Gottlieb Sigmund Gruner

Gottlieb Sigmund Gruner (born July 20, 1717 in Trachselwald , Canton Bern; † April 10, 1778 Utzenstorf ) was a Swiss naturalist ( geologist , mineralogist ) of the Enlightenment. He made the first maps of minerals in Switzerland and published the first mineralogy in Switzerland.

Life

Gruner came from a Bernese council family. His father Johann Rudolf Gruner (1680–1761), who also owned a natural history cabinet and gathered geographical and historical information about the canton of Bern, was a pastor in Trachselwald and later in Burgdorf BE . Gottlieb Sigmund Gruner attended the Latin school in Burgdorf, studied law in Bern and graduated with a doctorate. In 1739 he became a notary. In 1741 he was the archivist of the Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg and then teacher (court master) of the Hereditary Prince Christian of Anhalt-Bernburg-Schaumburg-Hoym (1720–1758), with whom he traveled from 1743 through Prussia and Silesia and to the University of Halle. In 1749 he became deputy clerk in Thorberg , which belongs to the canton of Bern , in 1755 he was advocate before the two hundred in Bern and in 1764 land clerk of Landshut and Fraubrunnen .

Gruner became known as a geologist. In 1760 he published a three-volume work on mountains and glaciers in Switzerland (the third volume of which is devoted to the nature of glaciers) and in 1775 a map of mineral discovery sites in Switzerland, which he also tried to classify. He published works on mines, beekeeping, travel guides through Switzerland and others. His reports about the Swiss mountains are based less on his own travels than on stories from others and from older literature.

From 1761 he was a member of the Economic Society in Bern and received six prizes from the society. Gruner owned an extensive collection of minerals and fossils.

On June 12, 1766 he was nicknamed Acarnan III. Member of the Leopoldina .

Fonts

• The ice mountains of the Swiss country, 3 volumes, Bern: Abraham Wagner, 1760 to 1762, volume 1
  • French translation: Histoire naturelle des glacieres de Suisse, Paris 1770, (Google Books)
• Trial of a directory of the minerals of the Swiss country, Bern 1775, (Google Books)
• The natural history of Helvetia in the Old World, Bern 1775 (Google Books) (French Neuchatel 1776)
• Travels through the strangest regions of Helvetia, 2 volumes, 1778 (London is given as the place of publication in the book, in reality it was Bern)

literature

• Stefan Graeser:  Gruner, Gottlieb Sigmund. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , p. 229 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Karin Marti-Weissenbach: Gruner, Gottlieb Sigmund. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Johann Daniel Ferdinand Neigebaur : History of the imperial Leopoldino-Carolinische German academy of natural scientists during the second century of its existence. Friedrich Frommann, Jena 1860, p. 226 (digitized version)
• Willi Ule : History of the Imperial Leopoldine-Carolinian German Academy of Natural Scientists during the years 1852–1887. With a look back at the earlier times of its existence. In commission at Wilh. Engelmann in Leipzig, Halle 1889, supplements and additions to the history of Neigebaur, p. 163 (digitized version)

Web links

• Member entry of Theophil Gottlob Siegmund Gruner at the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on May 29, 2017th

Individual evidence

1. ↑ There is a (not printed) four-volume Thesaurus topographico-historicus totius ditionis Bernensis (1729/30) and he published Deliciae urbis Bernae in 1732
2. ↑ While Horace-Bénédict de Saussure praises the work despite physical deficiencies, the judgment of Peter Merian (On the theory of glaciers, Annalen der Physik 1843) is less favorable. wikisource
3. ^ Entry on Gruner in the Encyclopedia Britannica 1911
4. ↑ Member entry by Gottlieb Sieg. Gruner in the directory of members of the economic society in Bern; directed to the year 1761 , p. 6 (digitized version)