Johann Georg Zimmermann (doctor)

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Johann Georg Zimmermann

Johann Georg Zimmermann , Knight von Zimmermann since 1786 , (* December 8, 1728 in Brugg ; † October 7, 1795 in Hanover ) was a Swiss doctor, scholar, philosopher and writer who worked in Hanover from 1768.

Life

Johann Georg Zimmermann was the child of escort Johannes Zimmermann and Johanna Pache. He had been married to Susanna Katharina Steck since 1766; they had a daughter, Katharina von Zimmermann (1756–1781). After the death of his daughter, he married Luise Margarethe von Berger (1755-1826), who later administered his estate.

Zimmermann first studied rhetoric, history and philosophy in Bern , then medicine in Göttingen , where he was a student of his Swiss compatriot Albrecht von Haller from 1747 . After receiving his doctorate in Göttingen in 1751, he went on study trips to Leiden and Paris, then became a general practitioner in Bern from 1752 to 1754 and, from 1754, a city ​​physician in his native Brugg .

1755 began his extremely fruitful career as a writer with the publication of The Life of Herr von Haller . In 1760 he was elected both a foreign member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and the Prussian Academy of Sciences . In 1770 he became a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen and in 1786 an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg .

From 1768 he was "Royal British Councilor and Personal Physician " in Hanover at the court of George III. , which was the place of activity in the last three decades of his life. Zimmermann also became a doctor and medical advisor to many crowned heads. The Prussian King Friedrich II called him to Potsdam as a conversation partner and physician in 1786. Zimmermann stayed from June 23 to July 11, 1786 to treat Friedrich in Potsdam and Sanssouci. He published his notes on the progress of the treatment and his conversations with the terminally ill in 1788 under the title "Ueber Friedrich the Great and my discussions with him shortly before his death".

Johann Georg Zimmermann

Zimmermann met Goethe several times . His main work on loneliness , in which the then current theme of melancholy played a major role, appeared in 1784/85 and made Zimmermann widely known in the then educated Europe. The Russian Tsarina Catherine II raised him to knighthood in 1786. She also invited him to her court in St. Petersburg , an invitation that he did not accept. In the last years of his life, Zimmermann developed into an opponent of the Enlightenment . This intensified after the French Revolution when he published the fragments about Frederick the Great in 1790 about the history of his life, his government, and his character . In it, Zimmermann denounced the situation in Berlin as godless and immoral, ultimately as a result of the tolerance policy and religious indifference of Frederick the Great. Zimmermann had linked the allegations to the Berlin investigators with references to Friedrich's feigned homosexuality and his sex life with the now widowed Queen Elisabeth Christine . The result was a storm of indignation in the literary world. It began with an ironic attack by Carl Friedrich Bahrdts on Zimmermann's literary work and his medical skills, and continued with Friedrich Nicolai's Freymuethigen comments on Mr. Ritter von Zimmermann's fragments about Frederick the Great . On Zimmermann's side, August von Kotzebue intervened with the writing: Doctor Bahrdt with the iron forehead, or Die deutsche Union gegen Zimmermann , which he published under the name of Freiherr von Knigge , the author of the famous book On Dealing with People . As a result, Zimmermann found himself involved in a legal dispute with Knigge and finally became the object of the satire of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg .

Johann Georg Zimmermann was the personal physician of the Hanoverian mayor Ernst Anton Heiliger . The tradition according to Zimmermann the Hanover Hofbotaniker Friedrich Ehrhart about the discovery of mineral springs Heiliger Brunnen have informed in the Eilenriede.

Zimmermann's grave is in the Neustädter Friedhof in Hanover. Partial bequests are in the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library and in the Hanover City Archives .

Heinrich Matthias Marcard , also court physician and personal physician, was friends with Zimmermann and posthumously published a biography of him. He was also friends with the Swiss doctor and public health writer Samuel Auguste Tissot , who also wrote a biography posthumously.

Honors

A portrait cartouche by Zimmermann was installed in the hall of the New Town Hall in Hanover . In 1931 Zimmermannstrasse in Hanover-Linden was named after the Royal British personal physician. In 1972, the Johann Georg Zimmermann Fund founded by Deutsche Hypothekenbank (today: a registered association) awarded the annual Johann Georg Zimmermann Medal for the first time . The Johann Georg Zimmermann Prize for Cancer Research has been awarded annually since 2002 , one of the highest endowed medical prizes in Germany. He was ennobled by Catherine II .

Works

The destruction of Lisbon (1756)

Original editions

Later editions

  • Frederick the Great's Last Days - Memories from Johann Georg Zimmermann. With Zimmermann's tragic biography by Ricarda Huch , Rhein Verlag, Basel 1920 [1]
  • With scalpel and quill pen. A reader (= Swiss texts. New series, volume 5). Edited by Andreas Langenbacher. Haupt, Bern 1995, ISBN 3-258-05132-1 .
  • Memoire to His Imperial and Royal Majesty Leopold the Second on the madness of our age and the murderers who want to enlighten Germany and all of Europe (= Small Archive of the Eighteenth Century. Volume 24). Edited from the manuscript in the Vienna House, Court and State Archives with an afterword. by Christoph Weiß. Röhrig, St. Ingbert 1995, ISBN 3-86110-067-3
  • Three poems about the Lisbon earthquake . With an afterword ed. by Martin Rector and Matthias Wehrhahn. Wehrhahn, Hannover-Laatzen 2005, ISBN 3-86525-019-X .

literature

Web links

Commons : Johann Georg Zimmermann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 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, Volume 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Series 3, volume 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 268.
  2. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Johann Georg Zimmermann. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed November 6, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Ritter von Zimmermann: Fragments about Frederick the Great on the history of his life, his government, and his character , Volume 1 , Weidmann, Leipzig 1790.
  4. ↑ On the controversy, especially with Nicolai, see Sigrid Habersaat: Defense of the Enlightenment. Friedrich Nicolai in religious and political debates . Volume 1, Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2001, ISBN 978-3-8260-1975-3 .
  5. ↑ With the Lord Zimmermann Knight of the Order of St. Vladimir from the third class, Kgl. Personal doctor and councilor in Hanover. German spoken . Without publisher, without location (Berlin) 1790.
  6. ↑ Friedrich Nicolai : Freymuethige notes on the Herr Ritters von Zimmermann fragments about Frederick the Great. From some Brandenburg patriots . Friedrich Nicolai, Berlin and Stettin 1791. As a reprint (= Friedrich Nicolai. Collected Works, Volume 8) in Olms, Hildesheim, Zurich, New York 1985, ISBN 978-3-487-07585-3
  7. ↑ Doctor Bahrdt with the iron forehead, or The German Union against Zimmermann. A play in four acts, by Freyherrn von Knigge. Without publisher (Gruner), without location (Dorpat) 1790.
  8. ^ Rainer Ertel , Ernst-Friedrich Roesener: Medicinal wells. In: Hannoversches Brunnenbuch. Fountains and fountains in Hanover. Exemplary and documentary. Torch bearer, Hannover 1988, ISBN 3-7716-1497-X , p. 58 ff.
  9. ^ Hugo Thielen : Zimmermann, Johann Georg. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 690 f.
  10. ↑ Klaus Mlynek : MARCARD, H (e) inrich Matthias. In: Dirk Böttcher et al. (Ed.): Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, p. 246 ( online via Google Books ).
  11. ^ Heinrich Matthias Marcard : Addendum to the biography of the soul. Hofraths and Ritters von Zimmermann, prompted by the disease history published by Herr Leibmedicus Wichmann in Hanover. Benjamin Gottlob Hoffmann, Hamburg 1796 ( 11552476 in VD 18th ).
  12. ^ Tissot SAD: Life of the knight von Zimmermann, Hofraths and personal physician in Hanover . Hahn brothers, Hanover 1797.
personal data
SURNAME Zimmermann, Johann Georg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zimmermann, Johann Georg Ritter von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss doctor, scholar, philosopher and writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1728
PLACE OF BIRTH Brugg
DATE OF DEATH October 7, 1795
Place of death Hanover