Лоренц в советском плену

[jayrandom]

Оказывается, Конрад Лоренц, основатель науки этологии и нобелевский лауреат, был в советском плену. Он там даже написал монографию, которую ему разрешили вывезти на родину. Вот как это было:

In spring 1942 I was sent to the front near Witebsk and two months later taken prisoner by the Russians. At first I worked in a hospital in Chalturin where I was put in charge of a department with 600 beds, occupied almost exclusively by cases of so-called field polyneuritis, a form of general inflammation of nervous tissues caused by the combined effects of stress, overexertion, cold and lack of vitamins. Surprisingly, the Russian physicians did not know this syndrome and believed in the effects of diphteria - an illness which also causes a failing of all reflexes. When this hospital was broken up I became a camp doctor, first in Oritschi and later in a number of successive camps in Armenia. I became tolerably fluent in Russian and got quite friendly with some Russians, mostly doctors. I had the occasion to observe the striking parallels between the psychological effects of nazi and of marxist education. It was then that I began to realize the nature of indoctrination as such.

As a doctor in small camps in Armenia I had some time on my hand and I started to write a book on epistemology, since that was the only subject for which I needed no library. The manuscript was mainly written with potassium permanganate solution on cement sacking cut to pieces and ironed out. The Soviet authorities encouraged my writing, but, just when it was about finished, transferred me to a camp in Krasnogorsk near Moscow, with the injunction to type the manuscript and send a copy to the censor. They promised I should be permitted to take a copy home on being repatriated. The prospective date for repatriation of Austrians was approaching and I had cause to fear that I should be kept back because of my book. One day, however, the commander of the camp had me called to his office, asked me, on my word of honor, whether my manuscript really contained nothing but unpolitical science. When I assured him that this was indeed the case, he shook hands with me and forthwith wrote out a "propusk", an order, which said that I was allowed to take my manuscript and my tame starling home with me. By word of mouth he told the convoy officer to tell the next to tell the next and so on, that I should not be searched. So I arrived in Altenberg with manuscript and bird intact. I do not think that I ever experienced a comparable example of a man trusting another man's word. With a few additions and changes the book written in Russia was published under the title "Die Rückseite des Spiegels". This title had been suggested by a fellow prisoner of war in Erivan, by name of Zimmer.

-- Konrad Lorenz – Autobiography

Об этом также рассказывает Гороховская в своём интервью.

Comments

[b-my.livejournal.com]

Да, способ записи мыслей более чем впечатляет...

Написать так не записку какую-нить, не "последнюю весть от", а КНИГУ. Действительно, "железные люди".