Eberhard Gmelin

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Eberhard Gmelin (approx. 1795)

Eberhard Gmelin (born May 1, 1751 in Tübingen ; † March 3, 1809 in Heilbronn am Neckar) was a city doctor in Heilbronn and one of the earliest representatives of "mesmerizing" based on animal magnetism .

family

Gmelin's ancestors were famous scholars. He was born as the second of three sons of Johann Georg Gmelin (1709–1755), Siberia researcher and professor in Tübingen, and Maria Barbara Fromann (* 1709). Gmelin married on September 3, 1772 in Heilbronn Sophie Henriette Hartmann (born September 5, 1749 in Marbach am Neckar am Neckar, † November 2, 1823 in Heilbronn), the daughter of Ferdinand Paul Hartmann (around 1705–1761, a descendant of Wendel Hiiplers and later mayor in Marbach am Neckar), and Johanne Margarethe Schweikher (* around 1716). The marriage remained childless.

Life

education

As a child, Gmelin attended the Tübingen Latin School and then the University of Tübingen . He continued to study botany , chemistry and the doctrines of Herman Boerhaave with his uncle, Professor Philipp Friedrich Gmelin , since 1764 enrolled in medicine, surgery , physiology , pathology and forensic medicine with Professor Georg Friedrich Sigwart, general pathology and general therapy with Professor Ferdinand Christoph Oetinger , the brother of the Pietist prelate Friedrich Christoph Oetinger , and materia medica with Professor Christian Friedrich Jäger, who is related to the Oetinger brothers . His first dissertation dealt with a new treatment method for chickenpox , his second dissertation dealt with forensic medicine experiments on drowned animals. After acquiring the academic degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1769, he attended further lectures and practical classes at the University of Leiden and from 1770 to 1771 at the University of Vienna , where he heard, among others, Anton de Haën . In 1771 Gmelin practiced first in Feldkirch in Vorarlberg and in March 1772 in Urach (Württemberg). In the summer of the same year, Gmelin became a city doctor in Freudenstadt , where he looked after the entire area of ​​the offices in Freudenstadt, Dornstetten, Alpirsbach Abbey and Reichenbach Abbey. He married Sophie Henriette Hartmann on August 27, 1772. In 1776 he was elected a member of the Imperial Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina . The harsh climate of the Black Forest affected Gmelin's health, as he wrote in 1778 in his application for a doctor's position in Heilbronn.

Physicist in Heilbronn

Gmelin's report on Lisette Kornacher, published in 1793

On June 15, 1778, Gmelin applied for the post of physicist in Heilbronn, although there was no corresponding position available there. Due to its qualities, for which the Württemberg Council Dr. Johann Georg Hopfengärtner vouched for, a provisional doctor's position in Heilbronn was promised to him on June 20, 1778. After the unexpected death of the city's third physician, Dr. Johann Heinrich Sailer, on July 9, 1778, Gmelin could be hired as a Physicus Ordinarius after his arrival in Heilbronn on October 10, 1778 . Despite the new job, he enrolled again at the University of Tübingen in 1779. In 1781/82 he successfully fought a flu epidemic in Heilbronn, for which he received a pay increase of 150 guilders. The University of Tübingen wanted to appoint him professor, but Gmelin declared that he did not want to change anything in his field of activity. In 1785 he moved up to the position of second city physician. In 1791 Gmelin bought a house in Heilbronn's Sülmerstrasse, and in the following year he became the first city physician.

Representative of healing magnetism

Caroline Heigelin
Lisette Kornacher, Gmelin's patient and his nephew's wife

As in the early days of Prelate Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, who was associated with the Heilbronn region through his former tenure as dean in the nearby town of Weinsberg , the Tübingen doctor Christian Friedrich (von) Reuss (1745-1813), a pupil, was interested, but to a much greater extent and since 1773 son-in-law of Gmelin's teacher Ferdinand Christoph Oetinger, who died in 1772, for animalistic ("animal") magnetism. In 1778 Reuss published two books in which he carefully documented the spread of the magnetic cures by Maximilian Hell , SJ., And Franz Anton Mesmer . Like Prelate Oetinger, Reuss had special relationships with Heilbronn. He was a cousin of Jacob Gottlieb Reuss (1753 - 1839), that since 1780 in Heilbronn archivist at Ritter Canton Kraichgau of knights circle Schwaben the imperial knights , from 1795 to 1807 there Counsel.

In September 1787, Gmelin himself first attempted animal magnetism , a healing method that is now scientifically revoked by means of touch under hypnosis. Gmelin reported in letters from July and September 1787 of considerable healing successes with this method, including the treatment of Lisette Kornacher (1773-1858), daughter of Heilbronn's mayor Georg Christoph Kornacher and granddaughter of the then rose innkeeper Johann Georg Uhl. This was even cured by a certain "Madame Tschiffeli" using this method. That therapist was Margarethe Tschiffeli, b. Steck, daughter of Johann Friedrich Steck ( bailiff of Trachselwald ) and widow of the Bernese agronomist and choir judge (clerk of the superior marriage court) Johann Rudolf Tschiffeli the Younger (1716–1780). After this therapeutic success, Uhl entrusted his granddaughter to Gmelin.

In 1788, he dealt with the merchant's daughter Charlotte Elisabethe Zobel (1774–1806), who was twice by marriage to Gmelin's teacher Ferdinand Christoph Oetinger and his brother Friedrich Christoph Oetinger , and who today is considered by some researchers to be a model for Käthchen in some respects.

Gmelin also treated Caroline Heigelin . In the late autumn of 1788, Margarethe Tschiffeli also treated Gmelin's doctor colleague Dr. Friedrich August Weber (1753-1806) and healed him from a three-year chronic eye inflammation. In May 1789 Gmelin went to Karlsruhe to compare his experiences with those of the Privy Councilor Johann Lorenz Böckmann (1746–1802), then he visited the magnetopathic sanatorium of the Strasbourg doctor Armand Marie Jacques de Chastenet, Marquis de Puységur , of Margarethe Tschiffeli had acquired their knowledge.

Gmelin's active occupation with healing magnetism only lasted around three years from 1787 to 1790. Although he still supported corresponding treatments later, he only carried out them himself in very few cases. By 1797 he published ten books and innumerable newspaper articles on the healing method he initially called "animal elemental fire", later "animalized electricity". In the text Materials for Anthropology of 1793 he also described Lisette Kornacher's medical history, which ran benign. Gmelin's works are among the earliest writings on healing magnetism; before 1800 they represented the most extensive German-language literature on the subject by any single author. In his works from 1791 to 1793, he also devotes himself in particular to the exploration of the soul under the influence of healing magnetism and hypnosis .

In 1793 Friedrich Schiller and his wife came to Heilbronn for four weeks to meet Gmelin there and to find out about therapeutic magnetic treatments. Gmelin recommended the poet some officers who were familiar with the method at the Asperg fortress , but ultimately could not convince Schiller. On August 27, 1793, Schiller himself criticized Gmelin's “inclination for the miraculous” in a letter to Christian Gottfried Körner , but in the spring of 1794 prompted him to join the Natural Research Society of Jena founded in 1793 by the doctor and botanist August Johann Georg Karl Batsch ( Societas physica Jenensis) as an honorary member.

Gmelin's tombstone by J. H. Dannecker

Late years and death

In 1795 a military hospital was built in the orphanage and penitentiary in Heilbronn, and the arriving sick brought with them various epidemics in the course of the Napoleonic Wars , so that Gmelin had to devote himself to fighting them. In 1797 he treated the young Justinus Kerner . In his will of 1805, the doctor reported how he had noticed progressive physical decline in himself since 1797. In the years 1797 and 1798 he therefore went on longer spa trips in the summer.

In December 1800, on Gmelin's mediation, the nephew of his wife, the Countess Erbachische Hofrat and personal physician Dr. Christian Johann Klett , who had been married to Gmelin's former patient Lisette Kornacher since 1796, was also called to Heilbronn, where in 1801 he was appointed third city doctor.

When the imperial city of Heilbronn passed to Württemberg in 1802, Gmelin became the Württemberg senior physician and although he was actively involved in the drafting of the new Württemberg medical regulations, his ideas found little acceptance there. In the early summer of 1803 he pushed for the introduction of the cowpox vaccination before he resigned from his office in September 1803. In July 1805, Klett was his successor.

In the spring of 1805 Gmelin suffered an attack of apoplexy from which he did not recover physically. He died on March 3, 1809 at the age of 57.

Johann Heinrich Dannecker made Gmelin's tombstone, which is now in the Heilbronn City Museum in Eichgasse and shows the goddess of health Hygieia , who carries both a staff of Aesculapia and an olive branch.

Fonts

  • On animal magnetism, in a letter to the secret councilor Hoffmann in Mainz. Tuebingen 1787.
  • New Studies on Animal Magnetism. Tuebingen 1789.
  • Materials for anthropology. 2 volumes, Tübingen a.o. 1791/1793.

literature

  • Gerhard Bauer: Eberhard Gmelin, his concept of "animal magnetism" and his influence on Justinus Kerner. In: Justinus Kerner. Anniversary ribbon for the 200th birthday. […] Part 2. Medicine and Romance. Kerner as a doctor and soul researcher. Contributions to the symposium. On behalf of the city of Weinsberg ed. by Heinz Schott . Weinsberg [1991], pp. 224-231. (P. 227 on Heinrich von Kleist and Käthchen von Heilbronn .)
    • [Reprint] in: Medicine and Romanticism , ed. by Heinz Schott. 2nd, unchanged edition [only of part 2 of the volume "Justinus Kerner. Anniversary volume for the 200th birthday <…>. Weinsberg <1991>, including pp. 193–500], City of Weinsberg and Justinus-Kerner-Verein, Weinsberg [ 1998], pp. 224-231.
  • Gerhard Bauer: Eberhard Gmelin (1751-1809). His life and his work. A contribution to the study of sources of animal manetism in German-speaking countries. City Archives Heilbronn; Heilbronn 1994, ISBN 3-928990-44-6 ( Sources and research on the history of the city of Heilbronn. Volume 4). - Before that, Med. Diss. Freiburg im Breisgau 1990.
  • Reinhard Breymayer : Between Princess Antonia von Württemberg and Kleist's Käthchen von Heilbronn . News about the magnetic field and tension of Prelate Friedrich Christoph Oetinger . Heck , Dußlingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-924249-51-9 . [To the broadcast of the magnetism sympathizer Oetinger about the doctor Christian Friedrich (von) Reuss, who is connected with Heilbronn in Tübingen, the Heilbronn doctor and magnetizer Eberhard Gmelin, the doctor Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert and the painter Christian Ferdinand Hartmann in Dresden on Heinrich von Kleist's environment.]
  • Werner von Froreich: Eberhard Gmelin - between Kerner and Kleist. In: Nachrichtenblatt für die Stadt Weinsberg , January 19, 1973, January 26, 1973 and February 9, 1973. [In it the Zobel thesis.]
  • Werner von Froreich: Eberhard Gmelin - a great doctor. In: Swabia and Franconia. Local history sheets of the Heilbronn voice . 20 (1974), 5, pp. 1-2.
  • Werner E. Gerabek : Gmelin, Eberhard. 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. 497.
  • Karl Hermann : Dr. Eberhard Gmelin, Schiller's Heilbronn doctor. Biographical summary. In: Historischer Verein Heilbronn, 22nd publication , Heilbronn 1957, pp. 221–240.
  • August Hirsch :  Gmelin, Eberhard . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, p. 266 f.
  • Stadtarchiv Heilbronn [Director: Christhard Schrenk] [Corporate author]: Das Käthchen von Heilbronn ; Internet address: https://stadtarchiv.heilbronn.de/stadtgeschichte/geschichte-az/k/kaethchen-von-heilbronn.html . - [Balanced abstract; One should also consider the possible interpretation of Kleist's term "invention" as a rhetorical term for "inventio", which is not to be equated with fiction. See Reinhard Breymayer's contribution to the discussion of the present article: Discussion: Eberhard Gmelin .]

Web links

Commons : Eberhard Gmelin  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Werner E. Gerabek: Gmelin, Eberhard. 2005, p. 497.
  2. ^ Member entry by Eberhard Gmelin at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on February 8, 2016.
  3. ↑ Cf. [Christian Friedrich Reuß:] Collection of the latest printed and written messages from Magnet-Curen, especially the Mesmeric ones. Leipzig, from Christian Gottlob Hilschern [Hilscher] , 1778 . - [Edition A:] [3] Bl, 194 p .; [Edition B:] [2] p., 309 p., [2] folded sheets. See the reference to it by Reinhard Breymayer: Advertisement section […]. In: Johann Friedrich Jüdler, Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, Erhard Weigel: Real advantages for information . [...] Rediscovered and ed. by Reinhard Breymayer. Heck, Dußlingen 2014, pp. 163–172, here p. 167.
  4. ↑ Jakob Gottlieb Reuß was successively married to two sisters of Gmelin's patient Charlotte Elisabethe Zobel: first in 1780 with Maria Christina Benigna , b. Zobel (1760-1801), then 1804 with Johanna Elisabetha Christiana, b. Sable (* 1764).
  5. ↑ On Charlotte Elisabethe Zobel, on the importance of Friedrich Christoph Oetinger as someone interested in animal magnetism and on the impact of his theosophy on the Heilbronn / Weinsberg region, especially about the Zobel, Dertinger and Hartmann families, cf.
    • Reinhard Breymayer: Between Princess Antonia von Württemberg and Kleist's Käthchen von Heilbronn. News on the magnetic and tension fields of Prelate Friedrich Christoph Oetinger . Noûs-Verlag Thomas Leon Heck, Dußlingen (2010), pp. 8–10, 14–17, 34, 47 f., 55, 59 f., 62, 67, 69–71, 76, 81, 84 f., and 226 f.
    The pioneering reference to the importance of Prelate Oetinger for Kleist's environment, without reference to the Zobel and Dertinger families and without any particular reference to the Heilbronn / Weinsberg region, can be found at
    • Hans-Jürgen Schrader: Kleist's saints or the violence of sympathy. Broken traditions of magnetic correspondence . In: Traces du mesmérisme dans les littératures européennes du XIX siècle / Influences of Mesmerism on 19th Century European Literature . […] Sous la direction de Ernst Leonardy [among others]. Bruxelles 2001, pp. 93-117, here pp. 111-113; and in his student's dissertation in Geneva
    • Katharine Weder Kleist's magnetic poetry. Experiments of Mesmerism . (Göttingen 2008), pp. 39-44. 46, 63, 145, 238, 284, 388, 395, 402, 404, 411.
  6. ↑ See e.g. B. Christhard Schrenk : Old news about Käthchen. Charlotte Elisabethe Zobel versus Lisette Kornacher. In: Swabia & Franconia. Local history supplement [to the newspaper] Heilbronner Voice , vol. 38, no. October 10, 1992, pp. 1–4; comprehensive Christhard Schrenk: Das Käthchen von Heilbronn. Some reflections on Kleist's knight play (1994) . (Heilbronn 2005) ( Käthchen in Heilbronn . Commissioned by the city of Heilbronn. Ed. By Günther Emig ). - Cf. also, referring to the history of research, with a distance from the simple assumption of "Urkäthchen": Christhard Schrenk: Heilbronner Urkäthchen? Lisette Kornacher (1773-1858) and Charlotte Elisabethe Zobel (1774-1806). In: Heilbronner Köpf , Vol. 5. Heilbronn 2009, pp. 89-100, on this the references p. 285 f.
  7. ↑ See next to the Wikipedia article Caroline Heigelin the exhibition in the Haus der Stadtgeschichte Heilbronn.
  8. ↑ On Kleist's painter friend Hartmann cf. ibid. p. 17 f. 38. 67. 69. 77. 227. About his Heilbronn sister Johanna Henriette Friederike Mayer (1762–1820), born. Hartmann, wife of since 1785 (1797-1803 in Heilbronn) as knightly bailiff 1803-1806 as chivalry consultant of Knight Canton Odenwald of knights circle francs of Reichsritterschaft in Kochendorf acting lawyers Friedrich Christoph Mayer knightly, an indirect relationship Kleist returned to Heilbronn and Scene; see. ibid., p. 18. 227. Henriette Mayer lived in Heilbronn from 1797–1803 and from November 1808 to 1820, in between (1803–1808) in the nearby village of Kochendorf, which was an imperial knighthood until 1806. That a later head of the Heilbronn city, the city councilor Johann Clemens Bruckmann , was given by his wife, Auguste, born. Mayer, who became the son-in-law of the Heilbronn sister of the former Kleist friend Hartmann, is characteristic of Kleist's network of relationships, which basically includes Heilbronn.
personal data
SURNAME Gmelin, Eberhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor
DATE OF BIRTH May 1, 1751
PLACE OF BIRTH Tübingen
DATE OF DEATH March 3, 1809
Place of death Heilbronn