Ernst Haeckel House
The Ernst Haeckel House in Jena is a museum with an attached archive in memory of the zoologist, philosopher and Darwinist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919). It is part of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and is located in Haeckel's former home at Berggasse 7. Original manuscripts, books, letters, drawings, portraits, photographs and prints are on display in seven rooms of the two-story “Villa Medusa”.
history
Haeckel's house on Berggasse was built around 1882 and served as his residence until his death. In 1918 he sold the Villa Medusa to the Carl Zeiss Foundation . His private secretary Heinrich Schmidt became his estate administrator after Haeckel's death and was director of the Ernst Haeckel House until the end of his life in 1935. The National Socialist racial theorist Victor Franz then took over the management of the house until 1945, now under the name of the Institute for the History of Zoology, in particular Development Studies . After the end of the war, the facility was taken over by the Friedrich Schiller University and was now called the Institute for the History of Zoology, especially Developmental Studies . Georg Schneider held the directorate until 1959, his successor was Georg Uschmann until his retirement in 1979. In 1965 a chair for the history of natural sciences was established, in 1968 the name was changed to the Institute for the History of Medicine and Natural Science - Ernst-Haeckel-Haus . In 1995 Olaf Breidbach became director of the Ernst Haeckel House.
In the GDR , Haeckel, an outspoken opponent of egalitarian socialism , admirer of Otto von Bismarck , advocate of aggressive German imperialism and avowed anti-Semite , who was venerated as a pioneer of racial hygiene during the time of National Socialism , was taken over by the management of the Ernst Haeckel House stylized as a progressive source of inspiration for real socialism . In 1950, director Georg Schneider interpreted a drawing from 1850 with the title “National Assembly of Birds” by 16-year-old Haeckel as his participation in the internal political revolutionary development in Germany. In 1987 Erika Krauße established a connection between Haeckel's school teachers and the revolution of 1848 . During this time only a few authors were allowed to publish on Haeckel. The descriptions of the time portray the scientist exclusively as a thoroughly progressive materialist thinker whose philosophical speculations show similarities with Karl Marx 's Dialectical Materialism . Even after the fall of the Wall and German reunification , attempts were made to deny access to the Ernst Haeckel House archive to authors such as Stephen Jay Gould and André Pichot , who interpret Haeckel's works and works critically.
literature
- Daniel Gasman: The Scientific Origins of National Socialism. Routledge, 2017. ISBN 978-0-7658-0581-2 . Online partial view
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ D. Gasman: The Scientific Origins of National Socialism. Pp. 7-8.
Coordinates: 50 ° 55 ′ 27 ″ N , 11 ° 34 ′ 55 ″ E