Long-time readers know that I have done volunteer work at a place called Wolf Park. Some of you have even come down and visited there, or even helped the park out a bit. The park truly began in 1972 when founded by Erich Klinghammer, who taught at Purdue. The very proper mode of address would be Professor Doctor Klinghammer I believe, but that was never Erich's style. Having a Ph.D., or a Ph.D. in the "right" field, was never his criteria for evaluation or judgement, just as not having straight A's was a bar to working with him academically (or otherwise). He was far more interested in the knowledge you had, and the passion to learn and do that drove you, than anything. Erich would be the first to tell you that he was "complicated" and even that he was selfish. The first is actually a bit of understatement to my mind, and I am sure the second was true. To understand both, however, takes a bit of background. Born in 1930 in Germany, Erich came of age during the worst of World War II. His experiences with the Nazi's, with war and the capriciousness of fate in war time, shaped him in many ways. One way in which we disagreed was in what comes after, as he felt that when you die that's it. Quite a few who knew him disagreed with him on that, and I found out at his memorial last night that someone had gotten the chance to tell him not long before he passed that they hoped he was very surprised on the other side... Another was a profound distrust of anything that smacked of Fascism. His own impressment into part of the Hitler Youth (thankfully not the do-or-die military arm) shaped that, and helped shape a bit of what I can only call pacifism (more in a moment). After the war, he came to America because he felt that it was a place that someone like him, with little money but dreams and a desire to work at those dreams could succeed. He saw America for what it was, a land of opportunity and a nation where wilderness still existed in large areas. He never, as far as I knew, believed that America could not make mistakes, but saw it as a country that tried to fix its mistakes and gave its Citizens the chance to make that happen if and as needed. He hated war as only someone who has seen its worst can hate it. Erich knew death and destruction first hand, and would cheerfully have seen war no more. Yet, he was also an avid student of military (and technological) history, and knew that the odds of war no more were slim. I suspect that our versions of rational pacifism were similar in some respects, and I will regret no longer having the chance to explore that issue with him. I would also note that he was a passionate ambassador for Germany, and took pains to point out that not all from his era were monsters. He loved his homeland, but one of his dying declarations was that he chose to be an American. Yet, he served in the Army and felt that such service was a good thing. He respected that service, those who served, most who led, and felt an obligation to do for those who had served -- particularly in war. He dispensed large amounts of advice to those he knew were going in harm's way, myself included. In my case much of that didn't matter since I was a non-combatant, though that didn't slow him down a bit. There were some very good nuggets of information in there, however, and were based on his own experiences and events that had happened since. My single largest disagreement with him on modern military history came from the fact that his prime source was the mainstream media; and, we argued cheerfully and strongly about sourcing. Over the few years I had to know him, Erich talked to me several times about doing things for the Park. Some of these would have included becoming staff, and taking on some interesting responsibilities. A couple of those suggestions were outside my comfort zone, and even outside my areas of formal training. That didn't phase Erich a bit, as he was confident I could do the job. That's one of the best things about Erich in my book, is that he often believed in someone's ability to do a job or make a difference when they didn't, and his belief was so strong that you found yourself coming to believe it to. I wasn't the only one he did this to, and I know I wasn't the only one who heard some variant of 'I'm not doing this for you, I'm doing it for me. I'm being selfish because if you do this I won't have to do it/will have time to do what I want to do instead.' His passion in life was Ethology, which is the study of animal behavior (and understanding/translation of same). It is also a branch of knowledge dealing with human character and its formation/evolution. The two are, in my opinion and I strongly suspect in Erich's, unrelated. It was a study that when he discovered it, he pursued with focus and determination. He was a friend and protege of Nobel Laureate Konrad Lorenz, who visited Erich and Wolf Park several times. The stature he holds in the field is not related to the number of papers produced, or the fact that he did literally ground-breaking research. It truly lies in the number of papers and practical operations that resulted from him and his passion. Erich inspired many, and what's more he dared you to go do. Almost all who crossed his orbit changed trajectories to some degree, so that they went and did -- not just studied. One of the more interesting aspects of ethology for me is...
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Posted
Oct 09 2011, 11:18 PM
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BLACKFIVE