Karl Friedrich Kielmeyer

Carl Friedrich von Kielmeyer

Karl Friedrich Kielmeyer , also Carl ... , from 1808 von Kielmeyer , (born October 22, 1765 in Bebenhausen , † September 24, 1844 in Stuttgart ) was a German physician, natural scientist, chemist and theoretical biologist .

Live and act

Kielmeyer studied from 1773 at the Karlsschule on the Solitude near Gerlingen , which was relocated to Stuttgart as the Karlsakademie in 1775 and was promoted to the Hohen Karlsschule in December 1781. He completed his studies here in 1786 with a dissertation on the chemical content of some mineral springs . As early as 1785, while he was still doing his doctorate, Kielmeyer worked as a teacher of natural sciences at the Hohen Karlsschule. He expanded his studies at the Georg-August University in Göttingen . There he found the appropriate support for his studies with Johann Friedrich Blumenbach , Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and Johann Friedrich Gmelin . In 1790 he became a teacher of zoology at the Hohen Karlsschule and co-curator of the natural history collections of the school.

From 1792 Kielmeyer was a full professor of chemistry at the Hohen Karlsschule. After the Karlsschule closed, he was appointed professor of chemistry and botany at the University of Tübingen in 1796 . In 1804 he was commissioned by Duke Friedrich to create the new botanical garden in Tübingen . In 1816 he returned to Stuttgart as director of the royal scientific collections (royal library, botanical garden, antiquities, coins and natural objects collections). From 1817 he also worked as a State Councilor in Stuttgart.

Honors

In 1808 he was raised to the personal nobility ( ennoblement ) by being awarded the Knight's Cross of the Württemberg Civil Merit Order . He received the Knight's Cross of the Order of the Württemberg Crown in 1818, in 1830 he received the Commentary Cross of the Order of the Württemberg Crown and in 1840 the Knight's Cross of the Frederick Order . In 1818 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . From 1812 he was a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences .

The plant genus Kielmeyera Mart is named after him . & Zucc. from the family of the Clusiaceae .

In Tübingen, Stuttgart and other cities streets bear his name. His grave is on the Hoppenlaufriedhof in Stuttgart.

Scientific importance

Kielmeyer was a representative of vitalism .

During his activity as a teacher at the Hohen Karlsschule Kielmeyer made friends with Georges Cuvier , who had studied at the Hohen Karlsschule from 1784 to 1788. With Cuvier, Kielmeyer was in alternating intensive correspondence until his death. This personal relationship also means that Cuvier sent material to the Stuttgart collection several times and later saved it from being plundered by Napoleon's generals.

As an early evolution theorist, Kielmeyer expressed his own thoughts on the evolution of living things long before Charles Darwin . The printed version of his speech on the birthday of Duke Karl Eugen in 1793 had a great influence. Kielmeyer clearly expressed the hypothesis of the evolution of species and the development from lower to higher forms, especially in his lecture, but did not publish it himself. However, lecture notes from 1807 and 1814/15 circulated in specialist circles. His lecture on general zoology, published by Gustav Wilhelm Münter, was only printed in 1840. This includes the following statements on the theory of evolution: “It therefore appears that the number of individual organic species on our earth emerged from one another and that the various types of organisms are in a real relationship of form and composition to one another, precisely because of their development each other. The similarities between the species and their differences seem to be based on the origin, as it were by a common father ”. Kielmeyer also recognized the importance of the evolutionary hypothesis for biological systematics : "while the systematic classification of inorganic bodies is more artificial, that of organic bodies is natural, since it is based on evolutionary affinity".

An important student of Kielmeyer was the later Bonn anatomy professor August Franz Josef Karl Mayer .

Works

• Disquisitio chemica acidularum bergensium et goeppingensium: commentatio doctoralis Caroli Friderici Kielmeyer a. 1786 latine scripta eiusque translatio theodisca a Nicolao Gross confecta (new edition 2006 by Leo Latinus in Weißenhorn, ISBN 3-938905-20-4 )
• About the proportions of the organic forces among each other in the series of different organizations , Stuttgart 1793 (reprint 1993, Basilisken-Presse in Marburg an der Lahn, ISBN 3-925347-25-9 )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Royal Württemberg Court and State Manual , 1815, p. 36
2. ↑ Royal Württemberg Court and State Manual , 1828, p. 32.
3. ↑ Royal Württemberg Court and State Manual , 1843.
4. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names . Extended Edition. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Free University Berlin Berlin 2018. [1]
5. ↑ mbv-ev .
6. ^ Kanz, Kai Torsten: Kielmeyer Bibliography Directory of the literature by and about the natural scientist Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer (1765-1844) , ISBN 978-3-928186-06-3 (= sources of the history of science, 1).

literature

• Volker Hess: Kielmeyer, Karl Friedrich . In: Werner E. Gerabek u. a. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of medical history . De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 737.
• Thomas Bach: Biology and Philosophy with CF Kielmeyer and FWJ Schelling , Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2001, ISBN 3-7728-2034-4 .
• Georg Jäger : [memorial speech for Karl Friedrich Kielmeyer]. In: Annual Books of the Association for Patriotic Natural History, Volume 1, 1845, Pages 137–145, pdf .
• Kai Torsten Kanz: Philosophy of the Organic in Goethe's Time. Studies on the work and effects of the natural scientist Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer , Steiner Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-515-06550-4 .
• Kai Torsten Kanz: Kielmeyer Bibliography. Directory of literature by and about the natural scientist Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer , Publishing House for the History of Natural Sciences and Technology, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-928186-06-X .
• I. Schumacher: Karl Friedrich Kielmeyer, a pioneer of new ideas. The influence of his method of comparison on the biology of time . In: “Medizinhistorisches Journal” 14, No. 1/2, 1979, pp. 81–99.
• Gaston Mayer :  Kielmeyer, Karl Friedrich v .. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 581 ( digitized version ).
• William Coleman: Limits of the Recapitulation Theory: Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer's Critique of the Presumed Parallelism of Earth History, Ontogeny, and the Present Order of Organisms . In: "Isis". 64, No. 3 (September 1973), pp. 341-350.
• Karl August Klüpfel :  Kielmeyer, Karl Friedrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1882, pp. 721-723.

Web links

• Literature by and about Karl Friedrich Kielmeyer in the catalog of the German National Library