Eberhard Christian Kindermann

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Eberhard Christian Kindermann (* around 1715 in Weißenfels , then Duchy of Saxony-Weißenfels , today Saxony-Anhalt ; † 2nd half of the 18th century) was a lesser-known court astronomer and mathematician from the Saxon court .

Life

He grew up in Weißenfels, attended the illustrious Augusteum grammar school there from 1733 and was a student of Christian Ludewig Büttner and Heinrich Engelhard Poley , the German translator of the works of John Locke . After completing his school education, he probably stayed in Leipzig at the end of the 1730s and beginning of the 1740s and, for pecuniary reasons, could not take up a proper university course, which is now assumed from his legitimizing statements in the prefaces of his writings. As an autodidact, he was obviously forced to defend his research as a layman again and again. He joined the circle around Johann Christoph Gottsched and then took a job as a secretary in Dresden.

He went to Russia , was Georg Moritz Lowitz's father-in-law and a German teacher in Moscow .

First German-speaking science fiction author

In 1739 he published his first astronomical work, travel in Gedancken by the general opened sky spheres ... . This was followed in 1744 by a complete revision as Complete Astronomy, ... and then in the same year in Berlin Die Geschwinde Reise on the Lufft ship to the upper world, which recently employed five people ... , the first and only literary work of his . This journey took the people in the allegorical figures of the five senses in a ship made of sandalwood to the first moon of Mars . This short treatise, his main work, is generally regarded as the first science fiction text in the German language and is representative of science fiction literature in the 18th century, which began in France and England before 1744.

action

Kindermann attaches particular importance to the technical aspects of the fantastic journey such as observing the sky map or calculating the distance between the earth and Mars. The journey through the different spheres, the four elements as well as the zones of the apocalypse is made possible for the travelers by six evacuated copper spheres, which were built according to the ideas of the Italian Jesuit Francesco Lana Terzi . His ideas in a representation published in 1670 were based on the discoveries of Otto von Guericke regarding the vacuum . The plot is full of allegories from Greco-Roman mythology . For example, there are encounters with Fama and the goddess Bellona . The narrative style is typical of the baroque and depicts a religious utopia in which the Martians deal directly with God and not through the mediating medium of the Bible. These angelic beings inhabit the moons of Mars in addition to centaurs and faunas , but are not free from sin.

Reception and aftermath

Kindermann is mentioned as important for the self-taught education of Johann George Palitzsch .

In 1783, the Montgolfier brothers made their first flight in a balloon using heated air. The Martian moons were only discovered in 1877.

plant

Title page of the book Complete Astronomy, ...
  • Travel in thought through the opened general celestial spheres, on which all world-bodies created by God, both their names, nature and properties, viewed very precisely, as well as all these bodies in comets, and finally transformed into nothing , Rudolstadt, Verlag Wolffgang Deer 1739
  • Complete astronomy, or strange considerations of the most distinguished planets and stars in the firmament , revised new edition of his work published in 1739, Verlag Wolffgang Deer, Rudolstadt 1744.
  • The speed trip on the Lufft ship to the upper world, which recently employed five people , Berlin 1744
  • Astronomical description and news of comet 1746 and the ones to come, which will appear in those years. Dresden 1746
  • Physica sacra, or the doctrine of all nature , unpublished manuscript from 1748, codex germanicus fol. 132, Volumes I and IV of the Prussian State Library Berlin.

literature

  • in Johannes Mittenzwei, ed .: Fantastic space trips. Neues Leben, Berlin 1961, pp. 23–36, linguistically smoothed and with illustrations by Heinz Bormann. Epilogue, biography, glossary. The preface by Kindermann, which can be found in Dejong, pp. 37–39, is missing.
  • The rapid journey on the airship to the upper world . Dr. Otto, Berlin 1923.
  • Hendrikus JJ Dejong, ed .: The speed trip. Science fiction from 1744 , Dejong, Zurich or Books on Demand , Norderstedt 2006 ISBN 978-3-033-00703-1 .
  • The speed journey on the Lufft ship to the upper world, which recently employed five people .. , newly edited and commented on by Hania Siebenpfeiffer; Wehrhahn Verlag, Hannover 2010, ISBN 978-3-86525-139-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Weissenfelser helps Russian Empire Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, April 22, 2000
  2. ^ Martin Mulsow: Free spirits in the Gottsched circle: Wolffianism, student activities and criticism of religion in Leipzig 1740-1745 . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0202-0 , p. 100 ff . (239 p., Limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ↑ see Deutsches Museum, 2. St. Febr. 1776, p. 184f and Alexander Nicolaus Scherer: Words of remembrance of the life and merits of Tobias Lowitz: spoken in the ... general meeting of the pharmaceutical society in St. Petersburg on 12 . Dec. 1819 Verlag Schnoor 1820, p. 10
  4. ↑ Kristine Koch: German as a Foreign Language in Russia in the 18th Century. A contribution to the history of foreign language learning in Europe and to German-Russian relations, Volume 1 of The History of German as a Foreign Language. Verlag Walter de Gruyter 2002, p. 200
  5. ↑ "... In the meantime, according to his own confessions, this book was very welcome to him ...", (anonymous): Silhouettes of noble Germans . Volume 3, Hall 1784, p. 202
  6. ↑ Contains: Foreword by the publisher: Was ist Sciencefiction; the version of 1744 pp. 37-88; New version created by publisher; Retelling by the publisher - Readable or searchable online on the Internet
personal data
SURNAME Kindermann, Eberhard Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German amateur astronomer and mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH 18th century
PLACE OF BIRTH Weißenfels , Thuringia
DATE OF DEATH 18th century