D O C . 3 7 4 A P R I L 1 9 2 0 3 1 3 Now I must finally take leave of you, a pity though it is for me! Best regards from all the Ehrenfests, yours, Ehrenfest. 374. From Paul Kammerer Vienna XIII/5, 239 Auhof St., 15 April 1920 Highly esteemed Professor, I am enclosing a letter by the Count, Dr. Arco, because this way the answers are given more easily and unambiguously.[1] This way you can see better what I was actually asked by Count Arco, because even though he is inquiring in your name, you did not formulate the question yourself. That I “repeatedly established the heredity of dialects” is a misunderstanding. I just said, and could only have said, in connection with related experiences by Count Arco himself, that I am aware of cases where inheritability of dialects is alleged. My information does not come from unquestionable sources either, not from scien- tific data, but rather from a diary of a Viennese painter by the name of Ida Gutmann, who is supposed to have published it under the title “Angeborene Vatersprache und Vererbung erworbener Eigenschaften” [Patrimonial Speech and the Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics]. This, at least, is mentioned in a review that I found under the heading “Merkwürdige Gaben eines Wiener Kindes” [Special Gifts of a Vi- ennese Child] in the Neues Wiener Journal, issue no. 8427 of Tuesday, 17 April 1917, page 5. However, no bookseller was able to find out the publisher and pro- cure the book for me. Nor did I want to contact the author directly. For I had seen the ms. of her diary and I had returned it to her with a few polite words after reading it. The mentioned review in the Neues Wiener Journal indicates, though, that she used my letter without permission as a foreword which thereby implies that I want- ed to vouch for her observations. The case itself consists of the following “facts,” which must be taken with ut- most caution: from a very tender age, the young son of Mrs. Ida Gutmann used some of his father’s most frequently used expressions without ever knowing him, like “Jessas” (“Jesus”), “Na net” (“ain’t it so” to mean, just right) in exactly the same intonation and dialect as his father’s, accompanied even by the same gestures. Count Arco also inaccurately recalled from memory his second gleanings from my statements. He apparently means a passage, which I have marked and am send- ing to you, that mentions that breeders are mistaken if they think that everything they have achieved with their strains is due to their selective breeding. Rather, it is
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