Alexander von Frantzius

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alexander von Frantzius

Alexander von Frantzius (born June 10, 1821 in Danzig ; †  July 18, 1877 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German obstetrician , explorer and doctor .

biography

His parents were Friedrich Wilhelm von Frantzius (* June 11, 1789; † May 6, 1861) and his wife Adele Elisabeth Ritt (* May 23, 1796; † April 17, 1881).

Frantzius initially completed, and this is still an exception today, training as a midwife at the midwifery school in Danzig. Frantzius then studied medicine in Heidelberg, Erlangen, Halle and Berlin from 1842 , where he received his doctorate on September 5, 1846.

Even before his studies he took part in the zoological research of the gynecologist Eduard Caspar von Siebold in his hometown of Gdansk . In 1847 he went on a zoological study trip to Trieste for several months with von Siebold and Ecker . Together with his friend Rudolf Virchow , he was actively involved in the revolution of 1848 in Berlin . In the summer of 1848 Frantzius fell ill with typhus . Due to the post-revolutionary events he had to leave Berlin and completed his habilitation as a private lecturer in Breslau in 1851 . A visit to Vienna in 1849/50 showed the first signs of a chronic lung disease that would never completely heal for life.

For health reasons and because his career prospects at German universities were poor, he went to Costa Rica in 1853 to seek healing in the mild climate there. The natural scientist Karl Hoffmann accompanied him there . He first settled as a doctor in Alajuela and later in San José in Costa Rica . He stayed there for 15 years and during this time collected numerous ethnological objects and made ethnographic studies. However, his main works were zoological, anthropological and geographical in nature. He sent many of his natural history finds to Jean Cabanis at the Berlin Museum of Natural History . In San José he ran a pharmacy where he employed José Castula Zeledón . After his biography he worked in Paris from 1853.

In 1868 he returned to Germany and Virchow won his old friend over as a collaborator for his anthropological and prehistoric endeavors. Between 1871 and 1874 Frantzius took over the office of Secretary General of the German Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory , whose first presidents were Rudolf Virchow and Wilhelm von Waldeyer . The lung disease of Alexander von Frantzius worsened noticeably, so that in 1874 he had to give up the general secretariat again and moved to Freiburg i. Br. Moved where he soon succumbed to his ailments.

family

Alexander von Frantzius was a grandson of the Danzig merchant and shipowner Theodosius Christian von Frantzius .

Honors

Frantzius' name is associated with numerous animal species, including a. Semnornis frantzii , Pteroglossus frantzii , Elaenia frantzii and Catharus frantzii .

Publications

  • Contributions to the knowledge of the volcanoes of Costa Rica . 1861
  • The right bank of the San Juan River . 1862
  • The southeastern part of Costa Rica . 1869
  • San Salvador and Honduras in 1576 . 1873

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thilo Stumpf: German doctors as explorers in Latin America from the 19th century up to the First World War , dissertation Institute for the History of Medicine, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg , supervisor Wolfgang U. Eckart , 2000, on Alexander Frantzius pp. 147 + 148. Thilo Stumpf: German Doctors Research Latin America.
personal data
SURNAME Frantzius, Alexander von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German explorer and doctor
DATE OF BIRTH June 10, 1821
PLACE OF BIRTH Danzig
DATE OF DEATH July 18, 1877
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau