Georg von Charasoff 29
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12 In an unpublished essay entitled ‘The Einstein I knew’, which is in the Einstein-
Archive (EA 59-353), Buek noted ‘that he often provided piano accompaniment for
Einstein’s violin’ (Howard 1993: 227).
13 Further evidence for Buek’s friendship with Einstein comes from a letter of
Hermann Cohen to Paul Natorp, dated 28 November 1914, which contains the
following passage: ‘It is very interesting that Buek is attending Einstein’s lectures &
comes together with him regularly & discusses thoroughly with him. He finds him
unclear philosophically, & still has no clear opinion on the whole thing, in which only
the difficult mathematics is beyond doubt’ (Universitätsbibliothek Marburg, Ms.
831/52; quoted from Holzhey 1986, vol. 2: 436).
14 Albert Einstein to Emil Szittya, 18 July 1953 (Nachlass Szittya, DLA Marbach).
Buek obtained regular financial support from the ‘Einstein fund’ for several years.
15 As an ‘Auditor’ he was allowed to attend lectures but could not take exams.
16 Eugen Bleuler (1857–1939) was professor of psychiatry at the University of
Zurich and the successor to Auguste Forel as director of the Psychiatric University
clinic ‘Burghölzli’ from 1898 to 1927. Bleuler was the first director of a psychiatric
clinic in Europe to adopt the psychoanalytical methods of Sigmund Freud. C.G. Jung,
the founder of analytical psychology, first was an assistant and then a collaborator of
Bleuler at the clinic ‘Burghölzli’ from 1900 to 1909. Bleuler is known in particular for
his analysis of schizophrenia (sometimes also designated as ‘morbus Bleuler’).
17 Vera Figner (1852–1942) was a leading member of the militant revolutionary
group ‘Narodnaya Volya’ (Will of the People), which was responsible for the
assassination of Tsar Alexander in 1881. In 1894 Figner was sentenced to death, but the
death sentence was not carried out and after her trial she was imprisoned for twenty
years at Schlüsselburg. In late 1906 she was set free and with the help of friends
brought to Switzerland for cure treatment in spring 1907, via Finland and Sweden.
After several years in exile, spent mostly in Switzerland, she returned to Russia before
the revolution.
18 Otto Veraguth was a well-known psychotherapist in Zurich.
19 In a letter of 1857, Tolstoy raved about the awesome beauty of the unique
landscape around Clarens, which had ‘blinded’ him and had ‘moved [him] with
unexpected force’ (quoted from Huser 2003: 82). Twenty-one years later, Tchaikovsky
wrote that he could not imagine any landscape outside of Russia ‘which more than this
one exerts a comforting influence on the soul’ (quoted from Huser 2003: 82-3).
20 The private library of Nicolai Aleksandrovich Rubakin comprised one of the
largest collections of Russian books in Western Europe. At the time of Rubakin’s death
in 1946 it comprised approximately 100,000 volumes. Rubakin freely offered his books
to anybody who was interested. Before the Russian revolution of 1917 his library was
used inter alia by the bolshevists and menshevists who lived in Baugy, and by guests
like Bukharin, Plekhanov, Lenin, and Stravinsky (cf. Senn 1973).
21 Letter to the author from François Allisson, Researcher at the Centre Walras-
Pareto at the University of Lausanne, 5 July 2010.
22 Her younger sister Sophie (born 15 February 1886) also came to Berne in the
winter term 1903-04 and enrolled as a student of philosophy.
23 The supervisor of her doctoral dissertation was Professor Wyder, the director of
the ‘Universitätsfrauenklinik’ at the University of Zurich.
24 Hans Bondy (1881–1917) was the son of the Viennese industrialist Otto Bondy
and his wife Julie, née Cassirer. His sister Tony was married to Ernst Cassirer (her
cousin) and his brother Walter was a well-known artist, gallery-owner and art critic.
Hans Bondy lived a bohemian life in Paris and Berlin; in 1917 he committed suicide. It
can safely be assumed that Otto Buek was involved in Charasoff’s choice of publisher.
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History of Economics Review
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25 For completeness it should be mentioned that there was also a short review of
Charasoff’s book of 1909 by Pierre Moride (1909).
26 Charasoff’s apartment in Plattenstrasse 28 was within walking distance (in fact
just across the street) from the Institute of Economics in Zürichbergstrasse 14.
27 Although Julius Wolf was strongly opposed to Marxism (see Wolf 1892), he
attracted a number of revolutionary Marxists as students: ‘The most talented among
them was in his view Rosa Luxemburg’ (Gagliardi et al. 1938: 831). Rosa Luxemburg
left Zurich in 1897.
28 Heinrich Sieveking (1871–1945) was born into a well-known family of Hanseatic
merchants and public servants in Hamburg. After his habilitation in Freiburg he became
a professor (Extraordinarius) in Marburg in 1903, before he became a professor of
social economics (Ordinarius für Sozialökonomie) at the University of Zurich, from
where he moved on to the newly founded University of Hamburg in 1922. He is known
for his work on Italian Renaissance merchant practices and the economic history of
Hamburg, as well as for his biographies of Karl Sieveking and Georg Heinrich
Sieveking. In Marburg, Sieveking had close contacts with Cohen and Natorp, and he
kept up the relationship with the two neo-Kantian philosophers during his time in
Zurich (see Sieveking 1977: 85).
29 The Warsaw-born Natalie Moszkowska (1886–1968) moved to Zurich in 1908 in
order to study economics. Her dissertation on workers’ savings banks in the Polish coal
and steel industry was finished in 1914 and published three years later (Moszkowska
1917). For more biographical information, see Howard and King (2000).
30 Max (Meer) Husmann (1888–1965) came to Zurich around 1900, together with his
mother and two brothers and sisters, from Proskurow, Poldonia. In 1906 the medical
student Marie Kriegshaber lived with the Husmann family as a tenant in Ilgenstrasse 4.
In 1912, Max Husmann founded a private school in Sonnegstrasse 80, the ‘Institut
Dr Max Husmann’, with Georg von Charasoff as a silent partner. In 1918, Husmann
merged his school with the ‘Institut Minerva’ in Scheuchzerstrasse 2 (which still exists
today), and in 1926 he founded another private school, the ‘Institut Montana’ in
Zugerberg (which also still exists).
31 This corresponds roughly to the annual income of a university professor in
Switzerland at the time.
32 Edith Rockefeller-McCormick (1872–1932) was a daughter of the American oil
tycoon John D. Rockefeller (Standard Oil); she was married to Harold Fowler
McCormick, a son of the inventor and entrepreneur Cyrus McCormick (International
Harvester). At the time, she was one of the richest women in the world. She first came
to Zurich in 1913 in order to obtain treatment from C.G. Jung, and then stayed on until
1921. During those eight years she lived in a luxurious suite in the Hotel Baur au Lac,
where in 1919 Lily Charasoff for several months visited her on a weekly basis in order
to spend the afternoon with her. Her daughter Muriel McCormick (1903–1959) was
Lily’s schoolmate and closest girlfriend. After having finished private schools in Zurich
and Lausanne, Muriel McCormick was trained as an actor and opera-singer, but she
never performed professionally. After the early death of her husband she devoted her
time and energy to the management of her considerable funds and to sponsoring the
performing and visual arts.
33 Karl Kautsky, who had rejected Charasoff’s submissions to Die neue Zeit in 1907
and 1909, visited Georgia from September 1920 to January 1921. He was favorably
impressed by the reforms that had been introduced by the Mensheviks, and wrote a
small booklet about his travel impressions (Kautsky 1921). However, when it was
published in May 1921, Georgia had already been occupied by the Red Army (Steenson
1991: 227).
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