Georg Heinrich Wilhelm Blumenbach

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Georg Heinrich Wilhelm Blumenbach (born September 21, 1780 in Göttingen , † May 30, 1855 in Hanover ) was a Hanoverian lawyer , politician and secret councilor . As a publicist in the 19th century he was “one of the early scientifically oriented experts in history and archeology”.

Life

family

Georg Heinrich Wilhelm Blumenbach was the eldest of three sons of the Göttingen professor of natural sciences, senior medical adviser, anatomist, natural scientist and Goethe friend Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) and Louise Amalie Brandes (1752-1837), daughter of the Electorate of Hanover and Göttinger Head of Department Georg Friedrich Brandes (1719–1791) and Marie Friederike Werkmeister (1730–1804).

Blumenbach married Helene Cleve (born November 17, 1797; † January 5, 1875), daughter of Anton Friedrich Karl Cleve († 1803) and Wilhelmine Friederike Ulrike Breymann (1764–1801). Two sons and a daughter were born to the couple, including the Hanoverian officer and painter Robert Blumenbach (1822-1914).

Career

Blumenbach was born in 1780 in the Electorate of Hanover during the personal union between Great Britain and Hanover , but attended the grammar school there in Gotha, Thuringia . From 1798 he studied law at the University of Göttingen .

From 1801, Blumenbach worked at the law firm in Hanover, where he was appointed real court and chancellery in 1806 . During the so-called French era, under the rule of Westphalia from 1810 to 1813, he worked in Celle at the Higher Appeal Court as a substitute for the General Procureur .

In 1813, Blumenbach resumed his work at the Hanoverian law firm and became a member of the Hanoverian provincial government around the time the Kingdom of Hanover began in 1814 .

During a trip through the Lüneburg Heath in May 1820, Blumenbach also came to Rieste near Bienenbüttel , which at the time was in the area of ​​the Medingen office . There and in the immediate vicinity of Rieste he found 15 partially well-preserved megalithic barrows : the megalithic graves near Rieste were described and drawn by him during a 14-day stay; what he called the "Hünenbett" became part of his manuscript under the title Collectaneen . The graves were later lost, just as Blumenbach's manuscript was lost "in an unexplained manner" during World War II. Decades later, Blumenbach reported extensively on his finds in 1854 in his article Results from Germanic graves published by the Historical Association for Lower Saxony .

In the first half of the 19th century, for example, Blumenbach published in the New Hanoverian Magazine and from the first edition in 1819 in the Fatherland Archives , about a future dress code , about the private life of King George III, who died in 1820 . , on the megalithic stone graves of seven stone houses in the Fallingbostel District Bailiwick or on the death of the Africa researcher Friedrich Konrad Hornemann .

Together with the archivist Adolf Schaumann and the archives secretary at the time, Karl Ludwig Grotefend , Blumenbach was an editorial member of the first three-person executive "association committee" of the journal of the Historical Association for Lower Saxony , in which he published numerous articles on historical and cultural events until his death in 1855 archaeological subjects published.

Fonts (selection)

  • Description of the old imperial palace in Goslar and the newly discovered imperial house chapel ... , Hanover: In the Hahn'schen Hofbuchhandlung, 1846.
  • A dress code, not from the 15th, not from the 16th century, but from 1818 , in: Hannövrisches Magazin , 1815, 75th piece, pp. 1185–1194
  • Character traits from the private life of the most blessed King George III. In: Vaterländisches Archiv , Vol. 2, Issue 1, pp. 172–193
  • About the old Germanic graves, called the seven stone houses, in the District Bailiwick of Fallingbostel, with two copper plates , in: Vaterländisches Archiv , Vol. 2, Issue 2, pp. 195-208
  • Last news of the death of Hornemann the African traveler , in: Vaterländisches Archiv , Vol. 4, Issue 2, pp. 321–327

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Peter Hennings: Georg Heinrich Wilhelm Blumenbach along with cross-references in his family tree on the genealogy page geneanet.org [ undated ], last accessed on February 16, 2018
  2. ↑ a b Compare the information and cross-references in the catalog of the German National Library
  3. ↑ a b c d Klaus Wedekind (Ed.): 10 years of work group history, 10 years of community archive. Bienenbüttel II traces 10 , Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8391-9528-4 , p. 9f .; limited preview in Google Book search
  4. ↑ a b c d e Heinrich Wilhelm Rotermund : Blumenbach (Georg Heinrich Wilhelm) , in ders .: The learned Hanover or lexicon of writers, learned businessmen and artists who since the Reformation in and outside of all the provinces belonging to the Kingdom of Hanover have lived and are still alive, compiled from the most credible writers , Vol. 1, Bremen: Carl Schünemann, 1823, pp. 195f .; limited preview in Google Book search
  5. ↑ Compare the digitized version of the bound first edition on the website of the Saxon State Library - State and University Library Dresden (SLUB)
personal data
SURNAME Blumenbach, Georg Heinrich Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Electoral Hanoverian and Royal Hanoverian lawyer and politician, real court and chancellery council and secret councilor
DATE OF BIRTH September 21, 1780
PLACE OF BIRTH Goettingen
DATE OF DEATH May 30, 1855
Place of death Hanover