Carl Heinrich Merck

Carl Heinrich Merck (born November 19, 1761 in Darmstadt , † January 31, 1799 in Saint Petersburg ) was a German medic and participant in a multi-year expedition through eastern Siberia and Alaska .

Life

Carl Heinrich Merck was born in Darmstadt in 1761. He grew up in Alsfeld in Upper Hesse . After graduating, he studied medicine in Jena and Giessen. Merck received his doctorate in medicine from the University of Giessen in late 1784 . His uncle Johann Heinrich Merck set up a letter dated April 2, 1785, to Johann Peter Brinckmann (1746–1785), the medical director of the Duchy of Jülich-Berg , for his nephew . He had accepted an offer as court medicus at the Petersburg court in Russia , was personally known to Merck and was supposed to stand up for the nephew. In fact, the "Neveu", the young Carl Heinrich Merck, accompanied the court medic from Hamburg to Saint Petersburg , where the two arrived on June 5, 1785. Merck had to repeat his exam there in order to work as a hospital doctor in Russia. In the same year he took up this activity in Irkutsk, Siberia .

Participation in the Billings-Sarychev expedition

In February 1786, Merck's life took an unexpected turn. As a replacement for the sick French mineralogist Eugène-Melchior Louis Patrin (1742-1815) he was recruited for an expedition to Eastern Siberia and Alaska . He was to receive an annual wage of 800 rubles , which was double the salary received by all participants in the expedition. In addition, each of them was entitled to a pension equal to a simple annual salary. As a doctor of medicine, Merck was also placed in the eighth class, that of college assessors. According to the Russian ranking table of 1721, these were entitled to a hereditary title of nobility. As early as 1787, Merck rose one step and was thus Imperial Councilor.

The team should consist of 140 men in total. The scientific supervision of the expedition was taken over by Peter Simon Pallas (1741–1811), who sent the expedition naturalist from Saint Petersburg instructions on the upcoming research. Although he agreed, Merck still feared that "he was not quite up to the business." All participants were obliged to keep records. The focus was on flora and fauna , weather and ethnological - linguistic conditions as well as the topography . As a doctor, Merck was supposed to describe diseases and healing methods of the indigenous population . All objects, but especially the diaries, should be handed over to the Russian Admiralty College after the expedition was over.

However, the researchers did not always adhere to the guidelines, especially not those relating to confidentiality. The internationality of the research team is likely to have contributed significantly to the dissemination of the knowledge acquired. With the British hydrographer Joseph Billings (1758-1806) even a foreigner was given full command.

In May 1786 Merck traveled to Yakutsk and two months later to the port city of Okhotsk on the Siberian east coast. The first destination was the delta of the Kolyma River , because the Northeast Passage was sought in order to be able to get to America by ship through the North Sea .

In the summer of 1789 they set out for Kamchatka , where the expedition spent the winter. In the following year it went via the Aleutian Islands to Alaska, and in 1791 back to Eastern Siberia, more precisely to the Chukchi Peninsula , to which Merck Billings accompanied while Gavriil Sarychev was in command of the ship. This is where the third section of the journey began, which led some participants in the expedition, led by local reindeer Shukchi, across the peninsula to the Kolyma estuary. In April 1792 they reached Yakutsk again, where the other members of the expedition arrived later. The men returned to the west with them.

While Merck's diary is of great value to botanists and, above all, zoologists , he himself considered his ethnographic records to be so significant that he set up a separate journal for them beyond the diary. This part of his notes was soon published. His description of the Chukchi : of their customs and way of life is considered the first ethnological document of this people and provides details about social structures, family life , religious customs and festivals. He describes their healing methods and the connection to shamanism , structural features such as the underground dwellings that later researchers no longer saw due to the destruction of the original Chukchi culture. Merck evidently had no interest in converting the East Siberians or the North Americans, but rather enjoyed their specialty. As befits the zeitgeist, Merck was also astonished at the lack of a god in religion, which nevertheless knew the evil that lived for some groups in the earth.

Merck also writes about the peoples of the Aleutians and Kamchatkas . He remarks about the “Kamchadal dances”: a great flexibility, which works particularly well with shoulders and hips, also play loosely enough with their forehead skin. They alternately imitate bears, whales, and geese; how they begin their dear games, or how they try to kill them ... ”He recorded census data for the Aleutians and sent a list of pre-Christian names. The German publication did not take place until 1814.

Last years of life

According to the entry in the Central State. Historical Archives of St. Petersburg (CGIA SPb, fond 19, opis'1, d. 16586), Merck married a 22-year-old Russian Orthodox girl named Nadezda Gavrilova, the daughter of the petty bourgeois of the city of Yakutsk Gavriil Martynov, on November 10, 1794 . The expedition draftsman Luka Voronin was also present at the wedding and signed the second page of the certificate for the uneducated bride. This refutes the information in the research literature that Merck was married to Nadezhda Katschka, the daughter of Gawriil Katschka from Irkutsk. The birth of two children - the daughter Sophie and the son Friedrich Carl Wolfgang - cannot be proven either.

From 1796 to 1797 Merck traveled to Germany to see his relatives. At the suggestion of the director of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences , Merck was elected as a corresponding member of the Society's physical class. As early as 1798, Merck's knowledge was partially combined in a publication by the second Göttingen member of this class.

In January 1799 Merck suffered a stroke , the consequences of which he died in Petersburg.

Late rediscovery

Although some of his notes flowed into important works by other scholars, his ethnographic observations were largely ignored and unpublished, apart from two brief publications in 1806 and 1814.

It was not until 1980 that Richard A. Pierce published the diary in full for the first time . Merck's notes, however, have been translated into modern English and contain few comments. Only Zoja Titova recognized in 1978 the dichotomy of tradition and, above all, the value of ethnographic records. A publication followed in 2009, keeping the spelling and with extensive commentary by Dittmar Dahlmann, Diana Ordubadi and Anna Friesen.

Fonts

• The Siberian-American diary from 1788-1791 . Edited by Dittmar Dahlmann , Anna Friesen and Diana Ordubadi. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8353-0545-8 .
• “Description of the Tschuckchi, their customs and way of life” as well as further reports and materials . Edited by Dittmar Dahlmann, Diana Ordubadi and Helena Pivovar. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8353-1436-8 .

literature

• Erich Donnert : The Billings Sarycev Expedition to the Northeast Pacific 1785–1793 and the natural scientist Carl Heinrich Merck , in: Europe in the early modern times: Festschrift for Günter Mühlpfordt, Volume 6: Central, Northern and Eastern Europe, Weimar [u. a.] 2002, pp. 1023-1036. ISBN 3-412-14799-0
• Diana Ordubadi: Burning ice, storms that chase away every dream and strange strangers ... Carl Heinrich Merck and his contribution to the exploration of the Russian north as part of the Billings-Saryčev expedition 1785–1795 . In: Heinz Duchhardt (Ed.): Russia, the Far East and the "Germans" . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-525-10092-9 , pp. 79-96.
• Diana Ordubadi: The Billings Sarycev Expedition 1785–1795. A research trip in the context of the scientific development of Siberia and the Far East , Göttingen 2016.
• Richard A. Pierce : Siberia and Northwestern America, 1788-1792. The Journal of Carl Heinrich Merck, Naturalist with the Russian Scientific Expedition led by Captains Joseph Billings and Gavriil Sarychev . Kingston, Ontario 1980.

Remarks

1. ↑ Carl Heinrich Merck: The Siberian-American Diary , p. 43.
2. ^ Carl Heinrich Merck: The Siberian-American Diary , p. 149.
3. ^ News of the Chukchi customs and traditions, collected by Dr. KH Merck on his travels in northern Asia , in: Journal for the latest land and sea journeys 16 (1814) pp. 1–27, 184–192, vol. 17, pp. 45–71, 137–152.
4. ↑ Центральный государственный исторический архив Санкт ‑ Петербурга: Фонд 19. Опись 1. Дело 16586 . Retrieved February 14, 2019.
5. ^ Johann Friedrich Blumenbach: News from the last great Russian voyage of discovery in the northeastern ocean , in: Allgemeine Geographische Ephemeriden I (1798), 5, pp. 525-531.