Friedrich von Hahn (astronomer)
Friedrich II. Count von Hahn , until 1802: Friedrich II. Hahn (* July 27, 1742 in Neuhaus , Duchy of Holstein ; † October 9, 1805 in Remplin , Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin ) was a large German landowner , natural philosopher and astronomer .
Life
Friedrich Hahn (No. 359 of the gender census ; von Hahn only since the Count in 1802) came from the Mecklenburg nobility . The family had been based in Basedow (Mecklenburg) since 1337 and was one of the largest landowners in the country on the threshold of the 19th century . Hahn was born on Gut Neuhaus in Holstein, where his father had acquired extensive property. He lived the first half of his life in Holstein and studied natural sciences, mathematics and astronomy at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel from 1760 to 1763 . During this time he met Johann Gottfried Herder , with whom he became friends and whom he later generously supported financially. Herder later dedicated the ode "Orion" to him.
Hahn's father died in 1772. Since his eldest brother Ludwig Kay (1735-1759) was killed in a duel and his older brother Dethlev (1736-1809) was incapacitated, Friedrich became de facto the main heir and sole administrator of the extensive family estates. When the Remplin line of the Hahns died out with his cousin Claus Ludwig Hahn in 1779, Friedrich and his brother inherited the Remplin estate , which had been in the family since 1405 , as well as numerous other estates in Mecklenburg. At the same time, Friedrich Hahn inherited the post of hereditary land marshal of the Stargard estate, which was connected to the Pleetz estate . He moved his residence to Remplin, modernized agriculture, had mansions built and built several glassworks . He let exotic fruits and flowers grow in newly built greenhouses in Remplin. After further estate purchases, at the end of his life he owned 60 estates with numerous accessories in Holstein, Mecklenburg and the Wetterau . This made him the richest landowner after the sovereigns that there has ever been in Mecklenburg.
Hahn also initiated extensive construction work outside of Remplin, such as the new construction of the castle in Faulenrost , the Tressow estate used by his son Carl and the Grabowhöfe estate inhabited by the other son Ferdinand , as well as modernization work on Basedow Castle and the renovation of the church Basedow and the new church tower in Bristow .
The enlightened humanist Hahn largely kept himself away from public and court life. He is said to have a humble nature. Outwardly he is described as inconspicuous and of weak, somewhat overgrown stature. He was held in high regard by his subjects, as he set uniform wages and had schools built on his Holstein possessions. He also increased the capital of a “Mild Foundation for needy women of the female sex”.
In his early years Hahn was not a scientist himself. He exchanged letters with Herder, the astronomer Johann Elert Bode and the Danish State and Foreign Minister Count von Bernstorff . In addition, he promoted young scholars, poets, such as Johann Hinrich Thomsen , and scientific ventures. Moses Mendelssohn calls him the most ingenious man he has ever met. He supported the Rostock professor of mathematics Peter Johann Hecker with the loan of a quadrant when he calculated the latitude of Rostock.
Hahn built a private observatory in the park of Remplin Castle in 1792/93 and equipped it with generous instruments. The observatory Remplin possessed at that time about reflecting telescopes , which were among the largest in Europe. The mirrors were made by Wilhelm Herschel . The building, which is only partially preserved today, is the second oldest surviving observatory building in Germany after the Mannheim observatory and one of the oldest verifiable observatories in Mecklenburg after Ivenack . The observatory tower, of which only a ruin remained, has been reconstructed in the last few decades by a support association and given a dome.
In 1800 Hahn discovered the central star of the Ring Nebula in the constellation Lyra . As early as 1796 he saw the Orion Nebula as a region of the sky in which stars can arise. He summarized the results of his observations of the lunar surface , the planets , the sun and foggy objects in 17 publications.
Hahn also owned a library with 12,000 volumes in Remplin and had its own music band. Hahn's guests in Remplin included Johann Friedrich Zöllner , who described his stay and the Hahn observatory and library in a travelogue from 1795, and on July 29, 1796, the future Queen Luise of Prussia and her husband .
On September 7, 1802 Hahn was raised to the status of hereditary imperial count. He died in 1805 at the age of 63 and found his final resting place in a family crypt in front of the main altar of the Basedow church .
family
Friedrich II. Hahn had been with Wilhelmine Christine, born on January 3rd, 1766. von Both (1744–1801), married, a daughter of Captain Adolph von Both of the Rankendorf family. The couple had five sons, of whom only Ferdinand (from) Hahn (1779-1805), later landowner on Grabowhöfe and founder of the Lutheran line of sex, and as "Theater Count" has become known Karl (from) Hahn (1782-1857) , Founder of the Catholic lineage of the sex, reached adulthood.
Post fame
At the end of his life, Friedrich von Hahn had increased the property of his family considerably and brought it to an order of magnitude that had never been achieved before and never again. His sons Ferdinand (1779–1805) and Karl (1782–1857) continued the count's line in the Basedow and Remplin tribes. However, the younger son Karl von Hahn auf Remplin - known as the “Theatergraf” because of his passion for the theater - brought through a large part of his father's inheritance within a few years. In the great Hahn property bankruptcy in 1816, many of the Hahn's possessions, some of which were centuries old, passed into other hands, including the Remplin estate. Friedrich von Hahn's granddaughter Ida Hahn-Hahn became a writer and founder of the order.
A portrait of the count painted by Anton Graff around 1785 was shown in the Graff-Kabinett of the Kunsthalle Hamburg in 1919 . The whereabouts of the painting is not known. A portrait bust of the count has also long been lost, and his grave is hardly noticeable today. The scientific instruments were sold by his descendants, some of which served the Königsberg observatory as initial equipment. His Herschel telescope was purchased in 1812 by the Neapolitan astronomer Federigo Zuccari for the new Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte . Today the mirror of this telescope is exhibited in the local observatory museum Museo degli Strumenti Astronomici . His valuable library has been moved to other places several times in the decades since Hahn's death and can no longer be found after refugees in Basedow heated the stoves with books by the count after the end of the war. However, to this day, a moon crater named Hahn reminds of the great German astronomer from Mecklenburg.
literature
- Ludwig Fromm: Hahn, Count Friedrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, p. 360 f.
- Grete Grewolls: Who was who in Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania. The dictionary of persons . Hinstorff Verlag, Rostock 2011, ISBN 978-3-356-01301-6 , p. 3766 .
- Dagmar Fürst, Jürgen Hamel : Friedrich von Hahn and the observatory in Remplin / Mecklenburg. In: The Stars . 59: 89-99 (1983).
- Arwed Bouvier: The dawn of reason. The Mecklenburg enlightener, astronomer and landowner Friedrich von Hahn (1742-1805) . Stock & Stein, Schwerin 2002. ISBN 9783932370861 .
- Peter Starsy: Hahn, Friedrich II .. In: Andreas Röpcke (Hrsg.): Biographisches Lexikon für Mecklenburg. (= Publications of the Historical Commission for Mecklenburg : Series A). Volume 5, Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 2009, ISBN 978-3-7950-3746-8 , pp. 157-163.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ In contemporary sources also: Baron von Hahn zu (or in) Neuhaus ; (Hereditary) Land Marshal Friedrich (von) Hahn
- ↑ Ekhart Berckenhagen: Anton Graff - life and work. Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin 1967, p. 184.
- ^ Mauro Gargano: The development of astronomy in Naples: the tale of two large telescopes made by William Herschel . In: Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage . 15, No. 1, 2012, ISSN 1440-2807 , pp. 30-41.
- ↑ Specchio di Herschel in the MuSA - Museo degli Strumenti Astronomici
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hahn, Friedrich von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Hahn, Friedrich II. Count of; Hahn, Friedrich II. Von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German philosopher and astronomer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 27, 1742 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Neuhaus , Duchy of Holstein |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 9, 1805 |
| Place of death | Remplin |