284 JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF COSMETIC CHEMISTS While Bavaria had a royal house, princes and commoners went to the same schools and mingled freely with one another. Ernest comes from 'a prominent Murlich family. His father was a famous architect who specialized particularly in two types of structure i, churches and breweries. I have no doubt that this is one of the reasons why Ernest's mind reflects a balanced synthesis of the spiritual and hedo- nist proclivities. Other reasons will appear on further probing. My friend Ernest is a humanist. To this very day he is immensely proud of the fact that in the course of his secondary schooling he has had nine years of Latin and six years of Greek. He thus belongs to that unfortunately diminishing band of men who are conscious of the great benefits derived from a thorough exposure to Greek and Roman classics. To anyone who has had the same opportunity, Ernest's educational back- ground must be immediately apparent. He himself admits that this humanistic upbringing at the time of an adolescent's greatest mental flexibility has been of immeasurable help to him, not only in the extension of his linguistic proficiency, but also in the disciplining of his mind, an indis- pensable prerequisite for the organization and production of his magnum opus, the six volumes of "The Essential Oils." Yet Ernest never lost contact with the pleasurable things of life. He took up sailing at the age of sixteen, mostly to compensate for a much coveted sailor's career which his father persuaded him to abandon. By way of added compensation he also turned to reading stories of adventures and travels, becoming eventually somewhat of an authority on the Ameri- can Indian and the Wild West, as it was then known in Europe. In common with many of his contemporaries, Ernest did not begin and end with the same subject of his professional training. When he enrolled at the University of Munich, he wanted to become a geologist with the idea of working and traveling abroad. He transferred subsequently to the University of Zurich, still pursuing the subjects of geology and mineralogy. Life and work in the liberal capital of Switzerland must have contributed greatly to the broadening of his humanitarian ideals. This is the time when he must have begun to develop into that superlative cosmopolite, the world citizen in the truest sense of the word which he is today, and which he has been for all these years when most of you made his acquaintance. The outbreak of the First World War had a profound effect upon his future career. Feeling that the war reduced the possibilities of world travel, he regretfull) abandoned geology in favor of organic chemistry. Fortunately, he found inspiring teachers of this subject in Zurich, among them the great Werner, Karrer and Ruzicka, Nobel Prize winners all. Incidentally, for a fillip he attended Albert Einstein's lectures on the theory of relativity. At any rate, it was while attending Ruzicka's courses that he became ac- quainted with terpenes and essential oils.

MY FRIEND, ERNEST GUENTHER 285 Ernest received his Ph.D. in 1920. He had an opportunity of coming to the United States almost immediately upon graduation to work as a dye chemist in Paterson, New Jersey. But again his sage father intervened, persuading him to acquire some experience locally before leaving the country. Those were depression years in Germany and finding a job was not easy. But fortune smiled once again. Ernest obtained a position as an assistant to Albert Hesse, the famous expert in floral oils who was then also editor of the Chemisches Zentralblatt. Hesse died two years later, whereupon Ernest accepted a position with a soap and cosmetic house in order to gain practical experience. He was so good at it that soon he was asked to establish manufacturing branches of his house in Austria, Poland, Yugoslavia, Finland and elsewhere. In the meantime the depression in Germany turned from bad to worse. Eventually the German mark reached the incredibly low point of exchange at the rate of four trillion, two hundred billion paper marks to one U.S. dollar. By then Ernest decided that he had acquired enough practical ex- perience to seek his fortune elsewhere. Before leaving, he made contacts with some prominent essential oil houses in New York. The selection nar- rowed down to Fritzsche Brothers, Inc., whose offer he accepted. He ar- rived in New York on a foggy afternoon, late in the fall of 1924. He still remembers with vivid emotion the sudden emergence of the New York sky- line, with its thousands upon thousands of glittering lights. He thinks that Parsifal must have felt the same when he first glimpsed Monsalvat, castle of the Holy Grail. It did not take Ernest very long to make good at Fritzsche Brothers. Mr. F. H. Leonhardt, the present Chairman of the Board, quickly recog- nized his extraordinary talents. The following summer, Ernest was asked to carry out an investigation of the production of essential oils in the Grasse region, particularly those ofjasmin and lavender. His findings were received so favorably by his firm that the following year he was asked to include Spain in his itinerary. Eventually, the company acquired a plant in Seillans, and Ernest was made its technical director. From this time on he began to travel all over Europe investigating or supervising the produc- tion of essential oils in France, Spain, Italy, Dalmatia, Bulgaria and, in- cidentally, also in North Africa. He spent the winters in the United States working in the laboratory, writing his monographs and lecturing all over the country. These lectures were illustrated by motion pictures anybody who saw them will never forget their vivid, story-telling beauty. The outbreak of the Second World War restricted Ernest's travels to the western hemisphere, but it also gave him an opportunity to help pro- mote the development of new sources of essential oils when the old Euro- pean, African and Asiatic sources became inaccessible.