Abstract

In 1894, three great German physicists died: Heinrich Hertz in Bonn, August Kundt and Hermann von Helmholtz in Berlin. As their successor Friedrich Kohlrausch, director of the Institute of Physics in Straßburg, was nominated. He denied to go to Bonn and at first accepted the call to Berlin as director of Kundt's former Institute of experimental physics, but he took for granted that the chair should be devided, declaring that it would be impossible to take the burden of teaching, research and the whole administration. After some months of negotiation the philosophical faculty refused this condition. In the meantime the director of the Physikalisch‐Technische Reichsanstalt Helmholtz died, and the Prussian Cultural Ministry offered this position to Kohlrausch, who accepted it. These proceedings which were kept secret by the faculty were openly discussed and commented in the correspondence between Emil Fischer and Friedrich Kohlrausch.