Georg Benjamin Mendelssohn

Georg Benjamin Mendelssohn (born November 15, 1794 in Berlin ; † August 24, 1874 in Horchheim ) was a German university professor , geographer and writer .

Life

Benjamin Mendelssohn came from the famous Berlin branch of the Jewish Mendelssohn family . He was first taught by private tutors and passed his Abitur at the Hamburg grammar school. 1811 enrolled him at the Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Berlin for medicine, but is used primarily scientific studies, especially geology and mineralogy .

At the beginning of the wars of liberation against Napoleon Bonaparte he enlisted in the spring of 1813 as a volunteer and took the Hussars "Graf Goetzen" (2nd Silesian) no. 6 on the first campaign in Silesia , Saxony and France participate. He became an officer and served at Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher's headquarters until October 1815 , before taking his leave as second lieutenant .

After the war he continued his studies privately in Berlin. He got to know Carl Ritter , who became his most important teacher. In 1821 he went to the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel , where his college friend August Twesten worked as a professor of theology and philosophy. Under his influence, he was baptized as a Protestant Georg Benjamin on May 28, 1821 in Schleswig .

He mainly stayed at his father's winery in Horchheim , where he ran an open house. From here he trained as a geographer through private studies and numerous hikes and trips through Germany, Switzerland (1820) and Italy (1824).

In May 1828 he was promoted to Dr. phil. PhD . He then qualified as a professor at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn in geography.

As a university lecturer , he was unsuccessful, but as an author . His main work The Germanic Europe. Zur Historical Geography (Berlin 1836) describes historical Europe and follows the paradigm of geodeterminism . The book is still one of the classics of geography today.

The University of Bonn appointed him in 1835 as associate professor and in 1847 as professor for geography and statistics. In both cases the appointment was made by the minister of education against the resistance of the university committees. In addition to anti-Semitic resentment, they stated that Mendelssohn was neither sufficiently productive in teaching nor in research for a professorship. Mendelssohn, who received no salary anyway, withdrew from the faculty and took a permanent leave of absence in 1857 for health reasons.

family

His father was the banker Joseph Mendelssohn , his mother Henriette nee. Meyer (1776-1862). His brother was the banker Alexander Mendelssohn .

On July 20, 1827, Georg Benjamin Mendelssohn married Rosamunde Ernestine Pauline Richter (1804-1883) in Berlin , the natural daughter of the diplomat Count Christian Haugwitz and the Rosa Richter . The couple adopted Betzy Thormann (1830–1906).

Works

• A look at Great Britain . Historical-Political Journal 2 (1833/1835), pp. 305–336.
• Germanic Europe. To historical geography . Berlin 1835/36.
• Moses Mendelssohn's collected writings. After original prints and manuscripts , ed. v. Georg Benjamin Mendelssohn, Vol. 1–7. Leipzig 1843-1845.
• The class institution in the monarchical state . Bonn 1846.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dissertation: Observationes geologico-geographicae de naturalibus soli in Germania formis

swell

• Ingeborg Stolzenberg:  Mendelssohn, Georg Benjamin. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , pp. 50-52 ( digitized version ).
• Joseph Hohmann: Georg Benjamin Mendelssohn 1794-1874. Geographie 23 (1968), pp. 161-164.
• Felix Gilbert: Georg Benjamin Mendelssohn and Karl Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Two professors from the 19th century. Mendelssohn Studies 2 (1975), pp. 183-201.

Web links

Entry in the Mendelssohn Encyclopedia Edited by Sebastian Panwitz with picture