Max Wilhelm Meyer

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Max Wilhelm Meyer

Max Wilhelm Meyer (born February 15, 1853 in Braunschweig ; † December 17, 1910 in Untermais near Meran ) was a German astronomer , naturalist and writer .

Life

Max Wilhelm Meyer was the son of the master glazier Georg Meyer (* around 1810 , † around 1870 in Braunschweig). He spent a few years of his youth in the family of his brother Heinrich Carl Georg Meyer, a railway master in Mainholzen near Braunschweig. He was known for his collection of around 2,000 petrefacts and probably stimulated the scientific interest of his nephew. Meyer left school in 1867 without a degree. He then did an apprenticeship as a bookseller. In 1871 he had a job at the observatory in Göttingen and moved to Leipzig to study astronomy .

In 1875 Meyer received his doctorate on double stars at the University of Zurich . Now he toured Naples , Pompeii and Capri . From 1877 to 1882 he worked as an assistant at the Geneva observatory. Meyer planned his future as a writer. At this time his first feature section appeared in the Frankfurter Zeitung . Another station was Vienna in 1883 (where he calculated the dates of several thousand solar eclipses ). Meyer married in Vienna in May 1884, moved to Berlin in 1885 , where his son Ernst was born in June 1886. Meyer wrote five feature articles a month for the Berliner Tageblatt newspaper for two years . Together with the inventor Werner von Siemens and the astronomer Wilhelm Foerster , he founded the astronomical society Urania in 1888 , of which he was director until 1897. In the Urania building in Berlin-Moabit, Meyer realized his idea of ​​a "scientific theater", for which he made use of theater techniques that he had already tried out at the Vienna Horticultural Exhibition and developed with the theater technician Carl Lautenschläger . In 1890 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . In addition, he directed Heaven and Earth , the “Illustrated Natural Science Monthly” of Urania. Due to a dispute with Wilhelm Foerster, he lost his job at Urania and moved to Capri and Zurich.

Max Wilhelm Meyer with his daughter Mercedes

Meyer wrote poems , short stories and plays throughout his life . The creation drama Until the End of the World was performed in many German cities. He owned a very extensive collection of natural objects.

Text excerpt from a travel report

Max Wilhelm Meyer also worked as a travel journalist, as in 1906 for the magazine Kosmos . In it he describes as Dr. M. Wilh. Meyer (Urania-Meyer) experiences of his trip to Egypt (presumably undertaken primarily out of astronomical interest) and also provides the photos for his text. The five-page article takes the colonialist basic perspective typical of the time , which regards the Arabs as friendly, fun-loving, but backward people:

"The Arabs, or whatever else is teeming with human races, scream at each other terribly, but they don't argue."

He writes about a little boy who shines Meyer's shoes in Cairo:

“There are nimble little guys here, aged six to eight, and in all the colors (except white) that boots vary in today. Around his little box, which he carries on his back, our boy has, depending on his wealth, hung up to a dozen different bottles for the different leather colors. [...] What does a kid do with the money? [...] Nobody can starve here at all. You could lie down somewhere under a beautiful palm tree all day and the only thing you could do was always crawl after its shadow. A few dates almost fall into their mouths by themselves. [...] He saves and works in order to acquire the highest enjoyment of life, a woman, or even more so that he can found his cozy home, his harem. He can already have that from fourteen years old if he has been diligent. "

Fonts

  • Self-biography from heaven.
  • The origin of the earth and the earthly. 1888.
  • Leisure hours of a nature lover. Sketches and studies of heavenly and earthly things. 1891.
  • Ed .: Illustrated guide to astronomy, physics and microscopy in the form of a guide through the Urania in Berlin . 1892.
  • The world building. A common celestial science. 1898.
  • Til the end of the world. Play, 1900.
  • The fall of the earth and the cosmic catastrophes. Reflections on the future fate of our earthly world. 1902.
  • The forces of nature. 1903.
  • The moon. Our neighboring world. 1905.
  • The Egyptian darkness. (Experience report of the solar eclipse on August 30, 1905 in Egypt), 1905.
  • The creation of the earth. 1907.
  • Under the spell of the volcanoes. Their history of development presented in travel descriptions. 1907.
  • Inhabited worlds. 1909.
  • World of planets. 1910.

Web links

Wikisource: Max Wilhelm Meyer  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Max Wilhelm Meyer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hermann Meyer: Ahnentafel Meyer . Ed .: self-published. Dinkelsbühl 1986, p. 68 .
  2. ^ Andreas W. Daum : Science popularization in the 19th century. Civil culture, scientific education and the German public, 1848–1914. Oldenbourg, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-486-56337-8 , pp. 179-182, 389-391, 501 f.
  3. ^ Max Wilhelm Meyer: Hiking and Travel. On the happy Nile. Kosmos, guide for nature lovers, III. Year 1906, p. 25 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Meyer, Max Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German astronomer, naturalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 15, 1853
PLACE OF BIRTH Braunschweig
DATE OF DEATH December 17, 1910
Place of death Lower maize near Merano