Overlooked, but—at least as much because of what he represents as his own activities—an important Fortean.
Waldemar Bernhard Kaempfert was born 23 September 1877 in New York City, making him a contemporary of Charles Fort, who was born upstate, in Albany, three years earlier. His father, Barnhard, was a German immigrant; his mother, the former Juliette Levine, was born in New York to a Russian father and German mother; Barnhard and Juliette were married 15 October 1876. I believe that Waldemar was their eldest child; he had a sister, Magda, two years his junior. I have not been able to find the Kaempfferts in the 1880 or 1900 censuses (the 1890 census was destroyed in a fire), so I do not know what work Barnhard did. He died sometime before 1910, leaving Juliette a widow for the last several decades of her life. Waldemar attended local schools, and graduated from the City College of New York with a Bachelor’s of Science in 1897.
Kaempffert went to work at Scientific American after his graduation; according to Wikipedia, his first job there was translating. In 1900, he became a managing editor; he also continued his education: he received and LL.B. from City College in 1904. In 1910, according to the census, Waldemar was living with his mother and sister on West 105th in Manhattan. Magda, who was divorced, taught at a school; Juliette did not have a job listed. The following year, Kaempffert married Carolyn Lydia Yeaton. During this period,, he was also writing on science for other periodicals—including Harper’s, Cosmopolitan, and McClure’s—and putting out books. In 1905 he translated Mathot’s “Gas-Engines and Producer-Gas Plants” from the French; in 1909 he published “Astronomy,” the first volume in “The Science-History of the Universe”; and in 1911, “The New Art of Flying.”
Waldemar Bernhard Kaempfert was born 23 September 1877 in New York City, making him a contemporary of Charles Fort, who was born upstate, in Albany, three years earlier. His father, Barnhard, was a German immigrant; his mother, the former Juliette Levine, was born in New York to a Russian father and German mother; Barnhard and Juliette were married 15 October 1876. I believe that Waldemar was their eldest child; he had a sister, Magda, two years his junior. I have not been able to find the Kaempfferts in the 1880 or 1900 censuses (the 1890 census was destroyed in a fire), so I do not know what work Barnhard did. He died sometime before 1910, leaving Juliette a widow for the last several decades of her life. Waldemar attended local schools, and graduated from the City College of New York with a Bachelor’s of Science in 1897.
Kaempffert went to work at Scientific American after his graduation; according to Wikipedia, his first job there was translating. In 1900, he became a managing editor; he also continued his education: he received and LL.B. from City College in 1904. In 1910, according to the census, Waldemar was living with his mother and sister on West 105th in Manhattan. Magda, who was divorced, taught at a school; Juliette did not have a job listed. The following year, Kaempffert married Carolyn Lydia Yeaton. During this period,, he was also writing on science for other periodicals—including Harper’s, Cosmopolitan, and McClure’s—and putting out books. In 1905 he translated Mathot’s “Gas-Engines and Producer-Gas Plants” from the French; in 1909 he published “Astronomy,” the first volume in “The Science-History of the Universe”; and in 1911, “The New Art of Flying.”
Kaempffert continued to busily plug away through the 1910s. In 1916, he became editor of “Popular Science Monthly.” He turned forty in 1917 and registered for the draft, though he did not serve. The 1920 census had him and Carolyn living together in Manhattan, on West 105th Street. Juliette lived with them, too. Books and articles followed through the next decade. In 1922, he went to work for the New York Times covering science (becoming editor of science and technology in 1927). In 1928 he relocated to Chicago as director of the Museum of Science and Industry. His work there did not go smoothly, though, as there were conflicts between his views and the need to accommodate donors, as well as dust-ups over his accounting practices. He quit in 1931, and returned to the Times. Two years later, Carolyn—some seven years Waldemar’s senior—died.
In the 1930s, he became friendly with the irascible (sometime) Fortean T. Swann Harding, with Harding sending on reprints of his copious articles. Harding took a jaundiced view to science as it was taught—his books took exception with modern scientific pronouncements about everything from the healthfulness of cigarettes (he thought they were fine) to nutrition advice—it was the same view that Evans brought to popular misconceptions. At least in correspondence, Kaempffert admitted there views were relatively simpatico: “Your intellect interests are much like my now,” he said one time, and “The [papers] on the social aspects of science proved to be especially stimulating,” in a different letter. He could have just been cultivating a source, but the expressions seem sincere and are consonant with my (very limited) review of Kaempffert’s writings. He took the time, for example, to single out how Harding was astute at “show[ing] some of the limitations of scientific reasoning," which he need not have done if he were only trying to be polite.
Kaempffert was not always sanguine about the world’s direction. He worried over capitalism, particularly as science and technology, used for profit, drove workers from jobs. But he worried about totalitarianism and communism, too, which squashed scientific research, forcing scientists to hew to the political line. He thought that there was some way in which scientific research could be organized while still allowing it to develop, though such sentiments were not always well regarded.
In 1934, Kaempffert was among the early members of the National Association of Science Writers—the establishment of which is an important context for the growth of the Fortean Society. Science journalism was organizing, and the authority granted to science was being consolidated, with fewer voices allowed to speak in the name of science. Not that Kaempffert was not open to fringe subjects. Kaempffert was a member of the American Society for Psychical Research, was friendly with parapsychologists, and wrote an open-minded review of a book by J. B. Rhine on ESP.
In 1939 he had a science fiction story published in “Famous Fantastic Mysteries.” It was about a scientist who learns to hide his mistress with a scientific trick that would shrink her into a minuscule statue—until his wife finds the doll and destroys it. His book published about the same time, “Science Today and Tomorrow” was a more non-fictional approach to science fiction, extrapolating on scientific ideas to imagine what space flight might look like, for example, what shape fuel might take in the future, and what later research into atoms and evolution will look for. Kamepffert’s vision was indeed wide. He gave positive nods to the Cahill map, for example, even as he continued to write on the latest developments in mainstream science.
He drew lines, too, though. He was a bit embarassed by the late work of Alexis Carrel, the biologist, which he saw as akin to mysticism. He had no use for Velikovsky. And he thought that interest in flying saucers denoted a continued ignorance of science among the laity—a perpetuation of superstition (which was the same position held by skeptics such as Bergen Evans and Martin Gardner: that modernity had not finished its project of enlightening the masses). A 1953 review of Donald Menzel’s flying saucer book for the “Times” began, “If the flying saucers prove anything they prove that science has not yet seeped down into the multitude. A belief in witches, devils and evil spirits may strike drivers of automobiles and owners of television sets as amusing and pathetic, but the widespread belief in flying saucers and the acceptance of tales of ‘little men’ who were found in one that was wrecked are cut from the same pattern.”
Kaempffert retired from the times in 1956. Later that year—27 November—aged 79, he died of a stroke.
*************
Waldemar Kaempffert’s relationship with Fort and the Fortean Society was complicated. It was also long-standing. He was one of the first people to read Fort’s foray into non-fiction. In 1916, Fort passed on to Theodore Dreiser a copy of his manuscript, “X.” This would later be destroyed, though it seems elements of it were also incorporated into “Book of the Damned.” As best as can be reconstructed, “X” made the argument that life on earth was controlled by beings on Mars. Dreiser was bowled over by what he read, and wanted to find support for Fort’s speculations. He sent a copy to Kaempffert, who was then editor at “Popular Science Monthly.” (He also sent it to “MacMillan’s,” “Harper’s,” and “Scribner’s” as well as the editor of “Scientific American,” where Kaempffert had once worked.) Fort was somewhat surprised, since one chapter of “X” poked fun at Kaempffert’s views on gravity.
Not surprisingly, Kaempffert dismissed the book. “A vast amount of reading has been done which has not been correctly applied,” he wrote. “When a man says that there is no such thing as objective reality and then utilizes scientific experiments on objective realities to prove a point, surely something must be wrong.” Kaempffert further suggested that Fort might be a Christian Scientist or devotee of the philosopher George Berkeley. Fort said he had no truck with either Mary Baker Eddy or Berkeley, and that his argument held together. “In ‘X’, I have pointed out that, though there’s nothing wrong with me personally, I am a delusion in super-imagination, and inconsistency must therefore be expected from me—but if I’m so rational as to be aware of my irrationality why? Why, then I have glimmers of the awakening and awareness of super-imagination.” If anything, Fort joked that Kaempffert’s own reluctance to support Fort’s views was the real inconsistency in “X”: “Oh, Waldemar, you discourage me. How can I be bright and intelligent if you’re part of the general mind in which I’m a unit? Speak to me, Waldemar! Tell me.”
I do not know what Kamepffert’s response was to Fort’s book when it was eventually published. “Popular Science Monthly” did not review “Book of the Damned,” and if Kaempffert did elsewhere, I have not seen it. The “Times” did review “New Lands”—it was signed by R. H. Wollstein—and the review was not good. (Kaempffert was at the “Times” when “New Lands” appeared.) Nor do I know of Kaempffert’s responses to Fort’s last two books, “Lo!,” which came out as he transitioned from Chicago back to New York, and “Wild Talents,” which was published while Kaempffert was at the “Times” again. It was not positive.
Perhaps by this point, though, Kaempffert’s views on Fort had even softened. Because in the mid-1920s, he met Tiffany Thayer. This was just after Thayer had relocated to New York from Chicago, but before he himself had met Fort. According to Thayer, they hung out at Maxl’s Braustüberl, a German-style beer garden at 243 East 86th Street, which was supposed to be part restaurant, part nightclub, and was a favorite of the collegiate set. Thayer said that they even sometimes met John Dos Passos then. There paths subsequently diverged, with Kaempffert soon enough leaving for Thayer’s old stomping grounds, and Thayer decamping for Hollywood around the time that Kaempffert returned to the Big Apple, but they seem to have connected again in the mid-1930s, when both were in New York, Kaempffert once more at the “Times” and Thayer in advertising as well as running the Fortean Society. It seems likely that Thayer would have pushed Fort on Kaempffert—and just as likely Kaempffert would have resisted.
Because what comes clear from the relationship between Kaempffert and the Society—such as it was—over the almost two decades between 1940 and 1957, which is when I can track it, is that Kaempffert was mostly aloof from the Society—it is noteworthy that Kaempffert was not an advisory member in the early years, when Thayer was quick to sign up anyone in that position, including people he never heard from again, and including journalists. Meanwhile, the Society (particularly Thayer) viewed him as the man they hated to love: he was a spokesman for scientific authority—to Thayer’s mind, the very embodiment of the scientific journalist—and yet Thayer could not help but like him.
The first mention of Kaempffert came in the third volume of Thayer’s magazine, dated January 1940 (more than two years after its debut). Thayer listed his “Science Today and Tomorrow” as recommended reading (along with Buckminster Fuller’s “Nine Chains to the Moon,” Watson’s “Scientists Are Human,” and a book called “Television: A Struggle for Power.”) It would not be until after World War II that Kaempffert rated another mention. In between, of course, Thayer had put out the Fort omnibus, but, again, if Kaempffert reviewed the book, I have not seen his comments.
By the time of Kaempffert’s return, Thayer had made him into a symbol of the modern science writer. The next reference, in (what was now called) “Doubt” 17, released at the end of 1946 or early 1947, was a glancing blow, assuming the reader was familiar with the “Times” author. Thayer noted that news articles had developed a new “stunt,” praising some scientific idea or new technology while simultaneously pointing out its problems. “One wonders,” Thayer wrote, “if Science [sic] has any other purpose than that of providing baseless nine-day wonders as subject matter for embryonic Kaempfferts to practice their freshmen semantics upon.” It was shortly after this that Thayer took to calling another science writer—John J. O’Neil of the “New York Herald Tribune,” and one of the founding members of the National Association of Science Writers—the “Republican Kaempffert.” (O’Neill would later convince Thayer, personally, that he was no such thing—but what that therefore meant O’Neill was, Thayer never said.) A bit later in 1947, while complimenting Kaempffert for covering an alternative cancer treatment announced out of the Soviet Union, Thayer repeated the collective noun for science writers: Kaempfferts.
But he also admitted that his jousting at Kaempffert was something of a game. In 1948, the Fortean Donald Bloch wrote to Thayer—in a letter that does not survive—seemingly defending Kaempffert, or at least praising something he had done. Wide-eyed, Thayer mock-naively asked, “If we admire Kaempffert, whom do we hate?” And it seems there wouldn’t be much hating of Kaempffert after he asked the question. The name didn’t appear again until 1950, and the two times it showed up in “Doubt” 29—from July of that year—the references were mostly in passing: Thayer said O’Neill was not the Republican Kaempffert and mentioned that the “Times” had run some “mildly recriminating" letters between Velikovsky and Kaempffert, but offered no annotation of the debate. One got the sense that Thayer was not overly impressed with Velikovsky, but neither did he take much time to attack “Worlds in Collision.”
Another five years would pass before Kaempffert made “Doubt” again—and by this time he’d been mostly accepted. Indeed, there were only two more mentions of him in the magazine, one in “Doubt” 47 (January 1955) and the other in “Doubt” 53 (February 1957), and both were effusive by Thayer’s standards. The first congratulated him for winning the Kalinga Prize, awarded by UNESCO for science popularization. (He was the third recipient.) “We’re happy that he got it,” Thayer said. “Aside from his goo about the White Elephant of Palomar, we think Kaempffert has written with a minimum of jingo in a field where jingo makes the mare go. Prosit!”
The other reference was a eulogy, short but seemingly heartfelt. “Although Waldemar Kaempffert was not a member of the Society, he was a long-time personal friend of YS and truly a Fortean at heart. The New York Times is to be commiserated upon his passing.”
In the 1930s, he became friendly with the irascible (sometime) Fortean T. Swann Harding, with Harding sending on reprints of his copious articles. Harding took a jaundiced view to science as it was taught—his books took exception with modern scientific pronouncements about everything from the healthfulness of cigarettes (he thought they were fine) to nutrition advice—it was the same view that Evans brought to popular misconceptions. At least in correspondence, Kaempffert admitted there views were relatively simpatico: “Your intellect interests are much like my now,” he said one time, and “The [papers] on the social aspects of science proved to be especially stimulating,” in a different letter. He could have just been cultivating a source, but the expressions seem sincere and are consonant with my (very limited) review of Kaempffert’s writings. He took the time, for example, to single out how Harding was astute at “show[ing] some of the limitations of scientific reasoning," which he need not have done if he were only trying to be polite.
Kaempffert was not always sanguine about the world’s direction. He worried over capitalism, particularly as science and technology, used for profit, drove workers from jobs. But he worried about totalitarianism and communism, too, which squashed scientific research, forcing scientists to hew to the political line. He thought that there was some way in which scientific research could be organized while still allowing it to develop, though such sentiments were not always well regarded.
In 1934, Kaempffert was among the early members of the National Association of Science Writers—the establishment of which is an important context for the growth of the Fortean Society. Science journalism was organizing, and the authority granted to science was being consolidated, with fewer voices allowed to speak in the name of science. Not that Kaempffert was not open to fringe subjects. Kaempffert was a member of the American Society for Psychical Research, was friendly with parapsychologists, and wrote an open-minded review of a book by J. B. Rhine on ESP.
In 1939 he had a science fiction story published in “Famous Fantastic Mysteries.” It was about a scientist who learns to hide his mistress with a scientific trick that would shrink her into a minuscule statue—until his wife finds the doll and destroys it. His book published about the same time, “Science Today and Tomorrow” was a more non-fictional approach to science fiction, extrapolating on scientific ideas to imagine what space flight might look like, for example, what shape fuel might take in the future, and what later research into atoms and evolution will look for. Kamepffert’s vision was indeed wide. He gave positive nods to the Cahill map, for example, even as he continued to write on the latest developments in mainstream science.
He drew lines, too, though. He was a bit embarassed by the late work of Alexis Carrel, the biologist, which he saw as akin to mysticism. He had no use for Velikovsky. And he thought that interest in flying saucers denoted a continued ignorance of science among the laity—a perpetuation of superstition (which was the same position held by skeptics such as Bergen Evans and Martin Gardner: that modernity had not finished its project of enlightening the masses). A 1953 review of Donald Menzel’s flying saucer book for the “Times” began, “If the flying saucers prove anything they prove that science has not yet seeped down into the multitude. A belief in witches, devils and evil spirits may strike drivers of automobiles and owners of television sets as amusing and pathetic, but the widespread belief in flying saucers and the acceptance of tales of ‘little men’ who were found in one that was wrecked are cut from the same pattern.”
Kaempffert retired from the times in 1956. Later that year—27 November—aged 79, he died of a stroke.
*************
Waldemar Kaempffert’s relationship with Fort and the Fortean Society was complicated. It was also long-standing. He was one of the first people to read Fort’s foray into non-fiction. In 1916, Fort passed on to Theodore Dreiser a copy of his manuscript, “X.” This would later be destroyed, though it seems elements of it were also incorporated into “Book of the Damned.” As best as can be reconstructed, “X” made the argument that life on earth was controlled by beings on Mars. Dreiser was bowled over by what he read, and wanted to find support for Fort’s speculations. He sent a copy to Kaempffert, who was then editor at “Popular Science Monthly.” (He also sent it to “MacMillan’s,” “Harper’s,” and “Scribner’s” as well as the editor of “Scientific American,” where Kaempffert had once worked.) Fort was somewhat surprised, since one chapter of “X” poked fun at Kaempffert’s views on gravity.
Not surprisingly, Kaempffert dismissed the book. “A vast amount of reading has been done which has not been correctly applied,” he wrote. “When a man says that there is no such thing as objective reality and then utilizes scientific experiments on objective realities to prove a point, surely something must be wrong.” Kaempffert further suggested that Fort might be a Christian Scientist or devotee of the philosopher George Berkeley. Fort said he had no truck with either Mary Baker Eddy or Berkeley, and that his argument held together. “In ‘X’, I have pointed out that, though there’s nothing wrong with me personally, I am a delusion in super-imagination, and inconsistency must therefore be expected from me—but if I’m so rational as to be aware of my irrationality why? Why, then I have glimmers of the awakening and awareness of super-imagination.” If anything, Fort joked that Kaempffert’s own reluctance to support Fort’s views was the real inconsistency in “X”: “Oh, Waldemar, you discourage me. How can I be bright and intelligent if you’re part of the general mind in which I’m a unit? Speak to me, Waldemar! Tell me.”
I do not know what Kamepffert’s response was to Fort’s book when it was eventually published. “Popular Science Monthly” did not review “Book of the Damned,” and if Kaempffert did elsewhere, I have not seen it. The “Times” did review “New Lands”—it was signed by R. H. Wollstein—and the review was not good. (Kaempffert was at the “Times” when “New Lands” appeared.) Nor do I know of Kaempffert’s responses to Fort’s last two books, “Lo!,” which came out as he transitioned from Chicago back to New York, and “Wild Talents,” which was published while Kaempffert was at the “Times” again. It was not positive.
Perhaps by this point, though, Kaempffert’s views on Fort had even softened. Because in the mid-1920s, he met Tiffany Thayer. This was just after Thayer had relocated to New York from Chicago, but before he himself had met Fort. According to Thayer, they hung out at Maxl’s Braustüberl, a German-style beer garden at 243 East 86th Street, which was supposed to be part restaurant, part nightclub, and was a favorite of the collegiate set. Thayer said that they even sometimes met John Dos Passos then. There paths subsequently diverged, with Kaempffert soon enough leaving for Thayer’s old stomping grounds, and Thayer decamping for Hollywood around the time that Kaempffert returned to the Big Apple, but they seem to have connected again in the mid-1930s, when both were in New York, Kaempffert once more at the “Times” and Thayer in advertising as well as running the Fortean Society. It seems likely that Thayer would have pushed Fort on Kaempffert—and just as likely Kaempffert would have resisted.
Because what comes clear from the relationship between Kaempffert and the Society—such as it was—over the almost two decades between 1940 and 1957, which is when I can track it, is that Kaempffert was mostly aloof from the Society—it is noteworthy that Kaempffert was not an advisory member in the early years, when Thayer was quick to sign up anyone in that position, including people he never heard from again, and including journalists. Meanwhile, the Society (particularly Thayer) viewed him as the man they hated to love: he was a spokesman for scientific authority—to Thayer’s mind, the very embodiment of the scientific journalist—and yet Thayer could not help but like him.
The first mention of Kaempffert came in the third volume of Thayer’s magazine, dated January 1940 (more than two years after its debut). Thayer listed his “Science Today and Tomorrow” as recommended reading (along with Buckminster Fuller’s “Nine Chains to the Moon,” Watson’s “Scientists Are Human,” and a book called “Television: A Struggle for Power.”) It would not be until after World War II that Kaempffert rated another mention. In between, of course, Thayer had put out the Fort omnibus, but, again, if Kaempffert reviewed the book, I have not seen his comments.
By the time of Kaempffert’s return, Thayer had made him into a symbol of the modern science writer. The next reference, in (what was now called) “Doubt” 17, released at the end of 1946 or early 1947, was a glancing blow, assuming the reader was familiar with the “Times” author. Thayer noted that news articles had developed a new “stunt,” praising some scientific idea or new technology while simultaneously pointing out its problems. “One wonders,” Thayer wrote, “if Science [sic] has any other purpose than that of providing baseless nine-day wonders as subject matter for embryonic Kaempfferts to practice their freshmen semantics upon.” It was shortly after this that Thayer took to calling another science writer—John J. O’Neil of the “New York Herald Tribune,” and one of the founding members of the National Association of Science Writers—the “Republican Kaempffert.” (O’Neill would later convince Thayer, personally, that he was no such thing—but what that therefore meant O’Neill was, Thayer never said.) A bit later in 1947, while complimenting Kaempffert for covering an alternative cancer treatment announced out of the Soviet Union, Thayer repeated the collective noun for science writers: Kaempfferts.
But he also admitted that his jousting at Kaempffert was something of a game. In 1948, the Fortean Donald Bloch wrote to Thayer—in a letter that does not survive—seemingly defending Kaempffert, or at least praising something he had done. Wide-eyed, Thayer mock-naively asked, “If we admire Kaempffert, whom do we hate?” And it seems there wouldn’t be much hating of Kaempffert after he asked the question. The name didn’t appear again until 1950, and the two times it showed up in “Doubt” 29—from July of that year—the references were mostly in passing: Thayer said O’Neill was not the Republican Kaempffert and mentioned that the “Times” had run some “mildly recriminating" letters between Velikovsky and Kaempffert, but offered no annotation of the debate. One got the sense that Thayer was not overly impressed with Velikovsky, but neither did he take much time to attack “Worlds in Collision.”
Another five years would pass before Kaempffert made “Doubt” again—and by this time he’d been mostly accepted. Indeed, there were only two more mentions of him in the magazine, one in “Doubt” 47 (January 1955) and the other in “Doubt” 53 (February 1957), and both were effusive by Thayer’s standards. The first congratulated him for winning the Kalinga Prize, awarded by UNESCO for science popularization. (He was the third recipient.) “We’re happy that he got it,” Thayer said. “Aside from his goo about the White Elephant of Palomar, we think Kaempffert has written with a minimum of jingo in a field where jingo makes the mare go. Prosit!”
The other reference was a eulogy, short but seemingly heartfelt. “Although Waldemar Kaempffert was not a member of the Society, he was a long-time personal friend of YS and truly a Fortean at heart. The New York Times is to be commiserated upon his passing.”
