Friedrich Wilhelm Schiek

Friedrich Wilhelm Schiek (* 1790 in Herbsleben ; † 1870 ) was a microscope maker in Berlin.

Schiek was born in Herbsleben, about 25 km northwest of Erfurt . The father was a surgeon who moved with the family to Frauensee , a good 60 km in a west-southwest direction. About a further 13 km to the southwest is Philippsthal Castle on the Werra, where Schiek completed an apprenticeship from 1808 to 1811. Prince Ernst Konstantin zu Hessen Philippsthal , later Landgrave, had set up a mechanical workshop there and employed the Hofopticus and Mechhanicus Ludwig Wisskemann, who was Schiek's teacher.

From 1819 onwards Schiek worked as a supplier to Carl Philipp Heinrich Pistor in Berlin, and in 1824 he joined Pistor's company as a partner and workshop manager. It is believed that when they worked together, Pistor was more of the creative theorist and Schiek the artful mechanic. A price list of the company Pistor & Schiek from 1829 with 120 items contained only 4 microscopes, but 63 astronomical and geodetic devices. Schiek concentrated increasingly on the construction of microscopes with results that were commented on by Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg in 1832 as follows: "I was filled with true enthusiasm for the sharpness and magnification that Mr. Schiek managed to put into this comfortable and delicate instrument".

In 1837 Schiek left Pistor and founded his own workshop. His microscopes continued to receive praise in the specialist literature, and in 1844 he received a gold medal at the trade fair. While the initial number was 2-3 microscopes per month, it later increased to 4-5. Two thirds of the production time was taken up by the optics, the rest by the mechanical parts, the so-called brass work. His most expensive devices were at 200 Reichstaler , roughly the annual salary of an extraordinary professor in Berlin.

In the 1840s and 1850s, his microscopes received special praise. The founder of the cell theory, Matthias Jacob Schleiden, wrote in 1845: “The best works are currently without a doubt Schiek in Berlin and Plössl in Vienna”. In the 9th edition of Brockhaus's conversation lexicon from 1846, it was stated that "The microscopes for naturalists, the microscopes that are actually assembled, are best made by Oberhäuser in Paris, von Plößl in Vienna and von Schieck in Berlin."

Web links

• Personal microscope by Rudolf Heinrich Paul Blasius, supplied in 1863 by the then leading Berlin microscope manufacturer Friedrich Wilhelm Schiek ( Memento from June 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), Museum of Optical Instruments (musoptin.com)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Dieter Gerlach: History of microscopy . Verlag Harri Deutsch, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-8171-1781-9 , pp. 262-264 .