Friedrich Moldenhauer

Karl August Friedrich Moldenhauer (born January 25, 1797 in Gernrode , † March 27, 1866 in Darmstadt ) was a German chemist and mineralogist.

Life

Karl August Friedrich Moldenhauer was born as the third child of the merchant and mayor Johann Karl Ernst Moldenhauer and his wife Luise Brinkmann in Gernrode in the Harz Mountains in 1797. After attending school in Gernrode and Nordhausen , where he worked with Julius Karl Friedrich Dilthey , he became a pharmacy assistant in Nordhausen in 1812 and from 1815 in Ostheim (Westheim) in Franconia.

In 1819 he became head of a chemical laboratory for the Henking and Mais company in Heidelberg. From 1821 he studied mathematics, natural sciences, chemistry and mineralogy in Heidelberg, Paris and Leiden. In 1823 he was instrumental in reorganizing the mineralogical cabinet at the University of Leiden . In the following year he founded the Heidelberg Mineral Exchange. In 1826 he passed his state examination in Heidelberg and obtained his doctorate in the same year in Heidelberg. phil.

After studying and other activities in Berlin, Clausthal and Marburg, he took over the management of a chlorinated lime factory built by Heinrich Emanuel Merck in Darmstadt in autumn 1830 . From 1831 Moldenhauer taught chemistry and mineralogy, initially at the agricultural institute founded by Heinrich Wilhelm von Pabst in Darmstadt. From 1835, under Rector Theodor Schacht, he was initially a provisional teacher for technical chemistry at the Realschule in Darmstadt, which had been founded the year before, and at the higher industrial school that had emerged from it, a predecessor of the TU Darmstadt . In 1836 he was employed as a teacher. In 1853 he was awarded the title of professor. In addition, he organized the mineralogical collection in the Grand Ducal Museum in Darmstadt in collaboration with Johann Jakob Kaup , who he knew from Leiden.

A process he developed for the manufacture of matches was of economic importance. In 1837 Friedrich Moldenhauer, Ludwig Anton and the Schönfärber J. Block jointly founded an ignition goods factory in Darmstadt, which moved to Aschbach (Wald-Michelbach) in the Odenwald in 1845 . The success of this factory sparked many imitators and ignition factories sprang up all over the country.

In May 1857 Moldenhauer was retired at his request. He died in March 1866 at the age of 69. Friedrich Moldenhauer's first marriage was from July 1835 to Charlotte Rosalie Wiener, a pastor's daughter from Bessungen . In his second marriage, he was in a relationship with Ottilie Schacht (born 1821 in Mainz), the daughter of Theodor Schacht , from September 1840 .

Honors

Memorial stone to Friedrich Moldenhauer in Gernrode

In the forest colony in Darmstadt, the Moldenhauerweg is named after him. A memorial stone commemorates him in his hometown of Gernrode.

Publications

Friedrich Moldenhauer wrote a number of scientific works, including a two-volume textbook on chemistry in 1835 and an outline of mineralogy for higher education institutions in Karlsruhe in 1838 . He worked on the concise dictionary of pure and applied chemistry published by Justus von Liebig and others .

literature

• Article Karl August Friedrich Moldenhauer , in: Stadtlexikon Darmstadt, Stuttgart 2006, p. 638
• Georg Büchner School Association, Darmstadt High School V. (Ed.): Georg-Büchner-Schule Darmstadt, 2nd edition, Darmstadt 2013.
• Christa Wolf and Marianne Viefhaus: Directory of professors at TH Darmstadt, Darmstadt 1977, p. 142.
• Georg Lehnert, Moldenhauer, Karl August Friedrich , in: Hessische Biographien, Volume 3, pp. 249-251.