Arthur von Oettingen
Arthur Joachim von Oettingen (* March 16 July / March 28, 1836 greg. On the Ludenhof estate near Dorpat , Livonia , today Estonia ; † September 5, 1920 in Bensheim , Bergstrasse district , Hesse ) was a German-Baltic physicist and Music theorist , professor at the Universities of Dorpat and Leipzig , Imperial Russian Real State Councilor.
family
He came from the old noble family von Oettingen , originally from Westphalia , and was the son of the landowner Alexander von Oettingen (1798–1846), Livonian land marshal and district administrator, and Helene von Knorring (1793–1863).
Oettingen married on April 24, 1869 in Dorpat Natalie von Brackel (born August 17, 1850 in Warta , district of Sieradz , Poland ; † February 12, 1913 in Leipzig , Saxony ), the daughter of the Imperial Russian Major General Woldemar von Brackel and Katharina Elisabeth Duffing .
His two brothers, Georg (1824–1916) and Alexander von Oettingen (1827–1905), also worked at the University of Dorpat. Three other brothers, August Georg Friedrich (1823–1908), Nicolai Conrad Peter (1826–1876) and Eduard Reinhold (1829–1919), were active in national politics in Livonia.
Life
Oettingen studied astronomy in Dorpat (1853 to 1855) , then physics. In 1859 he became a candidate in physics with his work On a Class of Definite Integrals . Since experimental physics was not represented in Dorpat, he continued his studies in Paris from 1859 and in Berlin from 1860 . In Paris, he not only studied physics in the laboratories of Antoine César Becquerel and Henri Victor Regnault , but also attended courses in mathematics, anatomy and physiology. In Berlin he worked in the laboratories of Heinrich Gustav Magnus , Johann Christian Poggendorff , Heinrich Wilhelm Dove and Karl Adolph Paalzow . In addition, he again attended mathematics lectures, including those of Jakob Steiner , whose synthetic geometry he himself later represented scientifically.
After his return to Dorpat he received his doctorate in 1862 with the thesis The residue of the Leiden battery as a test tool for the type of discharge to the Magisterium and acquired the teaching qualification as a private lecturer with about charging the Leyden battery by induction and about discharging the battery by the inductorium . In 1865 he received his doctorate with the work on the correction of thermometers, in particular on Bessel's calibrating method, and in the same year he became associate professor and in March 1868 full professor in his hometown. Oettingen devoted himself in particular to meteorology and founded an observatory in Dorpat, which was assigned to the university in 1869.
Since the 1980s there have been increasing political disputes in the Baltic Sea Governments , which have also spread to higher education. In 1888 Oettingen retired, but initially continued to work as an honorary professor for five years . In 1893 Oettingen therefore settled in Leipzig , where he worked as a private lecturer on the recommendation of his student Wilhelm Ostwald and was appointed honorary professor in 1894. He held this office until 1919. Since 1901 he was a member of the Royal Saxon Society of Sciences .
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2f/Orthotonophonium.jpg/220px-Orthotonophonium.jpg)
Oettingen was also scientifically active in thermodynamics and was the first European physicist who paved the way for Josiah Willard Gibbs' ideas . He invented the anemometer to measure wind speeds. In addition, he dealt with the fundamentals of music theory and is a passionate advocate of harmonic dualism , the interpretation of the minor chord as a sub -sound that is symmetrical to the major chord . Following Hermann von Helmholtz and many other physicists and musicians he constructed with his 1916 completed Orthotonophonium a harmonium in just intonation, whose Tondisposition accordance with its dualistic conceptions of tone d was designed based symmetrical. On this instrument, the octave is divided into 53 non-tempered pitches, so that thirds and fifths of all tones can be intonated, but no natural sevenths . In his book The dual harmony system , he introduced the millioctave as a unit of measurement for microintervals in 1913 . To do this, he divided the octave into 1000 mO. However, this measure did not prevail against the division into 1200 cents (100 cents per tempered semitone). Due to the reception of music theorists such as Hugo Riemann , Richard Wicke and Jens Rohwer , some of his thoughts were discussed intensively for a long time; Martin Vogel is one of the few later theorists who took up his ideas .
In 1909 he founded the Leipzig Artists' Union of Leonids together with Edwin Bormann and Georg Bötticher .
Oettingen died on September 5, 1920 in Bensheim an der Bergstrasse, where he had moved to his son Reinhart in 1919. He was buried in the south cemetery in Leipzig.
Orders and decorations
Publications (selection)
- The residue of the Leiden battery as a test tool for the type of discharge , Dorpat 1862 , also in: Annalen der Physik und Chemie 191 (1862), pp. 513–557.
- About the charging of the Leyden battery by induction and about the discharge of the battery by the inductorium , Dorpat 1863 , also in: Annalen der Physik und Chemie 194 (1863), pp. 369-406.
- About the correction of the thermometer, especially about Bessel's calibration method , Dorpat 1865.
- System of harmony in dual development. Studies on the theory of music , Dorpat and Leipzig 1866.
- "About the quantum of work to be achieved in the reversible cycle of permanent gases", in: Annalen der Physik und Chemie supplementary volume. 5 (1871), pp. 540-563.
- "Das Nordlicht - Spectrum", in: Annalen der Physik und Chemie 222 (1872), pp. 284–287.
- Speech at the annual celebration of the Dorpat University Foundation , Dorpat 1873.
- "About artificially induced interruption of the oscillatory discharges of a Leyden battery and about the law of electric shock distance", in: Annalen der Physik und Chemie Jubel-Vol. (1874), pp. 269-280.
- "Ueber Temperatur und Adiabat", in: Annalen der Physik und Chemie Erg.-Bd. 7 (1876), pp. 83-134.
- “The discharge residue of the Leydner battery in its dependence on the nature of the insulating substance”, in: Annalen der Physik und Chemie 238 (1877), pp. 305–326.
- Phenology of the Dorpater lignoses , Dorpat 1879.
- Eye and Ear , Dorpat 1882.
- Meteorological observations in Dorpat employed , Dorpat (1871-1893), with critical treatises
- The thermodynamic relations developed antithetically , St. Petersburg 1885.
- "Some observations on the instinct of birds", in: session reports of the Dorpater Naturforscher-Gesellschaft 7 (1886), pp. 328–332.
- “The method of the rotating mirror”, in: Central-Zeitung für Optik und Mechanik 8 (1887), pp. 229-230 and 268-269.
- "About interference of oscillatory electrical discharges", in: Annalen der Physik und Chemie 270 (1888), pp. 570-575.
- “The value of the senses for life and science” , in: Baltic Monthly Journal 37 (1890), pp. 295–308.
- "Remarks on the treatise by Mr. Adolf Heydweiller: 'About spark discharges of the inductorium in normal air'", in: Annalen der Physik und Chemie 276 (1890), pp. 74-82.
- Commemorative speech to celebrate the centenary of Wilhelm Struve's birthday (= quarterly journal of the Astronomical Society 29), Bonn 1893.
- Elements of geometric-perspective drawing , Leipzig 1901.
- “The dual system of harmony”, in: Annalen der Naturphilosophie 1 (1902), pp. 62–75; 2 (1903/4), pp. 375-403; 3 (1904), pp. 241-269; 4 (1905), pp. 116-152 and 301-338; 5 (1906), pp. 449-503.
- The perspective circular images of the conic section , Leipzig 1906.
- “The judgment of perspective images with regard to the point of view of the judge”, in: Annalen der Naturphilosophie 5 (1906), pp. 349–377.
- "The causal law", in: Annalen der Naturphilosophie 6 (1907), pp. 459-475.
- “A letter from Arthur von Oettingen”, in: Aus Baltischer Geistesarbeit 2 (1909), pp. 173–181 (autobiographical representation, reprint in: Baltische Lebenserinnerungen , edited by Alexander Eggers, Heilbronn 1926, pp. 183–191) .
- The school of physics. Especially for self-study , Braunschweig 1910.
- The dual harmony system , Leipzig 1913.
- “The basics of musicology and the dual re-instrument”, in: Treatises of the mathematical-physical class of the Royal Saxon Society of Sciences 34 (1917), pp. I-XVI and 155-361.
- (Ed.): Johann Christian Poggendorffs biographical-literary concise dictionary for the history of the exact sciences . Vol. 3 and 4. 1898 a. 1904.
- The properties of water and their significance for understanding nature, in: From Baltic intellectual work, speeches and essays, newly published by the German Association in Livonia, Volume X, Verlag von Jonck & Poliewsky, Riga 1909
- A requirement of the painterly perspective viewed from the mathematical standpoint. Reprinted from the reports of the mathematical-physical class of the Royal. Saxon. Society of Sciences in Leipzig. Meeting of November 14, 1901
literature
- Lothar Dunsch: "Arthur von Oettingen - the academic teacher as successor", in: A foundation for the building of the sciences. 100 Years of Ostwald's Classics (1889–1989) (= Ostwald's Classics of Exact Sciences Special Edition), Leipzig 1989, pp. 40–45.
- Karl Traugott Goldbach: "Arthur von Oettingen and his orthotonophonium in context". In: Tartu ülikooli muusikadirektor 200 , ed. v. Geiu Rohtla, Tartu 2007.
- Karl Traugott Goldbach: "The music theory teaching of the natural scientists Arthur von Oettingen and Wilhelm Ostwald at the University of Dorpat", in: University and Music in the Baltic Sea Region , ed. v. Ekkehard Ochs u. a. (= Greifswalder Contributions to Musicology Vol. 17), Berlin 2009, pp. 217–240. partly online
- Karl Traugott Goldbach: "At the borders of music theory", in: At the borders of science. The annals of natural philosophy and the natural and cultural philosophical program of their editors Wilhelm Ostwald and Rudolf Goldscheid , ed. v. Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer u. a. (= Treatises of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig, Philogisch-Historische Klasse, Vol. 82, No. 1), Stuttgart 2011, pp. 187–211.
- Toomas Pung: “The v. Oettingen ”, in: Germans in the Tsarist Empire and Russians in Germany , ed. v. Ingrid Kästner and Regine Pfrepper (= German-Russian relations in medicine and natural sciences, Vol. 12), Aachen 2005, pp. 359–380 (on Arthur von Oettingen here pp. 369–376).
- Martin Vogel: “Arthur v. Oettingen and the harmonious dualism ”. In: Contributions to the music theory of the 19th century , ed. v. Martin Vogel (= Studies on the History of Music in the 19th Century, Vol. 4), Regensburg 1966, pp. 103–132.
- Genealogical manual of the nobility , noble houses B volume XII, page 374, volume 64 of the complete series, CA Starke Verlag, Limburg (Lahn) 1977, ISSN 0435-2408
- Bartel, Hans-Georg: Oettingen, Arthur von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 477 f. ( Digitized version ).
Web links
- Literature by and about Arthur von Oettingen in the catalog of the German National Library
- Literature list in the online catalog of the Berlin State Library
- Overview of Arthur von Oettingen's courses at the University of Leipzig (summer semester 1894 to summer semester 1914)
- Arthur von Oettingen in the professorial catalog of the University of Leipzig
- Video with demonstration of the orthotonophonium
- History of the Leonids
- Gut Ludenhof (Luua)
- Album academicum of the Imperial University of Dorpat , Dorpat 1889
- Baltic Historical Commission (Ed.): Entry on Arthur von Oettingen. In: BBLD - Baltic Biographical Lexicon digital
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Oettingen, Arthur von |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Oettingen, Arthur Joachim von (full name) |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-Baltic physicist and music theorist |
DATE OF BIRTH | March 28, 1836 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Dorpat , Estonia |
DATE OF DEATH | 5th September 1920 |
Place of death | Bensheim , Bergstrasse district , Hesse |