Carl Gustav Carus

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Carl Gustav Carus, painting by Julius Huebner , 1844
Signature Carl Gustav Carus.PNG

Carl Gustav Carus , also Karl Gustav Carus (born January 3, 1789 in Leipzig , † July 28, 1869 in Dresden ) was a German doctor ( gynecologist , anatomist and pathologist and royal court doctor), painter , natural philosopher and psychologist. In his philosophy he conceived the cosmos as a whole permeated with life, his painting combined the soul life accessible in dreams with landscape art based on the ideal of Goethe. He is considered one of the most versatile universal scholars of the 19th century in Germany.

His oeuvre received extensive recognition in 2009/2010 in two exhibitions in Dresden ( Staatliche Kunstsammlungen , Galerie Neue Meister ) and Berlin ( Staatliche Museen zu Berlin , Alte Nationalgalerie ) accompanied by scientific publications .

Life

Memorial plaque in Leipzig
Carl Gustav Carus' grave in the Trinity cemetery in Dresden

Carl Gustav Carus was born as the son of the Brandenburg finisher and dyeing leaseholder Gottlob Ehrenfried Carus (1763–1842) and his wife, Christiana Elisabeth, born in Mühlhausen in Thuringia , the daughter of a master dyer. Jäger (1763–1846) was born in the house "Zum Blauen Lamm" in Leipzig's Ranstädter Steinweg 14. He spent his childhood in Mühlhausen and Leipzig, his youth in Leipzig. As an external he attended the Thomas School from 1801 to 1804 . From April 1804 to 1806 he studied physics , botany and chemistry at the University of Leipzig , and from 1806 medicine . His teachers included the doctor and psychological philosopher Ernst Platner , whose aesthetic research influenced Carus. At the same time he took lessons at the drawing academy . After working in the Leipzig Jacobshospital from 1809, the doctorate in philosophy and the habilitation (with Dissertatio sistens specimen biologiae generalis ) that took place in 1811, he also received his doctorate in medicine in Leipzig (with De uteri rheumatismo ) in 1811.

The highly gifted Carus had two doctoral degrees at the age of 22 and, as a novelty, gave lectures on comparative anatomy , in Germany for the first time as an independent subject at a university.

Carus was a personality in Goethe's time and belonged to the generation of romantics . His friends included Caspar David Friedrich , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Alexander von Humboldt , Ludwig Tieck , Ida von Lüttichau and King Johann I of Saxony . He and Novalis belong to a philosophical group that is called " magical idealism " and that belongs to the retinue of German idealism .

He was born with Caroline since 1811. Carus (1784-1859), the daughter of his grandfather Johann Gottlob Ehrenfried Carus, married. The couple had 6 sons (including the physician Albert Gustav Carus ) and 5 daughters; her daughter Charlotte (1810–1838) was the wife of the sculptor Ernst Rietschel .

Carl Gustav Carus was buried in the Trinity Cemetery in Dresden.

Mediciners

Carl Gustav Carus, painting by Johann Carl Rössler, around 1810

After Carus had been Johann Christian Jörg's assistant at the Trierschen Institute in Leipzig from 1811 , the French authorities entrusted him with the management of the provisional hospital in the Pfaffendorf Vorwerk in 1813 during the Battle of Nations . During the epidemic in Leipzig he was infected with typhus and barely escaped death. After his recovery he moved to the royal midwifery school in Dresden in 1814. He directed the school and from 1815 also worked as a professor of obstetrics . In the same year he co-founded the Surgical Medical Academy in Dresden (housed in the Kurländer Palais ). In 1827 King Anton of Saxony appointed Carus to one of his three personal physicians and awarded him the title of court and medical councilor. In 1828 Carus handed over the management of the midwifery school to the physician Carl Friedrich Haase (1788-1865). In 1839 Carus became a member of the Dante Committee under Prince Johann . In 1853 he became the first personal physician of the Saxon King Friedrich August II. In the same year he coined the term “unconsciousness” (see consciousness ). In 1862 he was elected the 13th President of the Leopoldinisch-Carolinische Akademie der Naturforscher ( Leopoldina ), of which he had been a member since 1818.

Carus is considered the philosophical predecessor of depth psychology . In his medical work, Carus, like Rudolf Virchow, stands for science-based medicine. In contrast to Virchow, however, he did not only want to rely on the objectifiable laws of mechanics, physics and chemistry, but also secure the spirit (spirit) that is effective in nature and in humans as part of medicine. It is therefore often viewed as a romantic forerunner of what is now known as holistic medicine .

On the occasion of his 50th service anniversary, the Carus Foundation was established on November 2, 1864 with a capital of 2,000 thalers. In 1896 the first laureate was awarded the Carus Prize .

Logo of the University Hospital Dresden

At the suggestion of Albert Fromme , the city of Dresden honored Carus in 1954 by giving his name to the Dresden Medical Academy , from which the currently existing Carl Gustav Carus Dresden University Hospital of the TU Dresden emerged . In February 1993, the Reichpietschufer in Dresden's Inner New Town was renamed Carusufer . The anthroposophic medical institutions Carl Gustav Carus Academy in Hamburg and the Carl Gustav Carus Institute Niefern-Öschelbronn in Baden-Württemberg were also named after Carl Gustav Carus .

Natural philosopher

In On the deliberate excitation of unusual states of the night side of life in general and on the mesmeric method in particular , Carus examines mesmerism or animal magnetism as "life magnetism" and assumes that people are connected to the whole world through "life magnetism".

Using his knowledge of medicine at the time and a philosophical-speculative thirst for research, he dealt just as intensively with magical movements such as the pendulum , divining rod and table back , explored foresighted dreams, sleep wakes and clairvoyance , second sight and rapture. He also wrote three texts on "Magical Effects in Life, in Science and in Poetry and Art".

In his work on the unequal ability of different human races for higher intellectual development from 1849 Carus designed a racially theoretically determined image of man. There is a “well-born” parentage, characterized by the unity of body and soul, as in Goethe, and there is the opposite. There is also a born elite among the peoples, who are therefore divided into “day peoples”, that is, Europeans and Arabs (e.g. Romans, Teutons, Greeks, Persians, Celts, Semites; total 18); “Night peoples” are Africans; and “peoples of dawn and dusk”, that is, East Asians and Indians, are to be separated. The day peoples alone are "culture-bearing"; The twilight peoples can indeed produce a shadow of culture, but this is mostly produced by the day peoples; the night peoples vegetate dully. The racist Arthur de Gobineau took over this three-way division and the hierarchical structure of innate “characteristics” of the peoples, which are to be classified as higher or lower, directly from Carus. Both authors see worldwide a natural upper world against the subhumans , and they represent in every single society, that is to say the individual in his social environment, an elite against the common people.

painter

Memory of Sorrento , 1828
View of Dresden from the Brühl Terrace , around 1830
Naples with Monte Somma and Vesuvius , 1831
Oak trees by the sea , 1834/35

Carus was already interested in painting as a teenager. His landscapes reflect the romantic lifestyle . Carus' friend Goethe valued him as a thinker and creative person. The painter Caspar David Friedrich influenced him before anyone else. He also got Carus to travel with him to the island of Rügen in 1819 . He wandered through the island and was very impressed by the "primeval nature". Motifs such as the moonlit night near Rügen , oaks by the sea and a barrow with a resting hiker testify to the impressions that the island had left on him. He wrote this down in his report Eine Rügenreise in 1819 . He later toured France (1835), Italy, England and Scotland (1844).

His subjects were above all ideal compositions showing moonlit night, mountains, forest, Gothic architecture and ruins, whereby he often linked Friedrich's motifs. Carus combined the romantic conception of nature with the classic ideal of beauty: "The even penetration of reason and nature" is what defines the essence of a painting. He understood the beautiful in the Goethean sense as the triad of God, nature and man. Often figures in old German clothing populate his pictures. He also painted views of Dresden and the surrounding area. His small-format, spontaneously created landscape details and cloud images also deserve attention. The trip to Italy in 1828 gave the opportunity to translate the typically German longing for the “land where the lemons bloom” (Goethe) into romantic sensory painting, exemplarily in memory of Sorrento , for example .

When choosing motifs, Carus often leaned on his friend Caspar David Friedrich in his early years, but since his second trip to Italy in 1828 he increasingly came up with very independent, less iconography-heavy pictorial inventions. He also became significant and influential for the art of Romanticism through his art-theoretical letters on landscape painting , which he published in 1831.

Scientific work

Plate from Zur Zootomie , 1818, drawn by Carus and engraved in copper
  • Attempt to represent the nervous system and especially the brain according to its importance, development and perfection in the animal organism. Leipzig 1814.
  • Twenty copper plates with their explanation. To the zootomy . [Fleischer, Leipzig 1818].
  • Textbook of Zootomy. Leipzig 1818.
  • Nine letters about landscape painting. 1819-1824.
    • 1st edition Leipzig 1831 ( digitized version of the University Library Weimar)
    • 2., by e. Letter u. some hatchet. Probably edition Fleischer, Leipzig 1835 [Facsimile print after the 2nd, presumably edition of 1835. With an afterword by Dorothea Kuhn. Schneider, Heidelberg 1972]
[numerous further edition]
    • engl. Ed. T. Nine letters on landscape painting, written in the years 1815-1824, with a letter from Goethe by way of introd. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Calif. 2003. ISBN 0-89236-674-5 .
  • Basics of a general view of nature. [Preliminary terms] Introduction to the as yet unprinted work on the judgments of the shell and bone structure. With an afterword by Goethe. JG Cotta'sche Buchhandlung, Stuttgart and Tübingen 1823. Reprinted by WBG, Darmstadt 1954
  • Gynecology textbook. 1820. ( Vol. 1 , Vol. 2 , each digitized and full text in the German text archive ).
  • Basics of comparative anatomy and physiology. 1828.
  • Lectures on psychology, given in Dresden in the winter of 1829/30. Gerhard Fleischer, Leipzig 1831 (new edition, edited by Egar Michaelis, Zurich / Leipzig 1931, Darmstadt 1958).
  • Basics of a new and scientifically founded cranioscopy (skull theory). Balz'sche Buchhandlung, Stuttgart 1841.
  • Twelve letters about earthly life. Balz'sche Buchhandlung, Stuttgart 1841
  • Psyche. The history of the development of the soul. 1846 ( digitized version and full text in the German text archive ), (2nd combined and presumably ed. 1850).
  • About the unequal ability of the different human tribes for higher spiritual development. Leipzig 1849.
  • Symbolism of the human form. Leipzig 1853 (photomechanical reprint 1997: ISBN 3-487-00266-3 ).
  • Organon of the knowledge of nature and spirit. Leipzig 1856.
  • About life magnetism and about the magical effects in general. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1857 (new edition, edited by Konrad Ditzfelbinger: Dingfelder, Andechs 1986, ISBN 3-926253-01-0 ).
  • Nature and idea or what is becoming and its law. A philosophical basis for special natural science. Braumüller, Vienna 1861
  • Life memories and memorabilia. 1865/66 (autobiography), ed. by R. Zaunick, Dresden 1931.
  • Comparative Psychology or History of the Soul in the Order of the Animal World. W. Braumüller, Vienna 1866.
  • Experience results from medical studies and medical work. 1872.

literature

Mnemosyne (1848)

(sorted chronologically in descending order)

  • Harald Salfellner (Ed.): With pen and scalpel. Vitalis, Prague 2014, ISBN 978-3-89919-167-7 .
  • Carl Gustav Carus. Dresden sketchbook 1861–1863. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Kupferstich-Kabinett, Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation (ed.). Sandstein, Dresden 2013, ISBN 978-3-95498-060-4 .
  • Carl Gustav Carus. Perception and construction. Essays. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin / Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-422-06881-0 (volume accompanying the exhibitions in Dresden and Berlin).
  • Gerd Spitzer: Carl Gustav Carus in the Dresden gallery. Sandstein, Dresden 2009, ISBN 978-3-940319-72-2 .
  • Angela Boehm: Carus album. The rediscovery of a portrait collection. On the occasion of the exhibition “Alliance of Friendship - the Carus Album. A portrait collection and its history ”at the Dresden City Gallery from June 25 to September 27, 2009. Dresden 2009, ISBN 978-3-941843-00-4 .
  • Frank Richter: Carl Gustav Carus. The painter friend Caspar David Friedrichs and his landscapes. Verlag der Kunst Dresden, Husum 2009, ISBN 978-3-86530-123-9 .
  • Volker Fintelmann (ed.): Carl Gustav Carus: Founder of a spiritual medicine and its importance for the 21st century . Stuttgart / Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-932386-78-7 .
  • Horst Riedel: Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z. Pro Leipzig, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-936508-03-8 , p. 87 f.
  • Werner E. Gerabek : Carus, Carl Gustav. In: Werner E. Gerabek, Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 232 f.
  • Stefan Grosche (Ed.): “Tender souls are granted a lot.” Science and art in the correspondence between CG Carus and Goethe. Wallstein, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-89244-238-X .
  • Stefan Grosche: Art of living and medicine with CG Carus (1789–1869): Anthropological medicine in Goethe's worldview . Göttingen 1993 (inaugural dissertation; PDF ).
  • Wolfgang Genschorek: Carl Gustav Carus. Doctor - artist - naturalist . Edition Wötzel, Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-925831-06-1 .
  • Wolfgang Licht: Personal physician at the Saxon royal family . Taucha 1989, ISBN 3-910074-76-6 .
  • Ekkehard Meffert: Carl Gustav Carus. His life - his view of the earth . Free Spiritual Life Publishing House, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-7725-0879-0 .
  • Marianne Prause: Carl Gustav Carus. Life and work. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 1968 (previously authoritative catalog raisonné of painting, a new comprehensive catalog is in preparation).
  • Manfred Schlösser (Ed.): Carl Gustav Carus: "Memories from Europe". Compiled into a picture of life (= Agora. Vol. 17/18), Schröder, Hamburg 1963.
  • Bernhard Knauß:  Carus, Carl Gustav. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, ISBN 3-428-00184-2 , pp. 161-163 ( digitized version ).
  • Paul Stocklein: Carl Gustav Carus. People and peoples. Hamburg 1943.
  • Karl von Hecker, Julius Victor Carus :  Carus, Carl . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, p. 37 f.

Exhibition catalogs

  • Carl Gustav Carus. Nature and idea. Catalog. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-422-06880-3 (companion volume to the exhibitions in Dresden and Berlin 2009/10).
  • Carl Gustav Carus and contemporary Dresden landscape painting. Painting from the Georg Schäfer Schweinfurt collection . Schweinfurt 1970.

Trivia

  • The writer Ralf Günther , who lives in Dresden , presented fictional and true incidents from the life of Carl Gustav Carus in his historical crime novels "The Thief of Dresden" and "The Personal Doctor" .

Web links

Commons : Carl Gustav Carus  - Collection of Images
Wikisource: Carl Gustav Carus  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Elmar Jansen: Carl Gustav Carus - A person in the succession of Goethe. An introduction to his life and work. In: Carl Gustav Carus, Memoirs and Memories. After the two-volume original edition from 1865/66 published in Leipzig, re-edited. by Elmar Jansen, Volume 2, Weimar 1966, pp. 351-395; here: p. 353.
  2. ↑ Werner E. Gerabek : Carus, Carl Gustav. 2005, p. 232.
  3. ^ Gundolf Keil, Werner Gerabek: Carl Gustav Carus and medicine. For the 200th birthday of the romantic natural scientist on January 3, 1989. In: Würzburger medical history reports 7, 1989, pp. 236-258; here: pp. 238–240
  4. ^ Stefan Grosche: Art of living and medicine with CG Carus (1789–1869): anthropological medicine in Goethe's worldview . Göttingen 1993 (inaugural dissertation) [1]
  5. ↑ Frank Andert: The house of fox and rabbit; and what Karl May has to do with it. In: Preview & Review; Monthly magazine for Radebeul and the surrounding area. Radebeuler monthly books e. V., January 2012, accessed January 7, 2012 .
  6. ^ Volker Roelcke : Carl Gustav Carus , in: Wolfgang U. Eckart and Christoph Gradmann: Doctors Lexicon. From antiquity to the present , 3rd edition Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2006, p. 74, ISBN 978-3-540-29584-6 (print), ISBN 978-3-540-29585-3 (online).
  7. ^ Gundolf Keil, Werner Gerabek: Carl Gustav Carus and medicine. On the occasion of the 200th birthday of the romantic natural scientist on January 3, 1989. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 7, 1989, pp. 236-258.
  8. ↑ Sabine Kleine: The rapport between animal magnetism and hypnotism. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 13, 1995, pp. 299-330; here: pp. 312–314.
  9. ↑ Patrik von zur Mühlen: Race ideologies. Dietz, Bonn 1977, 1979 ISBN 3-8012-1102-9 p. 47f.
  10. ↑ CG Carus: Mysterious in the clear day. Verlag Philipp Reclam, 1944, chap. 12
  11. ^ Supplement to the essay and catalog volume of the Carus exhibitions Dresden - Berlin 2009, Carus for children ed. from the Association of Friends of the National Gallery and State Museums in Berlin, back cover design
  12. ↑ See the title references in the Common Library Network (GBV)
personal data
SURNAME Carus, Carl Gustav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Carus, Karl Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor, painter and natural philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1789
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH July 28, 1869
Place of death Dresden