Gottfried Christoph Beireis

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Gottfried Christoph Beireis

Gottfried Christoph Beireis (born March 2, 1730 in Mühlhausen / Thuringia , † September 18, 1809 in Helmstedt ) was a German doctor , physicist and chemist .

Life

At the age of 20, the penniless Beireis began studying theology in Jena , but strove for the encyclopedic knowledge of a polyhistor (universal scholar) and studied physics, chemistry and medicine with Georg Erhard Hamberger . At the age of 25, he wrote one of his few books, “On the Use and Indispensability of Natural History” . From 1753 to 1756 he was traveling and must have already made money from chemical inventions. At the age of 26 he started studying medicine at the University of Helmstedt with the famous doctor Lorenz Heister . He was so successful in this that he became Professor of Physics in 1759 (as the successor to Johann Gottlob Krüger, who died in the same year ) and second Professor of Chemistry , without having achieved the doctorate (which he received a few months later in 1762) was appointed. In 1801 he was elected a foreign member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . He taught in numerous subjects in Helmstedt and also received a third professorship in medicine as well as various titles such as "Hofrat" and in 1803 "Leibmedicus" from the Duke of Braunschweig and Lüneburg Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand .

Beireis remained active well into old age. He was so busy with lectures and his medical practice that he published little. His alert mind, his knowledge and his lecturing activities and, last but not least, his collection made him known far beyond Helmstedt's borders; even Goethe did not fail to visit him in 1805, accompanied by Friedrich August Wolf and his son August . He was impressed by Beireis' valuable collection. Ludwig Achim von Arnim visited him in 1806 and dedicated a chapter of his novel Poverty, Wealth, Guilt and Penance by Countess Dolores to him. Beireis' outstanding ability as a doctor and chemist and the fact that he took money for medical diagnoses from rich people, but sometimes treated the poor for free, ensured a fulfilling professional life. His enormous diligence ("... 10-12 colleges daily, plus a strong medical practice."), However, gave Beireis no time to start a family and he had the reputation of an eccentric.

His extensive chemical knowledge, which he also liked to show in lectures, earned him the reputation of an alchemist (he was called Magus von Helmstedt), which explained the prosperity of Beireis. Beireis himself promoted this reputation through secrecy and hints (such as owning a large diamond, gold making, trips to India, etc.), but he refused to give followers of the then influential Rosicrucians lessons in chemistry or alchemy. He seems to have established his prosperity in part through chemical inventions (dyes, vinegar production). His publications on chemistry appeared mostly in the Chemische Annalen von Lorenz von Crell .

A thank you song and a birthday poem for him from his time in Helmstedt have been preserved in the Beireis pharmacy located in Helmstedt . They reflect how Beireis worked on and for the people of Helmstedt. Such an ode was also written on the fiftieth anniversary of his appointment as professor on May 29, 1809. Beireis collected rare and strange objects in a kind of art gallery. This also included physical apparatus, the basis of which was the collection of the professor in Helmstedt, Johann Andreas Schmid , who died in 1726 . The collection also included pictures from the Cranach workshop and Peter Paul Rubens and Jacques de Vaucanson's famous mechanical apparatus (the duck, the flute player and a drummer), which he probably sold in full to the French government in 1808 for a total value of 800,000 livres was estimated. When the dysentery raged in Helmstedt shortly afterwards , the almost 80-year-old Beireis was also one of its victims. After a short illness, he died on September 18, 1809. So he no longer had to experience how the center of his life, the University of Helmstedt, was closed in 1810 on the orders of Jérôme Bonaparte . The remnants of his collection were auctioned after his death, except for the instruments that fell to the university and which are now partially preserved by the University of Braunschweig, including the Magdeburg hemispheres and an air pump owned by Otto von Guericke . The estate also included 100,000 thalers.

Fonts

  • De utilitate et necessitate historiae naturalis, Helmstedt: Schnorr 1759, digitized
  • Dissertatio de paralysi gravissima femorum crurorumque sanata, Helmstedt 1762 (medical dissertation)
  • Dissertatio de febribus et variolis verminosis, Helmstedt 1780
  • Dissertatio solemnis medica de debilitate corporis humani, Helmstedt 1780
  • Dissertatio de irribilitate, Helmstedt 1791
  • Dissertatio de maculis ante oculos volutantibus, Helmstedt 1795

literature

Older literature:

  • Sybel, Biographisch Nachrichten über Beireis, Berlin 1811
  • Gabler, Narratio de vita Beireisii, Jena 1812
  • Carl von Heister: News about Gottfried Christoph Beireis, Professor zu Helmstedt from 1759 to 1809. Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin, 1860, digitized

Web links

Commons : Gottfried Christoph Beireis  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Carl Graf von Klinckowstroem, NDB 1955
  2. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 35.
  3. ↑ A. Hirsch, ADB, 1875. The medical historian Hirsch particularly emphasizes his debauchery and names his publications without any meaning.
  4. ↑ Karin Figala , in Priesner, Figala, Alchemie, p. 77
  5. ↑ Klinckstroem, NDB
  6. ^ Augsburgische Ordinari Postzeitung, Nro. 104, Saturday, April 30th, Anno 1808, p. 3, as digitized version .
  7. ↑ Braunschweig University Collection
  8. ^ Hirsch, ADB
personal data
SURNAME Beireis, Gottfried Christoph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor and chemist
DATE OF BIRTH March 2, 1730
PLACE OF BIRTH Mühlhausen / Thuringia
DATE OF DEATH September 18, 1809
Place of death Helmstedt