Con Sordino for Piano and Brain: Bohemian Neuroscience in a 1900 Cultural Metropolis

In the late 1840s, the pathologist Rudolf Virchow recognized that most of the cells in the brain could be categorized into two distinct groups: nerve cells, and a far more numerous group of cells that surround the nerve cells and fill the spaces between them. Virchow called this second category of brain cells the neuroglia (literally "nerve glue"). Half a century later, nerve cells and glial cells had attracted very different degrees of attention to their physiological role in higher brain function. By 1900, neuroscientists' knowledge of nerve cells had created the image of the neural-network brain, whereas their knowledge about glial cells was still at the level of nerve glue. There was no doubt in the neuroscientific community that the only functions of neuroglia were to hold the nerve cells in place, to isolate the individual nerve paths from each other, and, if malfunctioning, to produce brain tumors. ¹ Nerve cells, as dictated by an authoritative manual at the turn of the century, were "the only representatives of the nervous functions"; they were the "main factors of mental and nervous activity in general." ²

However, one person vehemently opposed the accepted scientific opinion about the passivity of neuroglia: the artistically inclined doctor and poet Carl Ludwig Schleich in Berlin. At the turn of the century, Schleich attracted great attention with his widely read collections of essays on popular science such as Von der Seele (On the soul, 1910) and Vom Schaltwerk der Gedanken (On the switchboard of thoughts, 1916), in which he declared the neuroglia to be the central switching apparatus in the brain. Even in his first book, Schmerzlose Operationen (Painless operations, 1895), he asserted that an "active function" and consequently "psychological importance" were to be ascribed to the neuroglia. ³ Without taking active glial cells into account, ran Schleich's provocative argument, the description of the physiological processes occurring in the brain tissues would remain incomplete. The brain research establishment at that time considered such a thesis absurd, and Schleich was viewed as someone whose own brain must be "turning into glue." ⁴ Both he and his glia theory were ignored by his scientific contemporaries, making the Berlin doctor an "alien of his age." ⁵

In this essay I will trace Schleich's iconoclastic brain theory in the context of the specific milieu from which it emerged, fin-de-siècle Berlin. Schleich's thoughts on the importance of neuroglia were formed outside the closed academic circles of brain research and the world of scientific laboratories—far from established research in a milieu of eccentric bohemians and friends of the arts who created their own laboratory and forum for discussion in Berlin wine cellars, beer gardens, studios, and salons. ⁶ Theirs was an avant-garde laboratory in whose center the bizarre Polish poet, writer, and piano player Stanislaw Przybyszewski created a thought-stimulating atmosphere with his Chopin interpretations.

The subjects of this essay are the cells in the brain, the piano as a laboratory instrument, Przybyszewski's piano recital in Schleich's house, and Schleich's literary reproduction of the conditions under which a new theory of brain function originated. I offer an example from late-nineteenth-century cultural history and the history of neuroscience in order to demonstrate how protagonists in both spheres can creatively interact in their need to produce innovative ideas. The example further demonstrates how permeable the boundaries between science, art, and music can be, and how artistic practices of experimentation can form a fruitful ground for scientific knowledge. ⁷

The Neuron: Excitation and Inhibition

In 1891, Heinrich W. G. von Waldeyer, a professor of anatomy at the University of Berlin,published a programmatic synopsis in the Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift of the current state of neurohistological knowledge. In agreement with microscopic observations made by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Wilhelm His, Auguste Forel, and Fridtjof Nansen...