Kapronczay Károly szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 234-237. (Budapest, 2016)
KÖZLEMÉNYEK - Müller Miklós—Elek Gábor: Bauer Ervin 1935-ös biológia-tankönyve és a könyv további sorsa
88 Comm, de Hist. Artis Med. 234-237 (2016) Table 1. Editors and authors of the successive editions of General Biology 1935, 1936 BAUER, Vinberg3, Dorfman, Morozov4, Paramonov, Eskin, Luntz5 1939 Vinberg, DORFMAN, Morozov, PARAMONOV, Eskin 1940 DORFMAN, Malevich (I.I.), Paramonov, Eskin 1944 DORFMAN, Paramonov, Eskin The first tragedy happened in August 1937. Ervin Bauer and his wife, were arrested by the NKVD, convicted on trumped up charges and executed in January 1938 (Müller, 2005). Bauer became a nonperson and his works were removed from circulation and destroyed. He and his wife were rehabilitated, but only in 1956. If further editions were to be published, his role in making this significant contribution to university teaching obviously had to disappear. For the new editions, the remaining authors took the seemingly easy way out. They prepared a second edition by modifying the original work. Dorftnan and Paramonov, two of the coauthors of the initial edition of Bauer’s book, signed the new edition as editors {floptpMaH, TlapaMOHoe 1939). Dorfman was an obvious choice for editor since he did much work on the overall editing of the first edition. Bauer’s and Luntz’ names were suppressed. Bauer’s introduction was removed and the Part “excitability” was replaced with a text written by Vin- berg. The rest of the volume had received only minor touch-ups. This new version is clearly nothing else than a new edition and certainly not a new work. The new version was planned to be issued in two volumes, as stated in the preface of Volume I (JJoptpMaH, TlapaMOHoe 1939), that contains chapters I - VII, covering topics from cell biology through individual development. Chapters dealing with genetics and evolution were reserved for Volume II. But politics intervened again. One of the contributors, Vinberg, was arrested in 1940 and deported to a prison camp in the Komi Autonomous Republic (Tmnpoe 2005). Thus no Volume II seems to have been ever published. At least such book is not listed in the catalogues of the Lenin Library and the Central Medical Library in Moscow and we found no mention of it elsewhere. In the absence of Volume II, Paramonov’s contribution did not appear in this edition, although his name as an author appears on the title page of Volume I. His contribution reappears in the later editions. After these politically warranted eliminations, the last two editions (JdopcpMan 1940, 1944) probably had easy sailing. Certainly the last one still appeared in a press run of 10000 copies, in spite of the war shortage of paper. These editions are still revisions of the first one edited by Bauer and not new works. Chapters contributed by his former coauthors received much editing but large blocks of text remained essentially unchanged, or were only slightly modified. Many of the figures in the first edition are still present in the 1944 version. This history credits Bauer’s significant and effective efforts to improve university and col3 Vinberg’s participation in the development “of the first soviet college text of general biology” is stressed in his biography by Ghilyarov (FiurspoB 2005). 4 Deceased by the time of the publication 5 Not listed as contributor on the title page
