Hans Böker

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Hans Heinrich Böker (born November 14, 1886 in Ciudad de Mexico , † April 28, 1939 in Cologne ) was a German anatomist and zoologist.

Life

Plaque for Hans Böker in Jena, Teichgraben 7

Hans Böker was the son of the export merchant Heinrich Böker and his wife Luise, nee. from the taker. Two years after his birth, his family returned to Remscheid . After graduating from high school, Böker studied medicine at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg from 1906 . He was active in the Corps Hasso-Borussia Freiburg . He switched to the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel and the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin . In 1911 he passed the state examination in Freiburg with a thesis on the history of the development of the salmon skull. In 1912 he became assistant to Robert Wiedersheim and later a prosector at the anatomical institute of the University of Freiburg, where he worked until 1932 with only a few interruptions. On February 14, 1913, Böker was licensed as a doctor. In 1917 he completed his habilitation with a paper on the development of the sand lizard's windpipe and became an associate professor there in 1921 . On 1 October 1922 he was given a professorship at the University of Jena where he remained until March 31 1923rd In 1927 he was made an associate professor in Freiburg. In 1932 Böker left Freiburg and became full professor of anatomy and director of the local anatomical institute in Jena . On October 1, 1938, he accepted a call to the University of Cologne . He died barely seven months later.

Hans Böker joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party in 1934 and on July 1, 1934, he joined the NSDAP's Sturmabteilung R II (No. 2.112.104). Since May 2, 1934, he was a supporting member of the SS (no. 101.1297), the sacrificial ring of the NSDAP , since June 1, 1934, the district headquarters Jena (no. 157), the National Socialist People's Welfare (1934), the Reichsluftschutzbund (1935) and, thanks to five children, since 1934 also of the Reichsbund der Kinderreich (Boker was married twice: his first wife died after giving birth to a daughter in 1915; the second, Maria Berg [from 1917], gave him three sons and another daughter). Nevertheless, the National Socialist regime was not very favorable to him, as he represented views that did not correspond to the purely social Darwinist image of man (“struggle for existence, natural selection, greater increase of the more capable”).

plant

Since 1912, Böker had undertaken numerous research trips (including to Corsica, the Canary Islands, North Africa). Results are available in "The biological anatomy of locomotion on the ground and its phylogenetic dependence on primary tree climbing in mammals" (published together with Rudolf Pfaff 1931), "Animals in Brazil - a biological-anatomical research trip to northern Brazil and the Amazon" (1932) and in the "Basic features of the comparative biological anatomy of vertebrates" (2 vols., 1935, 1937, unfinished).

Böker still wanted to bring in Lamarckian ideas with his “comparative biological anatomy” - he said: The comparative anatomy and biomorphology (“biomorphology” is preferable except in the context of the text, since “morphology” also represents a field of mathematics , linguistics, etc.). has until now largely thought of the dead organism and its “parts” (organs etc.) and neglected that their objects are living animals or plants that only act as a whole ( wholes ). At least as interesting as the homologies researched so far in morphology are the analogies (see below: Goiter formations of two bird species) .- According to Böker, the organisms remain in "harmony" with their environment as long as it does not "change". If this happens, there are now two possibilities for the organism: either it dies out or it adapts to the “new situation” (through anatomical “reconstructions”, Böker 1935). Such an argument, however, suffers from its schematic, and one soon draw Boker of Holism and Lamarckism. There are e.g. B. no “complete harmony” between organism and environment, since predators, parasites, bad weather are constantly “threatening” or already having an effect - he is constantly faced with new situations or challenges; whether it "remembers" ( Uexkiill environmental appreciation) or is not here belanglos.- Incidentally, has even suggested as a concession to the zeitgeist Boker, human races could perhaps constant (d. e. less umbildungsfähig) than animals.

Holism is indeed heuristically unproductive - as Wilhelm Lubosch (Professor of Anatomy in Würzburg ; † 1938 - himself not a Darwinist and hardly agreeable to the regime) expresses: “The whole thing exists real, but it is only recognizable in the relationships between its parts. ”At that time, on the political side, holism was considered a“ cunning trick of Roman Catholic science against German factual research, exact natural science and the foundations of our racial theory ”, and the Gauleiter of Thuringia, Fritz Sauckel , declared that he wanted to prevent“ holism at the State University [Jena], but deprive him and related phenomena of any possibility of existence ”. (A publication ban was also discussed, but not implemented because one expected a lot of “personal animosity” (denunciations) [Hoßfeld 2003].) A friend of Bökers from Freiburg's student years, the anatomist Otto Veit (1884–1976), was an assistant in Cologne . After Böker's unexpected death, Veit soon became head of the institute and persistently refused to identify "unreliable", unpopular and similar people. similar institute employees to dismiss.

The crested chicken in Hylaea

Ernst Mayr retrospectively considered Boker's approach to be promising and “visionary”, but the early death of the researcher made speculations about his potential obsolete anyway. He asked many questions about functional anatomy (cf. Jan Versluys ), but the method of answering them was wrong; In addition, the focus was mostly on proving the usefulness of this method and less on the "functionality" itself. Biological observations on living organisms are in principle desiderate and make Boker's books "treasure troves", but do not justify holism, and his Lamarckism is only suitable, endless To feed speculations about the "causes" of the redesign - for example in the case of the Opisthocomus crested chicken . (If the huge crop of this plant-eating (mainly leaf-eating) bird were to get a bit bigger, it would not be able to reach a position of equilibrium during the already arduous flight without major reconstruction, would easily overturn in the air and would be incapable of flight He condemned it to extinction because he did not have the necessary climbing ability, which he could not achieve even with the most extensive reconstructions, etc. If, however, he ate more animal food, which, however, is only sparsely represented in his Amazonian biotope, etc. . - but this would again require major reconstructions of an anatomical (as well as physiological) nature. - If "targeted" transformations lead to precarious results, how should the undirected ones of Darwinism enable survival and "restore harmony"?).

The predominantly herbivorous owl parrot , whose development to flight inability Boker (Morph. Jb. 63, 1929) also discussed.

Hoßfeld shows that Lyssenkoism is based on a very similar view : the organism reacts as a “whole” to the environment, something like “genes” (which produce the organism or at least precede it) does not exist (“are just an invention of the rulers ”). According to today's view, however, Darwinism is unthinkable if there is not an ultimately environmentally independent control entity in the organism, which in this respect cannot present a "holistic" unit ( Erwin Schrödinger 1944).

Honors

Böker was a member or honorary member of numerous scientific societies such as the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina (1938).

Fonts

  • The skull of Salmo salar : a contribution to the evolution of the teleost animal skull . Bergmann, Wiesbaden 1913. - Thesis
  • The development of the trachea in Lacerta agilis. Veit, Leipzig 1918. - Habilitation thesis
  • Establishment of a biological morphology . In: Journal of Morphology and Anthropology . Volume 24, 1924, pp. 1-22.
  • The biological anatomy of the flight species of birds and their phylogeny . In: Journal of Ornithology . Volume 75, number 2, 1927, pp. 304-371, doi : 10.1007 / BF01906605 .
  • The biological anatomy of locomotion on the ground and its phylogenetic dependence on primary tree climbing in mammals; The racer's biological anatomy . In: Gegenbauer's morphological yearbook . Volume 68, 1931, pp. 519-531. - with Rudolf Pfaff
  • Goethe and anatomy . In: Munich Medical Weekly . Volume 79, 1932, pp. 457-461.
  • Animals in Brazil . Strecker and Schröder, Stuttgart 1932.
  • Species change through reconstruction, reconstruction through active reaction of the organisms . In: Acta Biotheoretica . Volume 1, number 1/2, 1935, pp. 17-34, doi : 10.1007 / BF02324293 .
  • Introduction to the comparative biological anatomy of vertebrates . 2 volumes, Gustav Fischer, Jena 1935–1937.

literature

  • Adolf Meyer-Abich : Construction and redesign. - An obituary for Hans Böker, supplemented by new articles on the theory of reconstructions and the question of their inheritance . Gustav Fischer, Jena 1941.
  • Uwe Hoßfeld : From race studies, race hygiene and biological inheritance statistics to the synthetic theory of evolution: a sketch of the life sciences . In: Uwe Hoßfeld et al. (Ed.): "Combative Science". Studies at the University of Jena under National Socialism . Böhlau Verlag Weimar et al. 2003, pp. 519-574, Google Books .
  • Uwe Hoßfeld: Evolution and creation - history and theory of Darwinism / anti-Darwinism - an overview . Speech manuscript: Erfurt Dialogue, State Chancellery on January 23, 2006, (online) (PDF file; 140 kB).
  • Robert Mertens:  Böker, Hans. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 397 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Remscheid merchant Robert Böker was his great-uncle.
  2. ↑ Kösener Corp lists 1960, 31/250
  3. ↑ a b c Uwe Hoßfeld (Jena): Speech manuscript: Erfurter Dialog, State Chancellery on January 23, 2006 - Evolution and Creation ( online) (PDF file; 140 kB)
  4. ↑ Uwe Hoßfeld: From racial studies, racial hygiene and biological inheritance statistics to the synthetic theory of evolution: a sketch of the biosciences . In: Uwe Hoßfeld (Ed.): "Combative Science". Studies at the University of Jena under National Socialism . Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 2003, pp. 554, 570.
  5. ↑ "race Konstanz - species change" .- Race 1 (1934): 250-254 - so Boker attacked a ( opportunistic ) thesis of racial theorist Hans FK Günther on.
  6. ^ "Development of the biological world of thought: Diversity, evolution and heredity", 2002: 374
  7. ↑ cf. Discussion in: Arnold Gehlen "Der Mensch", text critic. 1993, p. 515.
personal data
SURNAME Böker, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Böker, Hans Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German anatomist and zoologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 14, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Ciudad de Mexico
DATE OF DEATH April 28, 1939
Place of death Cologne