Hermann Schaeffer

This article is about the physicist Hermann Schaeffer. On the church musician see Hermann Schäffer (* 1940) .

Hermann Schaeffer (Source: Professors Gallery of the Physics and Astronomy Faculty of the University of Jena)

Portrait relief on the monument to Hermann Schaeffer (Fürstengraben, Jena)

Hermann Karl Julius Traugott Schaeffer (born August 6, 1824 in Weimar ; † February 3, 1900 in Jena ) was a physicist , mathematician , astronomer and professor at the University of Jena in these three disciplines .

Life

As the oldest of four siblings, Hermann Schaeffer grew up in the Wielandhaus in Weimar. The mother Caroline Schaeffer was related to the family of the writer Christoph Martin Wieland . The father, Commissioner Karl Schaeffer, raised his children very liberally and open to everything new. He encouraged his children to do handicrafts and experiment at an early age. He gave them plenty of physical and mathematical toys. Hermann Schaeffer initially received private lessons and then attended high school in Weimar. He was particularly influenced by the mathematics and physics classes Ludwig Albrecht Kunzes had studied with Jakob Friedrich Fries in Jena. Kunze placed particular emphasis on conveying the history and practical references of mathematics.

Schaeffer studied from 1844 at the University of Jena , 1846/47 in Dresden, Berlin and Leipzig. There he attended the mathematics courses of Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet , Jakob Steiner , August Ferdinand Möbius and Moritz Wilhelm Drobisch . After his return to Jena in 1847, he received his doctorate and habilitation in 1850 with Karl Snell , with whom he stayed as an employee. In 1856 he became an associate professor of physics, mathematics and astronomy. During his studies he became a member of the fraternity on the Fürstenkeller and later an honorary member of the Germania Jena fraternity . In 1857 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . In 1878 he became a full honorary professor of physics. Schaeffer was best known as an extremely talented didactician and science popularizer, who advocated popular education without social boundaries. As a university lecturer, he expanded experimental physics and set up the first collection of physical apparatus and experimental facilities. For this he used a modest budget of 40 thalers. Under the name “physica pauperum” (“Physics of the Poor”), he collected numerous devices and models that he designed himself and built with the simplest of materials. Above all, he wanted to guide teachers and future teachers to organize sensible and interesting lessons even with the lowest budget of the school. He wanted to convey science transparently as "education for all". For this he developed pre-forms for the adult education center with his scientific advanced training courses . In his publicly staged events he showed himself to be a teacher who knew how to skillfully use the media available to him. Since its beginnings in 1889, Hermann Schaeffer has participated in the advanced training courses for teachers founded by Wilhelm Detmer and Wilhelm Rein , which was a pioneering achievement in Germany at the time. In the spirit of Schaeffer, it was also possible over time to open this up to elementary school teachers who were otherwise excluded as non-academics.

For the first time in Germany he carried out Foucault's pendulum test in the Jena garrison church . He distributed leaflets to publicize inventions or pointed out remarkable ideas with them. Memorial plaques on the Jena houses should remember their famous residents. Schaeffer was particularly interested in “early childhood education”. Even the youngest should be introduced to science and technology as early as possible. He played with the Jena children on the streets and explained the latest technological advances to them. He set up a children's room in his apartment that was packed with "educational" toys. Not only the children of their own relatives and friends were allowed to play there. Often he just invited children from Jena.

With "Glass Physics", Schaeffer created a unique collection of teaching aids that he had produced in the glassworks in the Thuringian Forest . This enabled him to achieve the highest degree of transparency in order to be able to show the processes that are invisible in the usual teaching materials. In the Thuringian Forest, Hermann Schaeffer trained the glassmakers who made the models and devices he designed. In doing so, he launched a whole new branch of industry, glass apparatus manufacturing in Thuringia. His lectures prepared the ground for the state technical school for glass instrument making in Ilmenau . Although Schaeffer was never personally involved in politics, he was close to the liberal ideas of the revolution of 1848. He regularly visited the Monday party Ernst Abbes , in which he had found a close friend beyond the student and later colleagues. With like-minded people there, it was said, he upheld the ideals of 1848. He never made a secret of his rejection of Bismarck and Prussia . He did not forgive Bismarck for the unification of Germany to the exclusion of the Greater German solution. At the latest after the founding of the German Empire in 1871, Schaeffer increasingly pushed his views into an outsider role. The circumstances of the unification, the general enthusiasm for Bismarck and a slowly spreading anti-Semitism contradicted his old liberal views. Schaeffer's tolerance was also evident in the matter-of-course manner with which he promoted the nationally liberal-minded Gottlob Frege , who was completely opposed to him in his views .

Schaeffer's last years of life were accompanied by disappointment. His courses were less and less up to date. Complaints and demands for his replacement increased. There were also physical ailments and a stroke. In 1899, Schaeffer had to reluctantly resign from his teaching post. At the beginning of the following year he died after a second stroke.

swell

• Siegfried Schmidt , Ludwig Elm, Günter Steiger (eds.): Alma mater Jenensis - history of the University of Jena , Hermann Böhlaus successor, Weimar, 1983
• Christian Heermann: Karl Snell and Hermann Schäffer as university educators. On the history of experimental teaching in physics at the University of Jena in the second half of the 19th century , series for the history of natural sciences, 1965
• Otto Knopf : Memories of Hermann Schäffer , Jena: Diederichs 1913.
• Carl Cappeller : Personal memories of Hermann Schaeffer. Written down for his friends , Jena: Vopelius 1913.
• W. Compter: Hermann Schäffer. In: Leopoldina. Official organ of the Imperial Leopoldino-Carolinian German Academy of Natural Scientists , ed. with the participation of the section heads of the President Dr. K. v.Fritsch, Halle a. S., booklet XXXVI. NF. May 5, 1900, 78-84.
• Leo Sachse , Ernst Piltz : In memory of the celebration of the 70th birthday of Professor H. Schaeffer in Jena on August 6, 1894 , Jena 1894.

Web links

Commons : Hermann Schaeffer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Exhibition about Schaeffer and his teaching material collection in Jena

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gustav Heinrich Schneider : The fraternity Germania zu Jena. A commemorative publication. Jena 1897, p. 564.
2. ^ Member entry by Herrmann Schäffer at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on February 15, 2016.