com Octalles Marcondes Ferreira, funda a "Companhia Gráfico-Editora Monteiro Lobato". Com o racionamento de energia, a editora vai à falência. Vendem tudo e fundam a "Companhia Editora Nacional". Lobato muda-se para o Rio de Janeiro e começa a publicar livros para crianças. Em 1921 publica "Narizinho Arrebitado", livro de leitura para as escolas. A obra fez grande sucesso, o que levou o autor a prolongar as aventuras de seu personagem em outros livros girando todos ao redor do "Sítio do Pica-pau Amarelo". Em 1927 é nomeado, por Washington Luís, adido comercial nos Estados Unidos, onde permanece até 1931.

Como escritor literário, Lobato destacou-se no gênero "conto". O universo retratado, em geral são os vilarejos decadentes e as populações do Vale do Parnaíba, quando da crise do plantio do café. Em seu livro "Urupês", que foi sua estreia na literatura, Lobato criou a figura do "Jeca Tatu", símbolo do caipira brasileiro. As histórias do "Sítio do Picapau Amarelo", e seus habitantes, Emília, Dona Benta, Pedrinho, Tia Anastácia, Narizinho, Rabicó e tantos outros, misturam a realidade e a fantasia usando uma linguagem coloquial e acessível.

O livro "Caçadas de Pedrinho", publicado em 1933, que faz parte do Programa Nacional Biblioteca na Escola, do Ministério da Educação, está sendo questionado pelo movimento negro, por conter "elementos racistas". O livro relata a caçada a uma onça que está rondando o sítio. "É guerra e das boas, não vai escapar ninguém, nem tia Anastácia, que tem cara preta".

José Renato Monteiro Lobato morreu no dia 5 de julho de 1948, de problemas cardíacos.

Obras de Monteiro Lobato

Idéias de Jeca Tatu, conto, 1918

Urupês, conto, 1918

Cidades Mortas, conto, 1920

Negrinha, conto, 1920

O Saci, literatura infantil, 1921

Fábulas de Narizinho, literatura infantil, 1921

Narizinho Arrebitado, literatura infantil, 1921

O Marquês de Rabicó, literatura infantil, 1922

O Macaco que se fez Homem, romance, 1923

Mundo da Lua, romance, 1923

Caçadas de Hans Staden, literatura infantil, 1927

Peter Pan, literatura infantil, 1930

Reinações de Narizinho, literatura infantil, 1931

Viagem ao Céu, literatura infantil, 1931

Caçadas de Pedrinho, 1933

Emília no País da Gramática, literatura infantil, 1934

História das Invenções, literatura infantil, 1935

Memórias da Emília, literatura infantil, 1936

Histórias de Tia Nastacia, literatura infantil, 1937

Serões de Dona Benta, literatura infantil, 1937

O Pica-pau Amarelo, literatura infantil, 1939

Fábulas de Monteiro Lobato

O Cavalo e o Burro

A Coruja e a Águia

O Lobo e o Cordeiro

O Corvo e o Pavão

A Formiga Má

A Garça Velha

As Duas Cachorras

O Jaboti e a Peúva

O Macaco e o Coelho

O Rabo do Macaco

Os Dois Burrinhos

Os Dois Ladrões

A caçada da Onça

Jeca Tatu

The grand stately Jules Verne

Jules Verne

Jules Verne, (born Feb. 8, 1828, Nantes, France—died March 24, 1905, Amiens), prolific French author whose writings laid much of the foundation of modern science fiction.

Verne’s father, intending that Jules follow in his footsteps as an attorney, sent him to Paris to study law. But the young Verne fell in love with literature, especially theatre. He wrote several plays, worked as secretary of the Théâtre Lyrique (1852–54), and published short stories and scientific essays in the periodical Musée des familles. In 1857 Verne married and for several years worked as a broker at the Paris Stock Market. During this period he continued to write, to do research at the Bibliothèque Nationale (National Library), and to dream of a new kind of novel—one that would combine scientific fact with adventure fiction. In September 1862 Verne met Pierre-Jules Hetzel, who agreed to publish the first of Verne’s Voyages extraordinaires (“Extraordinary Journeys”)—Cinq semaines en balloon (1863; Five Weeks in a Balloon). Initially serialized in Hetzel’s Le Magasin d’éducation et de récréation, the novel became an international best seller, and Hetzel offered Verne a long-term contract to produce many more works of “scientific fiction.” Verne subsequently quit his job at the stock market to become a full-time writer and began what would prove to be a highly successful author-publisher collaboration that lasted for more than 40 years and resulted in more than 60 works in the popular series Voyages extraordinaires.

Verne’s works can be divided into three distinct phases. The first, from 1862 to 1886, might be termed his positivist period. After his dystopian second novel Paris au XXe siècle (1994; Paris in the 20th Century) was rejected by Hetzel in 1863, Verne learned his lesson, and for more than two decades he churned out many successful science-adventure novels, including Voyage au centre de la terre (1863, expanded 1867; Journey to the Centre of the Earth), De la terre à la lune (1865; From the Earth to the Moon), Autour de la lune (1870; Trip Around the Moon), Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1870; Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea), and Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (1873; Around the World in Eighty Days). During these years Verne settled with his family in Amiens and made a brief trip to the United States to visit New York City and Niagara Falls. During this period he also purchased several yachts and sailed to many European countries, collaborated on theatre adaptations of several of his novels, and gained both worldwide fame and a modest fortune.

Illustration from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Captain Nemo observes an octopus through the window of the submarine.

The second phase, from 1886 until his death in 1905, might be considered Verne’s pessimist period. Throughout these years the ideological tone of his Voyages extraordinaires began to change. Increasingly Verne turned away from pro-science tales of exploration and discovery in favour of exploring the dangers of technology wrought by hubris-filled scientists in novels such as Sans dessus dessous (1889; Topsy-Turvy), L’Île à hélice (1895; Floating Island), Face au drapeau (1896; For the Flag), and Maître du monde (1904; Master of the World). This change of focus also paralleled certain adversities in the author’s personal life: growing problems with his rebellious son, Michel; financial difficulties that forced him to sell his yacht; the successive deaths of his mother and his mentor Hetzel; and an attack by a mentally disturbed nephew who shot him in the lower leg, rendering him partially crippled. When Verne died he left a drawerful of nearly completed manuscripts in his desk.

The third and final phase of the Jules Verne story, from 1905 to 1919, might be considered the Verne fils period, when his posthumous works were published—after being substantially revamped—by his son, Michel. They include Le Volcan d’or (1906; The Golden Volcano), L’Agence Thompson and Co. (1907; The Thompson Travel Agency), La Chasse au météore (1908; The Chase of the Golden Meteor), Le Pilote du Danube (1908; The Danube Pilot), Les Naufragés du Jonathan (1909; The Survivors of the Jonathan), Le Secret de Wilhelm Storitz (1910; The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz), Hier et demain (1910; Yesterday and Tomorrow, a collection of short stories), and L’Étonnante aventure de la mission Barsac (1919; The Barsac Mission). Comparing Verne’s original manuscripts with the versions published after his death, modern researchers discovered that Michel Verne did much more than merely edit them. In most cases he entirely rewrote them—among other changes, he recast plots, added fictional characters, and made their style more melodramatic. Scholarly reaction to these discoveries has been mixed. Some critics condemn these posthumous works as contaminated; others view them as a legitimate part of the Verne père et fils collaboration. The debate continues With Michel Verne’s death in 1925, the final chapter of Jules Verne’s literary legacy was more or less complete. The following year American publisher Hugo Gernsback used a representation of Verne’s tomb as a logo for his Amazing Stories, the first literary magazine featuring tales of “scientifiction.” As the term scientifiction evolved into science fiction, the new genre began to flourish as never before, and Verne became universally recognized as its patron saint.

The psychologist and philosopher Jean Piaget.

Jean Piaget was a Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher known for his epistemological studies with children. His theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology".

Biography

Jean Piaget was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, on August 9, 1896.  His father, Arthur Piaget, was a professor of medieval literature with an interest in local history.  His mother, Rebecca Jackson, was intelligent and energetic, but Jean found her a bit neurotic -- an impression that he said led to his interest in psychology, but away from pathology!  The oldest child, he was quite independent and took an early interest in nature, especially the collecting of shells.  He published his first “paper” when he was ten -- a one page account of his sighting of an albino sparrow.

He began publishing in earnest in high school on his favorite subject, mollusks.  He was particularly pleased to get a part time job with the director of Nuechâtel’s Museum of Natural History, Mr. Godel.  His work became well known among European students of mollusks, who assumed he was an adult!  All this early experience with science kept him away, he says, from “the demon of philosophy.”

Later in adolescence, he faced a bit a crisis of faith:  Encouraged by his mother to attend religious instruction, he found religious argument childish.  Studying various philosophers and the application of logic, he dedicated himself to finding a “biological explanation of knowledge.”  Ultimately, philosophy failed to assist him in his search, so he turned to psychology.

After high school, he went on to the University of Neuchâtel.  Constantly studying and writing, he became sickly, and had to retire to the mountains for a year to recuperate.  When he returned to Neuchâtel, he decided he would write down his philosophy.  A fundamental point became a centerpiece for his entire life’s work:  “In all fields of life (organic, mental, social) there exist ‘totalities’ qualitatively distinct from their parts and imposing on them an organization.” This principle forms the basis of his structuralist philosophy, as it would for the Gestaltists, Systems Theorists, and many others.

In 1918, Piaget received his Doctorate in Science from the University of Neuchâtel.  He worked for a year at psychology labs in Zurich and at Bleuler’s famous psychiatric clinic.  During this period, he was introduced to the works of Freud, Jung, and others.  In 1919, he taught psychology and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris.  Here he met Simon (of Simon-Binet fame) and did research on intelligence testing.  He didn’t care for the “right-or-wrong” style of the intelligent tests and started interviewing his subjects at a boys school instead, using the psychiatric interviewing techniques he had learned the year before.  In other words, he began asking how children reasoned.

In 1921, his first article on the psychology of intelligence was published in the Journal de Psychologie.  In the same year, he accepted a position at the Institut J. J. Rousseau in Geneva.  Here he began with his students to research the reasoning of elementary school children.  This research became his first five books on child psychology.  Although he considered this work highly preliminary, he was surprised by the strong positive public reaction to his work.

In 1923, he married one of his student coworkers, Valentine Châtenay.  In 1925, their first daughter was born; in 1927, their second daughter was born; and in 1931, their only son was born.  They immediately became the focus of intense observation by Piaget and his wife.  This research became three more books!

In 1929, Piaget began work as the director of the International Bureau of Education, a post he would hold until 1967.  He also began large scale research with A. Szeminska, E. Meyer, and especially Bärbel Inhelder, who would become his major collaborator.  Piaget, it should be noted, was particularly influential in bringing women into experimental psychology.  Some of this work, however, wouldn’t reach the world outside of Switzerland until World War II was over.

In 1940, He became chair of Experimental Psychology, the Director of the psychology laboratory, and the president of the Swiss Society of Psychology.  In 1942, he gave a series of lectures at the Collège de France, during the Nazi occupation of France.  These lectures became The Psychology of Intelligence.  At the end of the war, he was named President of the Swiss Commission of UNESCO.

Also during this period, he received a number of honorary degrees.  He received one  from the Sorbonne in 1946, the University of Brussels and the University of Brazil in 1949, on top of an earlier one from Harvard in 1936.  And, in 1949 and 1950, he published his synthesis, Introduction to Genetic Epistemology.

In 1952, he became a professor at the Sorbonne.  In 1955, he created the International Center for Genetic Epistemology, of which he served as director the rest of his life.  And, in 1956, he created the School of Sciences at the University of Geneva.

He continued working on a general theory of structures and tying his psychological work to biology for many more years.  Likewise, he continued his public service through UNESCO as a Swiss delegate.  By the end of his career, he had written over 60 books and many hundreds of articles.  He died in Geneva, September 16, 1980, one of the most significant psychologists of the twentieth century.

Theory

Jean Piaget began his career as a biologist -- specifically, a malacologist!  But his interest in science and the history of science soon overtook his interest in snails and clams.  As he delved deeper into the thought-processes of doing science, he became interested in the nature of thought itself, especially in the development of thinking.  Finding relatively little work done in the area, he had the opportunity to give it a label.  He called it genetic epistemology, meaning the study of the development of knowledge.

He noticed, for example, that even infants have certain skills in regard to objects in their environment.  These skills were certainly simple ones, sensori-motor skills, but they directed the way in which the infant explored his or her environment and so how they gained more knowledge of the world and more sophisticated exploratory skills.  These skills he called schemas.

For example, an infant knows how to grab his favorite rattle and thrust it into his mouth.  He’s got that schema down pat.  When he comes across some other object -- say daddy’s expensive watch, he easily learns to transfer his “grab and thrust” schema to the new object.  This Piaget called assimilation, specifically assimilating a new object into an old schema.

When our infant comes across another object again -- say a beach ball -- he will try his old schema of grab and thrust.  This of course works poorly with the new object.  So the schema will adapt to the new object:  Perhaps, in this example, “squeeze and drool” would be an appropriate title for the new schema.  This is called accommodation, specifically accomodating an old schema to a new object.

Assimilation and accommodation are the two sides of adaptation, Piaget’s term for what most of us would call learning.  Piaget saw adaptation, however, as a good deal broader than the kind of learning that Behaviorists in the US were talking about.  He saw it as a fundamentally biological process.  Even one’s grip has to accommodate to a stone, while clay is assimilated into our grip.  All living things adapt, even without a nervous system or brain.

Assimilation and accommodation work like pendulum swings at advancing our understanding of the world and our competency in it.  According to Piaget, they are directed at a balance between the structure of the mind and the environment, at a certain congruency between the two, that would indicate that you have a good (or at least good-enough) model of the universe.  This ideal state he calls equilibrium.

As he continued his investigation of children, he noted that there were periods where assimilation dominated, periods where accommodation dominated, and periods of relative equilibrium, and that these periods were similar among all the children he looked at in their nature and their timing.  And so he developed the idea of stages of cognitive development.  These constitute a lasting contribution to psychology.

The sensorimotor stage

The first stage, to which we have already referred, is the sensorimotor stage.  It lasts from birth to about two years old.  As the name implies, the infant uses senses and motor abilities to understand the world, beginning with reflexes and ending with complex combinations of sensorimotor skills.

Between one and four months, the child works on primary circular reactions -- just an action of his own which serves as a stimulus to which it responds with the same action, and around and around we go.  For example, the baby may suck her thumb.  That feels good, so she sucks some more...  Or she may blow a bubble.  That’s interesting so I’ll do it again....

Between four and 12 months, the infant turns to secondary circular reactions, which involve an act that extends out to the environment:  She may squeeze a rubber duckie.  It goes “quack.”  That’s great, so do it again, and again, and again.  She is learning “procedures that make interesting things last.”

At this point, other things begin to show up as well.  For example, babies become ticklish, although they must be aware that someone else is tickling them or it won’t work.  And they begin to develop object permanence.  This is the ability to recognize that, just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s gone!  Younger infants seem to function by an “out of sight, out of mind” schema.  Older infants remember, and may even try to find things they can no longer see.

Between 12 months and 24 months, the child works on tertiary circular reactions.  They consist of the same “making interesting things last” cycle, except with constant variation.  I hit the drum with the stick -- rat-tat-tat-tat.  I hit the block with the stick -- thump-thump.  I hit the table with the stick -- clunk-clunk.  I hit daddy with the stick -- ouch-ouch.  This kind of active experimentation is best seen during feeding time, when discovering new and interesting ways of throwing your spoon, dish, and food.

Around one and a half, the child is clearly developing mental representation, that is, the ability to hold an image in their mind for a period beyond the immediate experience.  For example, they can engage in deferred imitation, such as throwing a tantrum after seeing one an hour ago.  They can use mental combinations to solve simple problems, such as putting down a toy in order to open a door.  And they get good at pretending.  Instead of using dollies essentially as something to sit at, suck on, or throw, now the child will sing to it, tuck it into bed, and so on.

Preoperational stage

The preoperational stage lasts from about two to about seven years old.  Now that the child has mental representations and is able to pretend, it is a short step to the use of symbols.

A symbol is a thing that represents something else.  A drawing, a written word, or a spoken word comes to be understood as representing a real dog.  The use of language is, of course, the prime example, but another good example of symbol use is creative play, wherein checkers are cookies, papers are dishes, a box is the table, and so on.  By manipulating symbols, we are essentially thinking, in a way the infant could not:  in the absence of the actual objects involved!

Along with symbolization, there is a clear understanding of past and future.  for example, if a child is crying for its mother, and you say “Mommy will be home soon,” it will now tend to stop crying.  Or if you ask him, “Remember when you fell down?” he will respond by making a sad face.

On the other hand, the child is quite egocentric during this stage, that is, he sees things pretty much from one point of view:  his own!  She may hold up a picture so only she can see it and expect you to see it too. Or she may explain that grass grows so she won’t get hurt when she falls.

Piaget did a study to investigate this phenomenon called the mountains study.  He would put children in front of a simple plaster mountain range and seat himself to the side, then ask them to pick from four pictures the view that he, Piaget, would see.  Younger children would pick the picture of the view they themselves saw; older kids picked correctly.

Similarly, younger children center on one aspect of any problem or communication at a time.  for example, they may not understand you when you tell them “Your father is my husband.”  Or they may say things like “I don’t live in the USA; I live in Pennsylvania!”  Or, if you show them five black and three white marbles and ask them “Are there more marbles or more black marbles?” they will respond “More black ones!”

Perhaps the most famous example of the preoperational child’s centrism is what Piaget refers to as their inability to conserve liquid volume.  If I give a three year old some chocolate milk in a tall skinny glass, and I give myself a whole lot more in a short fat glass, she will tend to focus on only one of the dimensions of the glass.  Since the milk in the tall skinny glass goes up much higher, she is likely to assume that there is more milk in that one than in the short fat glass, even though there is far more in the latter.  It is the development of the child's ability to decenter that marks him as havingmoved to the next stage.

Concrete operations stage

The concrete operations stage lasts from about seven to about 11.  The word operations refers to logical operations or principles we use when solving problems.  In this stage, the child not only uses symbols representationally, but can manipulate those symbols logically.  Quite an accomplishment! But, at this point, they must still perform these operations within the context of concrete situations.

The stage begins with progressive decentering.  By six or seven, most children develop the ability to conserve number, length, and liquid volume.  Conservation refers to the idea that a quantity remains the same despite changes in appearance.  If you show a child four marbles in a row, then spread them out, the preoperational child will focus on the spread, and tend to believe that there are now more marbles than before.

Or if you have two five inch sticks laid parallel to each other, then move one of them a little, she may believe that the moved stick is now longer than the other.

The concrete operations child, on the other hand, will know that there are still four marbles, and that the stick doesn’t change length even though it now extends beyond the other.  And he will know that you have to look at more than just the height of the milk in the glass:  If you pour the mild from the short, fat glass into the tall, skinny glass, he will tell you that there is the same amount of milk as before, despite the dramatic increase in mild-level!

By seven or eight years old, children develop conservation of substance:  If I take a ball of clay and roll it into a long thin rod, or even split it into ten little pieces, the child knows that there is still the same amount of clay.  And he will know that, if you rolled it all back into a single ball, it would look quite the same as it did -- a feature known as reversibility.

By nine or ten, the last of the conservation tests is mastered:  conservation of area.  If you take four one-inch square pieces of felt, and lay them on a six-by-six cloth together in the center, the child who conserves will know that they take up just as much room as the same squares spread out in the corners, or, for that matter, anywhere at all.

If all this sounds too easy to be such a big deal, test your friends on conservation of mass:  Which is heavier:  a million tons of lead, or a million tons of feathers?

In addition, a child learns classification and seriation during this stage.  Classification refers back to the question of whether there are more marbles or more black marbles?  Now the child begins to get the idea that one set can include another.  Seriation is putting things in order.  The younger child may start putting things in order by, say size, but will quickly lose track.  Now the child has no problem with such a task.  Since arithmetic is essentially nothing more than classification and seriation, the child is now ready for some formal education!

Formal operations stage

But the concrete operations child has a hard time applying his new-found logical abilities to non-concrete -- i.e. abstract -- events.  If mom says to junior “You shouldn’t make fun of that boy’s nose.  How would you feel if someone did that to you?” he is likely to respond “I don’t have a big nose!”  Even this simple lesson may well be too abstract, too hypothetical, for his kind of thinking.

Don’t judge the concrete operations child too harshly, though.  Even adults are often taken-aback when we present them with something hypothetical:  “If Edith has a lighter complexion than Susan, and Edith is darker than Lily, who is the darkest?”  Most people need a moment or two.

From around 12 on, we enter the formal operations stage.  Here we become increasingly competent at adult-style thinking.  This involves using logical operations, and using them in the abstract, rather than the concrete.  We often call this hypothetical thinking.

Here’s a simple example of a task that a concrete operations child couldn’t do, but which a formal operations teenager or adult could -- with a little time and effort.  Consider this rule about a set of cards that have letters on one side and numbers on the other:  “If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an even number on the other side.”  Take a look at the cards below and tell me, which cards do I need to turn over to tell if this rule is actually true?  You’ll find the answer at the end of this chapter.

It is the formal operations stage that allows one to investigate a problem in a careful and systematic fashion.  Ask a 16 year old to tell you the rules for making pendulums swing quickly or slowly, and he may proceed like this:

A long string with a light weight -- let’s see how fast that swings.

A long string with a heavy weight -- let’s try that.

Now, a short string with a light weight.

And finally, a short string with a heavy weight.

His experiment -- and it is an experiment -- would tell him that a short string leads to a fast swing, and a long string to a slow swing, and that the weight of the pendulum means nothing at all!

The teenager has learned to group possibilities in four different ways:

By conjunction:  “Both A and B make a difference” (e.g. both the string’s length and the pendulum’s weight).

By disjunction:  “It’s either this or that” (e.g. it’s either the length or the weight).

By implication:  “If it’s this, then that will happen” (the formation of a hypothesis).

By incompatibility:  “When this happens, that doesn’t” (the elimination of a hypothesis).

On top of that, he can operate on the operations -- a higher level of grouping.  If you have a proposition, such as “it could be the string or the weight,” you can do four things with it:

Identity:  Leave it alone. “It could be the string or the weight.”

Negation:  Negate the components and replace or’s with and’s (and vice versa). “It might not be the string and not the weight, either.”

Reciprocity:  Negate the components but keep the and’s and or’s as they are.  “Either it is not the weight or it is not the string.”

Correlativity:  Keep the components as they are, but replace or’s with and’s, etc.  “It’s the weight and the string.”

Someone who has developed his or her formal operations will understand that the correlate of a reciprocal is a negation, that a reciprocal of a negation is a correlate, that the negation of a correlate is a reciprocal, and that the negation of a reciprocal of a correlate is an identity (phew!!!).

Maybe it has already occured to you:  It doesn’t seem that the formal operations stage is something everyone actually gets to.  Even those of us who do don’t operate in it at all times.  Even some cultures, it seems, don’t develop it or value it like ours does.  Abstract reasoning is simply not universal.

[Answer to the card question:  The E and the 7.  The E must have an even number on the back -- that much is obvious.  the 7 is odd, so it cannot have a vowel on the other side -- that would be against the rule!  But the rule says nothing about what has to be on the back of a consonant such as the K, nor does it say that the 4 musthave a vowel on the other side!]

Charles I, second Stuart King of England.

Charles I in three positions - multiple portrait by Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641).

Charles I was born in Fife on 19 November 1600, the second son of James VI of Scotland (from 1603 also James I of England) and Anne of Denmark.

He became heir to the throne on the death of his brother, Prince Henry, in 1612. He succeeded, as the second Stuart King of England, in 1625.

Controversy and disputes dogged Charles throughout his reign. They eventually led to civil wars, first with the Scots from 1637 and later in England (1642-46 and 1648). The wars deeply divided people at the time, and historians still disagree about the real causes of the conflict, but it is clear that Charles was not a successful ruler.

Charles was reserved (he had a residual stammer), self-righteous and had a high concept of royal authority, believing in the divine right of kings. He was a good linguist and a sensitive man of refined tastes.

He spent a lot on the arts, inviting the artists Van Dyck and Rubens to work in England, and buying a great collection of paintings by Raphael and Titian (this collection was later dispersed under Cromwell). Charles I also instituted the post of Master of the King's Music, involving supervision of the King's large band of musicians; the post survives today.

His expenditure on his court and his picture collection greatly increased the crown's debts. Indeed, crippling lack of money was a key problem for both the early Stuart monarchs.

Charles was also deeply religious. He favoured the high Anglican form of worship, with much ritual, while many of his subjects, particularly in Scotland, wanted plainer forms.

Charles found himself ever more in disagreement on religious and financial matters with many leading citizens. Having broken an engagement to the Spanish infanta, he had married a Roman Catholic, Henrietta Maria of France, and this only made matters worse.

Although Charles had promised Parliament in 1624 that there would be no advantages for recusants (people refusing to attend Church of England services), were he to marry a Roman Catholic bride, the French insisted on a commitment to remove all disabilities upon Roman Catholic subjects.

Charles's lack of scruple was shown by the fact that this commitment was secretly added to the marriage treaty, despite his promise to Parliament.

Charles had inherited disagreements with Parliament from his father, but his own actions (particularly engaging in ill-fated wars with France and Spain at the same time) eventually brought about a crisis in 1628-29.

Two expeditions to France failed - one of which had been led by Buckingham, a royal favourite of both James I and Charles I, who had gained political influence and military power.

Such was the general dislike of Buckingham, that he was impeached by Parliament in 1628, although he was murdered by a fanatic before he could lead the second expedition to France.

The political controversy over Buckingham demonstrated that, although the monarch's right to choose his own Ministers was accepted as an essential part of the royal prerogative, Ministers had to be acceptable to Parliament or there would be repeated confrontations.

The King's chief opponent in Parliament until 1629 was Sir John Eliot, who was finally imprisoned in the Tower of London until his death in 1632.

Tensions between the King and Parliament centred around finances, made worse by the costs of war abroad, and by religious suspicions at home. Charles's marriage was seen as ominous, at a time when plots against Elizabeth I and the Gunpowder Plot in James I's reign were still fresh in the collective memory, and when the Protestant cause was going badly in the war in Europe.

In the first four years of his rule, Charles was faced with the alternative of either obtaining parliamentary funding and having his policies questioned by argumentative Parliaments who linked the issue of supply to remedying their grievances, or conducting a war without subsidies from Parliament.

Charles dismissed his fourth Parliament in March 1629 and decided to make do without either its advice or the taxes which it alone could grant legally.

Although opponents later called this period 'the Eleven Years' Tyranny', Charles's decision to rule without Parliament was technically within the King's royal prerogative, and the absence of a Parliament was less of a grievance to many people than the efforts to raise revenue by non-parliamentary means.

Charles's leading advisers, including William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Earl of Strafford, were efficient but disliked.

For much of the 1630s, the King gained most of the income he needed from such measures as impositions, exploitation of forest laws, forced loans, wardship and, above all, ship money (extended in 1635 from ports to the whole country). These measures made him very unpopular, alienating many who were the natural supporters of the Crown.

Scotland (which Charles had left at the age of 3, returning only for his coronation in 1633) proved the catalyst for rebellion. Charles's attempt to impose a High Church liturgy and prayer book in Scotland had prompted a riot in 1637 in Edinburgh which escalated into general unrest.

Charles had to recall Parliament. However, the Short Parliament of April 1640 queried Charles's request for funds for war against the Scots and was dissolved within weeks.

The Scots occupied Newcastle and, under the treaty of Ripon, stayed in occupation of Northumberland and Durham and they were to be paid a subsidy until their grievances were redressed.

Charles was finally forced to call another Parliament in November 1640. This one, which came to be known as The Long Parliament, started with the imprisonment of Laud and Strafford (the latter was executed within six months, after a Bill of Attainder which did not allow for a defence), and the abolition of the King's Council (Star Chamber), and moved on to declare ship money and other fines illegal.

The King agreed that Parliament could not be dissolved without its own consent, and the Triennial Act of 1641 meant that no more than three years could elapse between Parliaments.

The Irish uprising of October 1641 raised tensions between the King and Parliament over the command of the Army. Parliament issued a Grand Remonstrance repeating their grievances, impeached 12 bisops and attempted to impeach the Queen.

Charles responded by entering the Commons in a failed attempt to arrest five Members of Parliament, who had fled before his arrival. Parliament reacted by passing a Militia Bill allowing troops to be raised only under officers approved by Parliament.

Finally, on 22 August 1642 at Nottingham, Charles raised the Royal Standard calling for loyal subjects to support him (Oxford was to be the King's capital during the war). The Civil War, what Sir William Waller (a Parliamentary general and moderate) called 'this war without an enemy', had begun.

The Battle of Edgehill in October 1642 showed that early on the fighting was even. Broadly speaking, Charles retained the north, west and south-west of the country, and Parliament had London, East Anglia and the south-east, although there were pockets of resistance everywhere, ranging from solitary garrisons to whole cities.

However, the Navy sided with Parliament (which made continental aid difficult), and Charles lacked the resources to hire substantial mercenary help.

Parliament had entered an armed alliance with the predominant Scottish Presbyterian group under the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, and from 1644 onwards Parliament's armies gained the upper hand - particularly with the improved training and discipline of the New Model Army.

The Self-Denying Ordinance was passed to exclude Members of Parliament from holding army commands, thereby getting rid of vacillating or incompetent earlier Parliamentary generals. Under strong generals like Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, Parliament won victories at Marston Moor (1644) and Naseby (1645).

The capture of the King's secret correspondence after Naseby showed the extent to which he had been seeking help from Ireland and from the Continent, which alienated many moderate supporters.

In May 1646, Charles placed himself in the hands of the Scottish Army (who handed him to the English Parliament after nine months in return for arrears of payment - the Scots had failed to win Charles's support for establishing Presbyterianism in England).

Charles did not see his action as surrender, but as an opportunity to regain lost ground by playing one group off against another; he saw the monarchy as the source of stability and told parliamentary commanders 'you cannot be without me: you will fall to ruin if I do not sustain you'.

In Scotland and Ireland, factions were arguing, whilst in England there were signs of division in Parliament between the Presbyterians and the Independents, with alienation from the Army (where radical doctrines such as that of the Levellers were threatening commanders' authority).

Charles's negotiations continued from his captivity at Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight (to which he had 'escaped' from Hampton Court in November 1647) and led to the Engagement with the Scots, under which the Scots would provide an army for Charles in exchange for the imposition of the Covenant on England.

This led to the second Civil War of 1648, which ended with Cromwell's victory at Preston in August.

The Army, concluding that permanent peace was impossible whilst Charles lived, decided that the King must be put on trial and executed. In December, Parliament was purged, leaving a small rump totally dependent on the Army, and the Rump Parliament established a High Court of Justice in the first week of January 1649.

On 20 January, Charles was charged with high treason 'against the realm of England'. Charles refused to plead, saying that he did not recognise the legality of the High Court (it had been established by a Commons purged of dissent, and without the House of Lords - nor had the Commons ever acted as a judicature).

The King was sentenced to death on 27 January. Three days later, Charles was beheaded on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall, London.

The King asked for warm clothing before his execution: 'the season is so sharp as probably may make me shake, which some observers may imagine proceeds from fear. I would have no such imputation.'

On the scaffold, he repeated his case: 'I must tell you that the liberty and freedom [of the people] consists in having of Government, those laws by which their life and their goods may be most their own. It is not for having share in Government, Sir, that is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things. If I would have given way to an arbitrary way, for to have all laws changed according to the Power of the Sword, I needed not to have come here, and therefore I tell you ... that I am the martyr of the people.'

His final words were 'I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be.'