Carl Eitz
Carl Andreas Eitz (born June 25, 1848 in Wehrstedt ; † April 18, 1924 in Eisleben ) was a German acoustician and music teacher .
Life
Summary
Carl Eitz was the son of a gardener, pointing in some areas of mathematics and physics , a giftedness . He became a teacher under difficult conditions. From 1870 to 1872 he was organist and teacher in Dalldorf , and then worked for many years as a teacher at the I. Eisleber Citizens School, where he also worked as a scientist. So he invented the tonal system (Latonization), which was used in many schools in Germany, as well as the pure harmonium , a harmonium with mathematically pure tuning. As an acoustician and music teacher, he was also recognized by the scientific greats of his time such as Max Planck and Hermann von Helmholtz . Full professor since 1918, his services to musical acoustics were honored in 1922 with an honorary doctorate from the University of Kiel .
There are very few records of Carl Eitz's family. One thing is certain: he was married to Adolphine Johanna Dorothee, b. Timme, who died in 1916. The marriage resulted in seven children, three of whom died in childhood. The surviving children were Lydia, Hans, Gertrud and Marie-Luise. Marie-Luise was born as the youngest daughter on May 24, 1888.
Childhood and school education
On June 25, 1848, Carl Andreas Eitz was the first of three children of the gardener Christoph Heinrich Eitz and his wife Luise Elisabeth, née. Glume, the light of the world. His parents lived in the house of their grandfather , who was the last cowherd in Wehrstedt. Carl and his parents moved to Halberstadt when he was still preschool. Here he attended the elementary school of the Reformed parish , where he was particularly enthusiastic about arithmetic lessons. Early on, however, he was very handicapped by an unnamed eye condition that often kept him away from school. When Eitz was ten years old, his parents moved back to Wehrstedt. In the elementary school there, his teacher, Wilhelm Feuerstake, recognized his talent and further stimulated his drive for knowledge. Carl deepened his knowledge of arithmetic, geometry and physics.
Feuerstake also tried to get the fourteen-year-old Eitz a free place at the Halberstedter Gymnasium. However, such a so-called “free space” was subject to the condition that the parents provided for appropriate clothing up to the Abitur. However, the gardener Christoph Eitz could not go into that. The plan was rejected. Carl Eitz is said to have consoled himself with the words: “Everything you know is in the books. If you can find some money, you buy books. You want to use everything you learn from it for the benefit of your fellow human beings. "
Professional background
After his confirmation in 1863, Carl Eitz left school and initially hired himself as a clerk . Then he became a clerk in the white goods business one of a businessman. Here he soon had the task of introducing customers to the operation of purchased sewing machines . As a result of the outbreak of war , he lost his position in the business in 1866 .
A friendly Halberstadt minister conveyed his admission to the brothers house in Reinstedt where Carl Eitz took a teaching job at the "stupid institution". During this time he learned to play the piano and harmonium . After two years, the institution sent him as a tutor to the mentally handicapped son of a Magdeburg factory owner. Eitz stayed in Magdeburg for a year. Here he contacted the school provincial councilor Trinkler to find out how he could get into the school service. Trinkler gave him the job of a school vicar in Gröningen with the obligation to take the teacher examination at a seminar later. After two years, Eitz was transferred to the city school in Wettin as vicar , and from here he passed the first teacher examination at the seminary in Eisleben around Easter 1872.
After the exam, he filled the second teaching position at the elementary school in Schochwitz . In 1875 Eitz passed the second teacher examination in Eisleben. The provincial school council Wöbke became aware of him and tried to win the elementary school teacher for the examination to become a middle school teacher . The senior teacher Jütting offered him a corresponding position at the Eisleben secondary school . Eitz rejected both requests and instead applied in 1878 for a position at the first citizen school (Grabenschule) in Eisleben. The Rector Sommer there, who had already got to know the applicant during the teacher test, actively supported the application, so that Eitz was accepted without further tests. In the same year Eitz moved to Eisleben, where he was to stay until the end of his life.
Inventions
From now on, Eitz shouldn't change professionally. He remained a primary school teacher in Eisleben. Instead, he immersed himself in science alongside his teaching activities . Although he was inspired by the natural scientist Johannes Kunze, he remained essentially an autodidact who liked to break new scientific ground. He was allowed to visit the chemical laboratory of the Mansfeld union. The trade association of which he was a member had a large library that he used frequently. The arithmetic was his favorite activity, and especially so, reckoning, he has gone the things of his interest to the bottom. He was actually a mathematician .
Calculations in the field of waves finally led him to the four inventions with which he was able to make a name for himself:
- the wave washer to illustrate advancing longitudinal waves
- the wave machine , an apparatus for visualizing standing and advancing waves
- the pure harmonium with 52 different tones in each octave
- the tone word system for singing lessons
The wave washer
The wave washer was intended as a teaching aid for teaching in higher schools. The poster accompanying the wave washer reads: “Instructions for using the wave washer by Carl Eitz - The wave washer illustrates progressive longitudinal waves - It is made to rotate around its center located in the hatched circle. - If one now looks at it through a narrow gap, which has the length and the direction of a diameter of the disk, then two waves from opposite directions appear. When looking at one half of the rotating disk, you get a peculiar image of a wave system spreading in a circle. "
The wave machine
In 1882, Carl Eitz constructed his wave machine , which was acquired as a teaching aid by almost all universities and many higher schools in the following years . Eitz built the apparatus as a visual and demonstration object for physics lessons. It can be used to demonstrate both transverse and longitudinal continuous waves as well as transverse and longitudinal standing waves. On the front of the box-shaped device (55 × 25 × 11 cm) two different wave fields can be seen, of which the upper shows transverse waves and the lower longitudinal waves. You can see 37 vertical strips in the upper field and 37 horizontal strips in the lower field, which are connected to one another in a complicated mechanism. The strips can be set in wave-like movements by means of a crank via a camshaft . Eitz had this invention patented on January 27, 1881 (patent certificate no. 14858).
Even today there is at least one working wave machine. It is in the physical collection of the Martin-Luther-Gymnasium Eisleben .
The pure harmonium
In 1881 Eitz published his findings from the study of sound waves in a little book with the title: The mathematically pure sound system . In it he dealt with the fact that to this day, especially with keyboard instruments, a constant tempered tuning is common, in which each octave is divided into twelve equally spaced semitones. However, this results in deviations from a pure mood that can be determined physically and mathematically . The instruments with tempered tuning are a bit out of tune compared to the pure tuning.
Eitz came up with the plan to have a perfectly tuned piano built. For this instrument he planned to divide each octave into 52 individual tones. However, the Ministry of Culture declined financial support for the construction of a prototype, which the inventor had applied for in 1888. Hermann von Helmholtz , a respected professor of physics, who also dealt with the problem of pure tuning at the Berlin University , became aware of Eitz through his work The mathematically pure tone system . The primary school teacher from Eisleben addressed him in a letter dated September 2, 1889, asking him to support the construction of a perfectly tuned harmonium, which “not only as a musical instrument, but also extensively to demonstrate the theory of harmony and also the historical Development of the scales can be used. "
Eitz was invited to Berlin University and was allowed to present his project to the physicist there. Helmholtz is said to have not uttered a word after the lecture and only said after a long thought: “Finally something sensible, Mr. Eitz, the Reinharmonium [...] is being built!” Helmholtz then prompted the then Prussian Ministerial Director Althoff in the Ministry of Culture to build the Instrument by the company Schiedmayer with state funds. This first Reinharmonium based on the Eitz concept stood in the Institute for Experimental Physics in Berlin for a long time before it was added to the inventory of the Berlin Musical Instrument Museum in 1926 . The prototype was lost in World War II .
However, two more identical instruments were built. One of them was delivered to the Imperial Russian court orchestra in St. Petersburg, the other is still in the magazine of the Deutsches Museum in Munich (inventory number of the object: 36245). A photo of the keyboard of this pure harmonium can be seen in item 10 for this article. The Schiedmayer piano factory also built a number of smaller pure harmoniums according to Carl Eitz's instructions. By order of the Ministry of Culture, Eitz performed his Reinharmonium in 1892, first at the Urania (Berlin) and then at the Vienna Music and Theater Exhibition . A year later, Max Planck played the Eitz'schen Reinharmonium and recognized the invention in a lecture to the Physical Society .
The tone word system
Eitz devised a tonal system for singing lessons, which he published for the first time in 1896 in his book The elementary design of a fruitful vocal lesson . Eitz assumed that singing on tone names supports the mental processing and the musical memory of the students considerably more than the usual note names . He wrote: "The logical and conceptual imperfection of musical notation is that one the seven notes of the C major - scale has chosen as its basis. This series in its alternation of whole and semitone steps is unsuitable for this from the start. The derivation of the remaining scales by using the cross and be signs causes a further distortion of the conceptual to the point of incomprehensibility. "
In Eitz's tonal system, each tone has its own name, which is composed of two sounds. The preceding consonant denotes the chromatic level , the following vowel the enharmonic level of the tone. This has consequences for the teaching method that singing with these new tone names is practiced.
This system brought Eitz into a relationship with pure tuning, whereby he set himself apart in his ear training from the leveling equality of modern tuning and enabled him to hear precisely. Eitz saw a further component of his method in his so-called tonality exercises.
The Eisleben elementary school teacher not only gained recognition with his tone word method, but also sparked a heated contemporary debate about the correct method in singing lessons.
Sayings and quotes from Carl Eitz
- “First and foremost, make sure that you have a job that creates bread for you and your children. If you are challenged by hobbies and endeavors that warm your head and heart, cultivate them in your leisure hours. If there is something sensible behind it, success suddenly emerges. "
- "Reason is in things."
- “Religion is feeling connected with the universe, with the unsearchable world background, the universal reason, the universal soul - with nature. To cultivate or create the feeling of such connectedness should be the task of all religious endeavors. "
- "Don't worry, just trust universal reason."
- "Have no regrets, come to terms with the inevitable, defend yourself against suffering, overcome it."
- "Despise and fight all activities for the sake of the cause."
Honors
On his 70th birthday, the Prussian Ministry of Culture awarded the inventor the title of professor. The city of Eisleben gave him an honorary pension and named a promenade as Carl-Eitz-Weg . On August 7, 1922, around 20 months before his death, Eitz received the honorary title of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Kiel .
In 1948 the city of Eisleben donated a memorial stone on the occasion of the pedagogue's 100th birthday. The Carl-Eitz-Stein was erected at the foot of the Scherbelberg. In the New Cemetery , on the upper west wall, a bust was placed as a tomb. Singing children are depicted on the corresponding relief. Above it is the saying: JOY IN LIFE.
The Carl Eitz School in Pinneberg is named after the inventor of the tone word system.
Works
- The mathematically pure sound system , Breitkopf und Härtel publishing house , Leipzig 1891.
- The Elementary Design of Productive Singing Lessons , 1896.
- The tonal system and its relationship to the three types of mood in music, namely the pure fifths, the tempered and the natural-pure mood. , Brochure German-English, Breitkopf und Härtel Verlag , Leipzig 1905.
- The school singing methods of the present , Leipzig 1906.
- Building blocks for school singing lessons in terms of the tone word method , Breitkopf und Härtel publishing house , Leipzig 1911.
- German Singing Primer , Leipzig 1913.
- Hundreds of spiritual hymns set in tone syllables
- Rejection of some objections to the tone word method , Berlin 1913.
- Singing lessons as the basis of musical education , Julius Klinkhardt Verlag , Leipzig, 1914.
- From solmizing. A reliable way to sing by sight. , Stuttgart 1918.
- Notice board for notes and notes , Eisleben 1924.
- The tone word. Building blocks for popular musical education. , Leipzig 1928.
Newspaper articles
- Playing instruments and musical education . In: The German Instrument Making , Berlin-Schöneberg 1899.
- Instrument and note name . In: The German Instrument Making , Berlin-Schöneberg 1899.
- Elevates musical education . In: Leaves for German Education , Berlin-Friedrichshagen 1901.
- Instruction of mothers for the musical education of their children . In: Deutsche Hausfrauen-Zeitung , Berlin 1902.
- Singing lessons in English elementary schools . In: Londoner Zeitung , London 1905.
- A convenient measure of the natural, pure tone relationships . In: The Voice , Berlin 1907.
- Meeting exercises in choral societies . In: Musikzeitung , Berlin 1907.
- The grades and their names in school singing lessons . In: Rheinische Musik- und Theaterzeitung , Cologne 1907.
- The tetrachords in the scale . In: The Voice , Berlin 1907.
- Singing lessons in elementary school, theory and practice . In: Free Bavarian School Newspaper , Würzburg, May 11, 1911.
- School singing lessons as the basis of the musical education of the people . In: Deutsche Revue , Stuttgart, June 1921.
The estate - published in 2012
In 2008, which is estate of Carl Eitz from the family to the city archives of Eisleben been passed. These are certificates , patent documents , specialist literature , specialist records, photographs , poems and all kinds of correspondence. After a painstaking sift through the extensive material, the estate has been in eleven archive boxes since February 2012 (No. D XXXVIII 56 to No. D XXXVIII 61 II) and is now available for research purposes. Pictures of the material are published on Wikimedia.
literature
- Wilhelm Stolte: Tonwort Singfibel and songbook for the elementary school. According to the tone word method of Professor Dr.hc Carl Eitz. Julius Beltz Publishing House , Langensalza 1926.
- Raimund Heuler: From the end of Eitz's tone word method and differently from the tone word. Konrad Triltsch publishing house , Würzburg 1929.
- Waldemar Mühlner: Carl Eitz . In: Historical Commission for the Province of Saxony and for Anhalt (Hrsg.): Mitteldeutsche Lebensbilder. Volume 3, Pictures of Life in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Self-published, Magdeburg 1928, pp. 564-574.
- Richard Münnich: Eitz, Carl Andreas. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 425 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Martin Wiehle : Borders Personalities. Biographical lexicon of the Magdeburger Börde (= contributions to the cultural history of the Magdeburger Börde and its peripheral areas. Vol. 6). Dr. ziethen verlag, Oschersleben 2001, ISBN 3-935358-20-2 , p. 44 f.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Waldemar Mühlner: From Professor Eitz's life . In: Mansfelder Heimatblatt No. 11 (Carl Eitz zum Gedächtnis) , supplement to the Eislebener Tageblatt , May 10, 1924.
- ↑ a b c d e Friedrich Wöhlbier: Carl Eitz 'work . In: Mansfelder Heimatblatt No. 11 (Carl Eitz zum Gedächtnis) , supplement to the Eislebener Tageblatt , May 10, 1924.
- ^ Rüdiger Schülbe: Carl Eitz. Wave machine around 1882. Commemorative publication on the occasion of his 160th birthday and the restoration of his wave machine. Ed .: Martin-Luther-Gymnasium Eisleben, June 25, 2008.
- ^ A b Arthur von Oettingen , Karl Traugott Goldbach: Arthur von Oettingen and his orthotonophonium in context . In: Yearbook of the State Institute for Music Research, Prussian Cultural Heritage / State Institute for Music Research Berlin , pp. 192–227, volume 2008/2009, Mainz 2009.
- ^ Richard Junker: Carl Eitz - A legacy . In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik , No. 115, p. 275, 1954.
- ^ Norman Balk: The Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin. With a representation of the Berlin education system until 1810 . Berlin 1926, p. 153
- ↑ Carl Eitz: Building blocks for school singing lessons in terms of the tone word method. Leipzig 1911, p. 106
- ↑ Mr. M. Planck demonstrated a new harmonium in natural tuning based on the C. Eitz system . In: Negotiations of the Physical Society in Berlin 12 (1893), p. 8f.
- ↑ Carl Eitz: Sings on tone names.
- ↑ Psyche of the keys (PDF; 5.6 MB), Egino Klepper: Psyche of the keys. Musical tuning systems on the border between mathematics and music. In: Culture & Technology. The magazine from the Deutsches Museum , Volume 4/1989, pp. 248-253, Ed .: Deutsches Museum Munich.
- ↑ a b c d e Karl Köster: From the people Carl Eitz . In: Mansfelder Heimatblatt No. 11 (Carl Eitz zum Gedächtnis) , supplement to the Eislebener Tageblatt , May 10, 1924.
- ↑ Our Mansfeld region . Home page of the districts Eisleben and Hettstedt. February 1955. p. 8 ff.
Web links
- Literature by and about Carl Eitz in the catalog of the German National Library
- Association for sound evaluation according to Carl Eitz
- The right method or what music educators argue about.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Eitz, Carl |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Eitz, Carl Andreas |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German acoustician and music teacher |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 25, 1848 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Wehrstedt (Halberstadt) |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 18, 1924 |
| Place of death | Eisleben |