Frederick L. Hoffman: His Life and Works

By F. J. Sypher

This book is the dramatic, inspiring story of a remarkable man, born in Germany, who achieved greatness and fame in the United States, but who, like many other distinguished persons, undeservedly faded from history.

Torn from a happy childhood, and desperate to leave Germany, he finally arrived here, speaking no English, with $4.76 in his pocket. He found love and success. Before he died, he authored 28 books and nearly 1200 published articles.

This book tells of his struggles and how he reached his goals, and was a pioneer in calling attention to new public health issues:

calling attention to the deadliness of asbestos (1918)

linking cancer and smoking (1915)

proving that silicosis was a real disease that was killing thousands of American workers (1922)

presenting preventive methods for malaria control (1917)

predicting from his thousands of air miles in the 1920s that airplanes would replace trains for long-distance passenger travel, and also the danger that airplanes would become major war machines

founding the American Cancer Society (1913)

helping found the American Lung Association (1904)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 11, 2002
• ISBN: 9781462832958

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COPYRIGHT © 2002 BY FRANCIS J. RIGNEY, JR.

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Contents

PREFACE

PART I

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

PART II

1. STATISTICS: A BRIEF OVERVIEW

2. HOFFMAN’S METHODS

3. TUBERCULOSIS AND THE DUSTY TRADES

4. CANCER

5. MALARIA

6. LEPROSY

7. HOMICIDE AND SUICIDE

8. HEALTH AND SOCIAL INSURANCE

9. AVIATION

10. GEOGRAPHY

11. AMER-INDIANS

12. AESTHETICS

Epilogue

APPENDIX 1

APPENDIX 2

HOFFMAN BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX TO HOFFMAN’S PUBLICATIONS

NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PREFACE

Why a biography about an unknown statistician? Because Frederick Ludwig Hoffman, born in Germany, achieved greatness in his day in the United States. His career illustrates the fulfillment of the American dream.

Hoffman was a figure of national and international prominence, both on account of his writings on statistics and on public health issues, such as cancer, tuberculosis, and occupational diseases, and on account of his many speeches at international conventions. He was welcomed in personal interviews with prominent leaders and scientists. His speeches and publications were the subject of frequent comment and summary in The New York Times, from 1913 through 1944. The Times (and other newspapers) printed numerous letters to the editor by Hoffman. Writings of his appeared in journals of national circulation, such as Scientific American, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. An article on Hoffman’s writings on suicide appeared in Time in 1932; and in the 1930s he was commented on by Alva Johnston and by James Thurber in The New Yorker. Events such as the American Cancer Society medal award to Hoffman in 1943 received wide publicity. He was the subject of lengthy entries in Who’s Who in America and in American Men of Science. He was regarded as the dean of American statisticians.

But after Hoffman’s death in 1946, there is virtual silence about him except for passing mentions here and there, as in The New Yorker in 1966, and in 1985 (full references in bibliography).Apart from articles by the editor-in American National Biography (1999), and in the journal Cosmos (2000)-the only relatively recent comprehensive notice of Hoffman’s achievements is the article by James H. Cassedy in the Dictionary of American Biography (1974), in which the author remarks: Surprisingly little has been written about Hoffman. How, one wonders, does one explain the sudden eclipse in reputation of someone of such international prominence?

To begin with, Hoffman’s case is far from unusual. Many figures of enduring achievement were prominent in their own time, but were utterly forgotten within decades. In Hoffman’s field, statistical research, new studies push previous ones into obscurity, especially when the author is no longer living. Further, Hoffman’s published reports were highly technical, and often rooted in the problems of his own time. Also, he never summed up his views in a work of general synthesis. Nor did he ever produce a popular book for which he might have been widely remembered.

Hoffman published over twelve hundred articles and books, and his unpublished writings are perhaps equally voluminous. Merely to locate his published volumes and his articles in periodicals is a major research effort, although there is a large collection of his writings, both published and unpublished, at Columbia University.

The aim of this book is to present the story of Hoffman’s life, and to survey his writings. The book is presented with an editor’s name, rather than that of an author because the book is based to varying degrees on the writing of four authors. Hoffman himself wrote an unpublished autobiography of his life from 1865 to 1888, and for his early life this has been the principal source (together with letters and diaries preserved by him). His daughter Ella Hoffman Rigney, amid a life filled with other activities, gathered material, and wrote a rough draft for a biography, but her work was incomplete at the time of her death in 1992. Shortly after that, her son Francis J. Rigney, Jr., M.D., invited the editor to bring her work to completion. The editor completely rewrote the biographical part of the book, using as sources Hoffman’s autobiography, Mrs. Rigney’s draft biography, and letters and other primary materials in the Hoffman papers at Columbia. The second part is by the editor, as is the bibliography, although an important bibliographic source was Mrs. Rigney’s list of Hoffman’s publications. The epilogue, the appendixes, and the index to the bibliography, are the joint work of Dr. Rigney and of the editor. The result is the present book, in which Dr. Rigney has played a major part, by writing certain portions (as noted in the text), by making suggestions, and by reviewing the entire manuscript.

Hoffman throughout his life was interested in biography. In 1890 he was reading Samuel Johnson’s essays, and marked in The Rambler (October 13, 1750) a passage including the phrase, no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography. . . In the margin Hoffman wrote: This is certainly true. He also marked another passage: I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful. In a letter of August 1,1906 to the president of the Prudential Insurance Company, Hoffman wrote, about biography in general: What posterity is interested in, primarily and chiefly, is the historical position of any given person in connection with events which have their effect upon the welfare of mankind in future years . . . . (box 1, item 1 of the Columbia collection). A principal aim of this study is to fulfill Hoffman’s criterion for biography.

F. J. SYPHER

New York, New York

July 11,2002

PART I

LIFE

1

Map of Life • 1865 to 1884

In the town of Varel, in the duchy of Oldenburg, in Germany, Frederick Ludwig Hoffman (originally Friedrich Ludwig Hoffmann) was born on May 2,1865, to Augustus Franziskus Hoffmann and his wife Antoinette Marie Elise von Laar. The Hoffmann home, at Marienlustgarten No. 11, where he spent his childhood and early youth, was surrounded by trees and gardens, and stood not far from the North Sea, which has put its mark on the entire region.

To ancient Roman geographers the region was known as Frisia. The western portion, today called Friesland, is part of the Netherlands. The eastern portion, defined by the Ems River, and known as East Friesland, has been affiliated with Germany since the fifteenth century. It is a land of salt-marsh flatlands, painstakingly reclaimed from the sea; a realm of sweeping horizons, punctuated by isolated trees or groves, and occasional windmills; with skies often filled with clouds, wind, fog, and rain. The land is exceptionally fertile, but stands in constant danger of being flooded. A local saying goes—in the regional dialect: De nich will dieken, möt wieken (He who won’t build dikes, must retreat; one might say, to echo the rhyme, Dike, or hike!).¹

East Friesland, at the confluence of several rivers, is also a focus for shipping, and has prominent towns and cities, such as Bremen. The people are traditionally independent in outlook, and in some ways have more in common with the Dutch, the English, and the Danes, than with the Prussians, who in the late nineteenth century imposed their rule on Oldenburg.²

The lingua franca is Plattdeutsch, or Low German. The term low does not denote any supposed inferiority, but refers to the low-lying terrain, as contrasted with the mountainous regions in southern Germany, where the language is called High German, which is the prevailing national language of education, science, and commerce. But Plattdeutsch can boast an antiquity and a literary tradition of its own.

Hoffman’s father was born on June 8,1832 in the North Sea town of Hooksiel, on the western side of the Jade River. He was an accountant, who acted as an insurance agent, and practiced law in a small way (quoted words, here and elsewhere in this chapter, unless otherwise indicated, are from Hoffman’s unpublished autobiography, Life Story of a Statistician 18651884, or from his earlier memoir in German).³

Hoffman’s mother, Antoinette von Laar, was born at Langwarden, Oldenburg, on October 23,1826. An ancestor of hers, Berend von Lahr (as the name had formerly been spelled), had lived in France, but had fled to Holland during the Catholic persecution of the Huguenots, and he had finally settled in Oldenburg. She married first Johann Friedrich Hayen; they had four children: Therese (married to Heinrich Cordes), Amalie (known as Maly, married to Adolf Tromann); Antoinette (known as Nette, married to Gustav Pundt), and Wilhelm Hayen. After the death of her husband, she married A. F. Hoffmann, and they had two children: Helene Hoffmann, born March 24, 1864; and Friedrich Ludwig Hoffmann, who was known in the family as Louis or Lui (his aunt Emilie called him Luli). Hoffman’s half-sisters married when he was quite young, but he was close to them and their families. In later years he visited them in Europe, and kept up correspondence with them, as he did also with his full sister Helene.⁴

Hoffman’s parents were afraid he might have a tendency to consumption, so he was not allowed to participate in athletics.

But he used to walk for miles around the countryside, and at the ruins of the old Varel castle, he would, as he remembered, sometimes throw stones upon the leaden coffins of the ancient princes and other worthies, buried in the church vault long since closed.

Hoffman was at first sent to a small public school, where he did not do well. His handwriting was poor, and years later he was diagnosed as having a palsy in three fingers of his right hand. His mother made him take violin lessons, at which he was a conspicuous failure. He later recalled that his teacher had reminded him of a grasshopper in long green trousers.

In summertime the Hoffmanns would travel from Varel by carriage, following the dike around the Jade Bay until they reached the home of relatives in the town of Stollhamm, in Butjadingerland (an alluvial region between the Weser River and the bay). He enjoyed such visits and recalled that it was then, as now, a land of ‘milk and honey’ blessed with marvellously fertile soil, and dotted with fine farms . . . . He found the local people a host of real folks, speaking the low German dialect and despising the ways of the city, proud of their fine farms and well-fed cattle.

During these early years, Hoffman also visited the historic town of Jever, with its castle. In the thriving port city of Bremen, he enjoyed attending the annual fair. In Wilhelmshaven, a modern port town on the Jade Bay, lived his half-sister Amalie and her family. In Bremerhaven lived his Aunt Hanne (his father’s sister) and her husband Friedrich Fliess. He especially enjoyed his visits to his Aunt Emilie (another sister), whose husband, Captain Friedrich Bohlen, was often away on long voyages, so she welcomed her nephew’s visits.

Hoffman’s father taught him to read at the age of five, and introduced him to the study of astronomy; the son’s chief interest was in the sciences and geography. He also read Ludwig Strackerjahn’s works, including his collection of local folk tales and legends (1867), and was much impressed by the author’s way of associating supernatural beings with a particular locality, with its fore-spook (Vorspuk, an omen or portent), and after-spook (Nachspuk).⁵

Hoffman’s interests were stimulated by family friends, such as Carl von Breton, a watchmaker of French ancestry, who discussed scientific matters with him, and gave him old watch-works to play with. Another friend, J. W. Acquistapace, owned a bookstore in Varel, where Hoffman was free to browse and read. His mother objected that he was not acquiring real knowledge, but merely indulging his curiosity. In general, Hoffman respected his mother’s opinions, and he later characterized her as radical in her views and advanced on many questions which were then considered outside of woman’s sphere; to his mother’s influence he credited his broad views on matters of Church and State. And he was proud that his mother was the first woman in his town to use a typewriter. He had warm memories of Christmas Eve, when his father would light candles on the Christmas tree and the family would sing traditional hymns.

* * *

On March 9,1876, Hoffman’s father, at the age of 43, died of consumption. The boy’s mother then looked to relatives and friends for advice about her son’s education. Since he had not done well at the local school, it was decided as a last resort to send him to a rather primitive boarding school run by Herr Friedrich Probst, the sexton of the Lutheran church at the small town of Strückhausen. The discipline was very harsh but Hoffman in retrospect recalled his life there as "a dream, just suited to my inclination to wander about and explore the

country in my own way. He would ring the bell of the centuries-old church, and would help dig graves, and in the process would collect skulls and bones from the churchyard. On occasion he and others would pilfer from the minister’s garden and hide the stolen fruit in the hayloft or belfry of the church. The school was only a few miles from Brake, where he enjoyed visits with his Aunt Emilie, who would send him back with plenty of good things to eat. In general he was lonely; yet he later concluded that out of his solitude he developed the very strength he needed. He found fault with German educational theories that were strongly opposed to the development of any sense of self-realization and of the conservation of originality or original traits, useful in the development of personality. In later years, Hoffman’s opinion was that the German system of teaching had had a pernicious influence on the American educational system."

The school textbooks were devoid of interest to him. The only book of instruction that he especially recalled was L. Rothschild’s merchants’ handbook, which contained an encyclopedic range of commercial, mathematical, and geographical information.⁶

At the start of summer vacation in 1880 Hoffman, on returning home, found that his mother had had serious financial losses (there are no details of what happened). Although he had just completed his preparation to take university entrance examinations, his mother now told him that he was not to return to school to take them, but was to begin to work in business. His close relatives were all businessmen: G. F. Fooken, an uncle (married to a sister of his father’s), was a banker in Jever; a brother-in-law, C. H. Cordes, was a cork manufacturer; another brother-in-law, Gustav Pundt, was a farmer. Hoffman in his autobiography commented: The advice which friends of my father gave to my mother was such as might be expected in a small provincial town, with a circumscribed outlook and a deep-rooted suspicion against all venturesome efforts in untried fields. His desire was to have a university education and pursue his scientific interests; but he realized that his situation gave him no choice but to do as he was told.

Hoffman’s first job was as a copyist with an accountant named Herr Büppelmann, but this did not work out. He next worked for about three months as a delivery-boy and general shop-boy in the bookstore of Herr Acquistapace, and this too was not a success. Both posts were apprenticeships, without any compensation whatever. His mother then paid a contractual sum for a three-year apprenticeship with a tradesman named I. Diechmann, who had a shop in Oyten (southeast of Bremen).

Before leaving, Hoffman received his first Communion, September 12, 1880, at Varel in the twelfth-century church, which was impressive, with its high altar and many wooden saints. This occasion was regarded as a ceremony of entry into manhood, but, except for the pastor, Hoffman was all alone. He was impressed by the seriousness of his need to make his way in life, but he inwardly rebelled against German authoritarianism, which was in the ascendant at that time, when Germany had recently become a unified county (Deutsches Reich—the German Empire), and an international power. Its powerful ruler was Prince Otto von Bismarck, the so-called Iron Chancellorwhose credo was Blut und Eisen (blood and iron).The German doctrine of the super-state was repellent to Hoffman; he was absolutely against the view that Might makes Right.

By contast, Hoffman had observed with enthusiasm many vestiges of earlier German traditions, such as the celebrations of the trade guilds, with their numerous parades and mummeries, the Easter fires and other ceremonials. In later life he wrote sympathetically of the similar Anglo-Saxon guilds and their gradual transformation, first into friendly societies and later into wage-earners’ insurance institutions. By contrast he was adamantly opposed to nationalized social-benefit programs.⁷

When he began his career, his mother advised him to keep an account of his expenses, and to keep a true account of the essential facts of his life. He did both throughout the years. He also began to keep statistical notes as a matter for future reference.

On September 16,1880 Hoffman began work in Oyten, but he found that he could not stand the harsh treatment and the physical work and in April he returned home. His mother arranged for another apprenticeship, with Herr A. Bartels, a manufacturer of linen goods in Bremen. Hoffman began on May 3, 1881, and held out for over a year. Meanwhile his mother moved to Bremen, on June 1, 1882. But one morning, Bartels told Hoffman that he was fired because he had stolen 30 marks, which Hoffman had not done. He exonerated himself by identifying the thief, who was arrested. Nevertheless, on July 30th, Hoffman was home again.

On yet another assignment, he began on October 14th and left on November 14th. His situation had serious implications, because to obtain regular employment in Germany, it was essential to have a certificate of completed apprenticeship. He also tried applying to a school for non-commissioned military officers, but he was rejected because of his slight build. He was five feet seven inches tall, and weighed about 110 pounds.

In response to word of an unpaid post with a shopkeeper named Peter Harms, Hoffman wrote an inquiry and was accepted, and traveled to Salzhausen, in the salt-rich region of the Lüneberger Heide (heath), where he arrived on November 21. He knew that this venture was doomed, when on his first night an old crone served him black bread and cabbage, and began to teach him how to do her own work. He thought that both the mother and the son were about the most avaricious people he had ever met. He evidently stirred up a family crisis at home by writing not only to his mother but also to his half-sister Antoinette Pundt, begging to come back. His mother wrote angry, insulting letters (which he kept all through the years), telling him that he had to stick it out and could not come home, or go to his sister’s. In one letter, for example, she wrote: Dear Louis, If you’re not crazy, I don’t know anything at all, have you lost your wits? A mindless fool you are . . . Phooey, phooey, shame on you. . . . You are a lazy conceited fop . . . Shiver with cold in this beautiful mild weather! Mindless fool, you act like a lord . . . . Aren’t you ashamed to bring ruin upon the reputation of your father? . . . You must stay there and work for your master and your shop and don’t try to come back here like a little schoolboy. Dumb youngster to come here with your big mouth, are you crazy? . . . This is the last word, Your loving Mama. But after at least six long letters in this tone, she finally gave in and wrote that he could come home.

Hoffman in his German memoir writes vividly of his sad arrival in Bremen: Thus on the thirteenth of December I came like the Prodigal Son back to my mother’s house, Hempstrasse No. 6. It was late and no helpful hand met me in welcome. He soon became very ill with a kind of colic or rheumatic inflammation and stayed in bed for four weeks, during which, as he writes: Mother took care of me as only a mother could and all our quarrels and conflicts were forgotten—throughout my sickness she was Mother. One is tempted to infer that his home life must have been characterized by extremes of excited behavior and outbursts on the part of both mother and son, and perhaps the emotionally exhausting dynamic of their relationship contributed to his desire finally to get as far away from Germany as possible.

Upon his recovery from his illness, Hoffman once again looked for work, and after much searching, found a job in Bremen, with a Herr Stoffers, who had a garment manufacturing and retail business. Hoffman began work on February 17,1883. His mother meanwhile had returned to Varel. But in June, Hoffman writes in his German memoir: I was standing in the street—(i.e. I was fired)—with one silver mark to my name. Stoffers went bankrupt (Served him right Hoffman later noted—in English—in his German memoir). But Hoffman was again out of work, and his small savings were almost gone.

He had the good luck to find a temporary job (June 12 to July 15) in the Bremen post office, and he enjoyed assignments such as delivering dispatches to the office of the North German Lloyd steamship line. He also had by now become convinced of his desire to see the world and by any and all means to find a way out of Germany for settlement abroad. Thus he was thrilled when he was recruited in Bremen to work as a lamp trimmer and silver polisher at a seaside resort in Wijk an Zee, in Holland. He left Bremen by train on July 28, 1883, and in his notebook wrote down details of arrival and departure, and made statistical observations of a sort that had already become habitual with him. He noted, for example, the estimated German population of Amsterdam (30,000), and the date of a new church building (1408). On arrival in the evening at Wijk an Zee he went out for a walk and watched the sun going down over the North Sea. He recalled: Wandering among the sand dunes, I knew perhaps one of the happiest moments of my life, in realising that at last I was on foreign shores. There seems, one imagines, to have been more to this experience than his satisfaction at getting away from Germany. In his later travel writings, he reveals a tendency to enter into an almost visionary state when confronted with remote scenes of exceptional natural beauty, as when he visited Theontonio Falls in Brazil in 1921.⁸

The next day, at 6:00 in the morning it was to work polishing knives, forks, and spoons. But on the following day he was fired. It had been noticed that he had a severe rash on his skin, which turned out to be scabies (die Krätze), which disqualified him. He arrived in Bremen near midnight on August 2, 1883, and, feeling deeply humiliated and unwilling to ask his family for help, he started to wander about in Germany on foot, from Bremen all the way to Hanover (about 60 miles), occasionally sleeping in public parks, and doing odd jobs when he could find them. At last in September he was taken in by an acquaintance, Herr Cruchen, who himself was also in poverty, and who, without Hoffman’s knowledge, got in touch with Hoffman’s brother-in-law, Heinrich Cordes, who arrived like a deus ex machina on September 11, and took Hoffman to Cordes’s house in Delmenhorst.

With both humiliation and pardonable pride, Hoffman looked back on this episode as an event that had had an important influence on his social views: In later years when I have had cause to consider the unemployment problem and when publicly I have defended my opposition to both compulsory health and unemployment insurance, this early experience of mine recalled the bitter truth that but for absolute necessity we would never make the efforts which finally develop our character and fit us for the real needs of life. He was at the time on the verge of suicide (also a problem of lifelong interest for him, as in his book on the subject, published in 1928), which he resisted chiefly because of his love and respect for his mother, even though he felt far removed from her in thoughts and aims.

Safely settled for the time being with Heinrich Cordes (his wife, Hoffman’s half-sister Therese, had died some years earlier), Hoffman took the opportunity for much-needed rest. He read in his brother-in-law’s library, and took long walks across the moorlands, where he visited his half-sister Nette and her husband Gustav Pundt, who lived in an attractive old farmhouse in Hasport, near Delmenhorst. He enjoyed the companionship of Cordes’s children, and Cordes’s sister Bertha, whom Hoffman thought one of the noblest of all the women I have known. Years later Hoffman’s niece Anna Cordes recalled (in a letter dated Delmenhorst, May 14,1920), that Bertha "loved those nearest to her more than she loved herself. She recalls Bertha saying: A bitter injustice was done to Louis, who was always left alone by himself in a little garret, no one cared about him, no one was concerned about his interests, his youthful life was not properly directed."

Hoffman soon began to look for work that would enable him to accumulate some money while he sought an opportunity to go abroad. Eventually he received an offer of employment in the lumberyard of Herr H. Bartels, in Hooksiel. On May 1, 1884, Hoffman began: he kept the books, sold goods, did general chores, and stacked lumber. He was able to visit nearby family members, such as his half-sister Amalie and her husband Adolf Tromann, in Wilhelmshaven, and his uncle G. F. Fooken, a private banker in Jever, who would sometimes invite Hoffman to dine, which he found was always a rather awe-inspiring occasion. On a very different sort of occasion he had, as he writes in his German memoir, a colossal hangover (Katzenjammer) after staying out until three in the morning to dance, dine, and drink at a dance hall—where he almost got into a fight with a rival for the attention of an attractive woman. He notes with some satisfaction that he won out in the end, perhaps, he says, because my money and my wine were better. But soon he and Bartels quarrelled, and Hoffman decided to resign on the first of November.

During his period of employment with Bartels, Hoffman had been writing letters of inquiry to countless firms with overseas interests. He was especially attracted to Africa, where Germany was actively developing major colonial possessions as of 1884. Africa, Argentina, Hawaii, the South Pacific, the Netherlands East Indies, China—it was all one to him—he would consider living anywhere but Prussianized Germany. But one after another the firms all said, in effect, there are no vacancies. He received dozens of letters of rejection, which, remarkably, he saved all through the years.⁹ There were doubtless many other young men who were seeking such posts, and perhaps such opportunities as might become available went to people with influential connections or with money to invest in the operations. In later years Hoffman wondered what would have become of him if any of these inquiries had worked out. South-West Africa, for example, was seized by South Africa when the First World War broke out. At the end of the war Germany had to give up all her colonies, in the Pacific as well as in Africa, and they were taken over as mandates of the League of Nations. But in 1884 all that was far in the unforeseeable future, and Hoffman believed that wherever he might go he would be better off than in Germany. After he had failed in all his attempts to find employment in colonial service, he made his decision to try his luck in America.

When Hoffman left Herr Bartels, he had 40 marks that he had saved, together with an unspecified amount from the sale of his stamp collection. He went to Jever to confer with his uncle G. F. Fooken, but met with a blank refusal of help. He next went to Varel and spent the night at his mother’s house. He recalled that he was in a turmoil of excitement, both mental and emotional: I have only a strong impression that I had decided in the event of my failure to make the necessary connections, that I would commit suicide!

He then went to the home of his uncle in Bremerhaven,

Friedrich Fliess, and there Hoffman received from his mother a letter dated November 3, in which she wishes him farewell: Now that you have made this decisive step, I shall hope and wish that it is for you a step toward future good fortune. May dear God go with you and lead you along the way and give you His blessing in all your undertakings. . . . I will have a great deal of worry and anxiety and sleepless nights about you—I have been very concerned about you—do not forget about me and give me some information from the ship or from overseas. To see foreign countries has its appeal. Farewell, my darling, my greeting and a kiss from your true and deeply loving Mama (and Helene).

A family friend, Bernhard Hohnholz, whose father lived in Varel, offered to secure Hoffman a post of employment on board ship, if he would pay the amount of steerage passage, which was 85 marks. From Hohnholz he also received a letter of introduction to Herr E. Lübbers in New York. In addition, Hoffman received a postcard from D. G. Bohlken, in Varel, with the address of his son Gerhart Bohlken, at 443 Lake Street, Cleveland, Ohio. These references turned out to be of vital assistance to Hoffman.¹⁰

Finally, on November 7/8 (date written thus), Fooken wrote to say that he had forwarded to Bertha Cordes 50 marks for Hoffman’s use, With my affectionate wishes for your well-being. Bertha had written to Fooken urging him to help, and the money she received from Fooken was forwarded to Hoffman by Heinrich Cordes, who sent him best wishes for success. Two days later, Cordes wrote to him again, and enclosed an additional 50 marks as a contribution to the cost of the crossing. Cordes says not to worry about feeling responsible for the assistance that people have given, but rather to take to heart the old saying, Erst besinn’s, dann beginn’s (First reflect upon it, then begin it). On November 10, Hoffman’s mother wrote, expressing displeasure that he had taken money from relatives, but wishing that dear God may lead you by the hand.

On November 11, 1884, Hoffman purchased his ticket on the North German Lloyd ship SS Main, scheduled to sail from Bremerhaven on Sunday, November 16th.¹¹ Thanks to Herr Hohnholz, Hoffman was appointed a clerical assistant to the purser, for which he received cabin accommodations (and did not have to travel in steerage), and he also had access to the officers’ mess. Bertha Cordes wrote: We hope, and it is by all affectionately wished, that you may have good luck over there . . . .

For his part, Hoffman hoped that someday he would be able to show his family his appreciation for the help he had received. That day came after the First World War, when Germany was racked by inflation, and food and essential goods, such as clothing, were scarce and expensive. Hoffman sent food packages and money to members of his family in Germany, and his niece Anna Cordes wrote in 1920 that with his gifts he had done for us more, much more good than Father ever did for you. He also in later years took care of his Aunt Emilie Bohlen until her death in 1923.¹²

In his German memoir, Hoffman quotes the familiar proverb Ende gut alles gut (All’s well that ends well), and he concludes with a prayer: "May America give me what I did not have in Germany—luck. " Reviewing this page of his manuscript years later, on the eve of his fortieth birthday, Hoffman wrote in the margin, in English: May 1st 05. I have never had cause to regret it. F.L.H.

2

Lonesome • 1884 to 1886

The Main left her pier at Bremerhaven on Sunday the 16th of November 1884, and Hoffman saw his uncle wave a last goodbye before the ship steamed out into the blue North Sea.¹ Hoffman watched the German coast disappear, and was awed by the thought that he might never see his homeland again, but he was ready to welcome the future: I was without a single practical aim and I had been a failure at everything that I had tried to do. I was thoroughly misunderstood by those who were nearest and dearest to me, but I was blessed with a deathless faith in my own destiny and with a willingness to work at anything my hands might find to do.

After remaining on deck for a few moments, he went below to stow his gear and check his bunk, which was one of about two dozen in a small cabin in the stern. On Tuesday, when the ship made a stop at Southampton, he went ashore for a moment so as to be able to say that he had stood on English soil. He writes of his delight in the chalk cliffs of Dover and the lovely shore-line of the Isle of Wight. When not working in the purser’s office, he passed the time with his fellow passengers in laughing, joking, seasickness and homesickness.² But he recorded little about the voyage, probably because he was too busy, too seasick, and in too emotional a state.

The Main docked in New York on November 28, 1884. At this period the city still retained its outward aspect