Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt

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Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt (* 16th September 1685 Gdansk , † March 25 . Jul / 5. April  1735 . Greg Saint Petersburg ) was a physician and naturalist. On behalf of the Russian Emperor Peter I, he explored the nature and landscape of Siberia in a seven-year journey .

Life

Cypripedium macranthon (description by Messerschmidt)

He studied from 1706 to 1708 in Jena and from 1708 in Halle various subjects, including mathematics, physics, botany and medicine. In May 1713 he became doctor of medicine doctorate and opened then a practice in his hometown. The physicians Friedrich Hoffmann (from whom he also obtained his doctorate) and Georg Ernst Stahl , as well as the polymath Christian Wolff and the theologian August Hermann Franke , gained significant influence on his thinking during his studies . He also knew the natural scientist Johann Philipp Breyne , who ran a famous natural history cabinet in Danzig, which Emperor Peter I visited in 1716. During this visit Messerschmidt was recommended by Breyne to the Russian emperor as an outstanding scientist, after which he traveled to St. Petersburg and in 1718 entered the Russian service.

In November 1718, Dr. Laurentius Blumentrost , the representative of the highest medical authority in the empire, signed a contract and extensive instructions for a multi-year research and collecting trip through Siberia. Its activities should essentially comprise six areas of responsibility:

  • geography
  • Natural history
  • Medicine (folk medicine, medicine, epidemic diseases, etc.)
  • Ethnology and Linguistics of the Siberian Nation
  • Monuments and other antiquities
  • Others

The journey initially led via Moscow and Kazan to Tobolsk , where he arrived in December 1719 and had an initial stay of 14 months. In March 1721 the next stage led over various water and land routes via Tara to Tomsk and from there on via Kuznetsk to Abakan , where quarters were initially taken up in the winter of 1721/22. On this trip he was accompanied by the Swedish captain and researcher Johann Philipp Tabbert (later von Strahlberg) , whom he had got to know and appreciate in Tobolsk. The onward journey followed by water on the Yenisei to Krasnoyarsk , and finally to the Kemchuk River (a small tributary of the Yenisei). While Tabbert now separated from the expedition and traveled back to Sweden, Messerschmidt continued across land and river (including Tschulym (Ob) ) and then back to winter quarters (1722/23) in Krasnoyarsk. In 1723 the journey led via a stopover in Lensk to Irkutsk , followed by a crossing of Lake Baikal in 1724. In summer the journey led across the Siberian steppes of the Uda and Onon to Inner Mongolia to Lake Dalai-Nor . Finally he got through the Sino-Mongolian border area into the southern Siberian mountains . In the province of Transbaikalia (in Chitinsk), quarters were made again for the winter before the journey back to St. Petersburg, where the expedition arrived on March 18, 1727.

In St. Petersburg, the researcher was not received as he had expected. On the one hand, he was rewarded with only 200 rubles of silver, contrary to the promised 500 rubles of silver per year. Furthermore, he had to hand over all of his notes and diaries to the now founded Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, with the obligation not to publish anything himself.

From his notes it can be seen that Messerschmidt provided descriptions and material on around 265 bird, 80 mammal and 60 fish species during his trip, and he also prepared ten detailed section logs of large mammals. His records include large collections of insects and plants, minerals and fossils, and numerous archaeological and ethnographic observations have come down to us.

This information was described in the diaries that were printed later, partly in "extracts" and catalogs that were already systematically sorted. This first systematic inventory of species in an area comprising ten degrees of longitude and nine degrees of latitude, with careful ecological and climatic information, created the favorable conditions for many further research expeditions in the 18th century.

It was only through the publications of his Swedish travel companion Tabbert in 1730 that Messerschmidt's achievements became known.

Messerschmidt returned to his home town of Danzig in autumn 1729 after living in Russia for two years, where he married Brigitte Helene Böchler in 1729 . During a shipwreck on the voyage, he lost all his belongings and especially the notes and records he had left. Disappointed by the changed Danzig, he returned to St. Petersburg in 1731, where he devoted himself to the organization of his collections until his death on March 25, 1735. Various animal and plant drawings, which he had the painter Georg Gsell made, were destroyed in the fire at the academy in 1747.

His notes were used by various scientists as a basis for further expeditions and research, including Johann Georg Gmelin , Johann Amman , Georg Wilhelm Steller , Peter Simon Pallas and Johann Gottlieb Georgi . His research was also valuable for historians such as Gerhard Friedrich Müller and Wassili Nikititsch Tatishchev , as well as for ethnography , which was able to fall back on his notes when studying the Asian languages, which were carefully documented by Messerschmidt. The paleozoology of Georges Cuvier was established by his mammoth find.

In his honor, was a department of the plant family Sebastiana of Carl Linnaeus Messerschmidia called and there is named after him Asteroid (16450) Messerschmidt . More recently, a Lake Baikal newly discovered Flohkrebsart , Eulimnogammarus messerschmidtii, named after him.

literature

  • DG Messerschmidt: Research trip through Siberia 1720–1727 , edited and edited by Eduard Winter and Nikolaj A. Figurovskij in Sources and Studies on the History of Eastern Europe , Akademie-Verlag Berlin, ISSN  0079-9114
  • The northern and eastern parts of Europe and Asia, as far as this includes the entire Russian Empire with Siberia and the great Tatars, in a historical and geographical description of the old and modern times ... on the occasion of the Swedish war captivity in Russia , on which long journeys were made, brought together and made out by Philipp Johann von Strahlberg , Stockholm 1730 ( digitized version )
  • Han F. Vermeulen: 'Enlightenment and Pietism. DG Messerschmidt and the Early Exploration of Siberia '. (= Ch.3). In: Han F. Vermeulen: Before Boas. the genesis of ethnography and ethnology in the German Enlightenment . Lincoln & London, University of Nebraska Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0-8032-5542-5

swell

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Messerschmidt, Daniel Gottlieb
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Naturalist and doctor
DATE OF BIRTH September 16, 1685
PLACE OF BIRTH Danzig
DATE OF DEATH April 5, 1735
Place of death St. Petersburg