Johann Gottfried Steinhäuser

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Johann Gottfried Steinhäuser (born September 20, 1768 in Plauen im Vogtland ; † November 17, 1825 in Halle ) was a German physicist , mathematician , mining specialist and lawyer .

Life

family

Johann Gottfried Steinhäuser came from the old noble family von Steinhäuser , perhaps also von Steinhausen , whose ancestral home was probably in Steinhausen near Lake Zug . During the Swiss Wars of Independence around the middle of the 15th century, they were driven from their ancestral home because they remained loyal to the German Emperor, and fled with part of their property to Styria and Carinthia , where they also owned large estates. From here two descendants emigrated to Gunzenhausen and Plauen around the time of the Church Reformation; they let the nobility of birth extinguish.

He was the son of his father of the same name Johann Gottfried Steinhäuser (* October 22, 1736; † July 15, 1815), electoral Saxon councilor and tax procurator; he had acquired an important reputation through his writing as well as his legal practice. His mother Sophie Rebecka, daughter of the legal consultant Johann Christoph Schlegel in Plauen, was a great-granddaughter of the theologian Christoph Schlegel and a granddaughter of the poet Johann Elias Schlegel . He had eight other siblings and remained unmarried throughout his life.

education

Already in his childhood he occupied himself with stone, plant and other natural history collections and went on long and far excursions . At the age of nine he spent whole days and nights in the laboratory of the director J. A. Neumeister of the Gösselschen calico factory in Plauen, who was a skilled chemist ; At the age of eleven, he also mastered the Latin language .

At the age of twelve he came to the Princely School in Pforta in 1780 and had, among other things, mathematics lessons from Johann Gottlieb Schmidt (1742-1820). During his stay at the school he made a camera obscura himself , made five-sided earth and sky globes from cardboard and covered them with maps of the earth and sky he had drawn himself . In winter he tried to hollow out a large concave mirror out of a large block of ice and also made small Montgolfiers . To observe the sunspots , he had attached his own device with a movable observation tube to his room window .

He finished school in 1787 and initially returned to his parents' house, before going to the Freiberg Mining Academy in the same year . There he became a student of Johann Friedrich Lempe , Wilhelm August Lampadius and Abraham Gottlob Werner, among others . After graduating from the academy , he enrolled at the University of Wittenberg in 1788 and began studying law and philosophy . He has heard lectures from Johann Jacob Ebert , Johann Daniel Titius , Christian August Langguth and Chladni , among others . In his free time he occupied himself with higher mathematics , physics , geography and reading English and French travelogues.

Career

In 1792 he finished his studies and went to Freiberg . There, however, he found no prospect of a job until 1793 to a request in Gotha Reichsanzeiger came, was sought in the person who is a Jasper - factory in Kirchheim-Bolanden could lead. He traveled to Frankfurt am Main to apply and was accepted. Around this time he also visited the grinding mills in the Palatinate and Zweibrücken and inspected the mercury mines in Stahlberg . In the Steinkreuz mine , in which no ores could be extracted at that time, he noticed from the location and nature of the mountain type that a crosscut in one passage could lead to important ore discoveries. Following his advice resulted in a rich find. Then he was offered the direction of the mines; However, he turned down this offer because he felt obliged to keep his promise in Kirchheim-Bolanden.

Due to the reputation he had acquired in this way, he received a request shortly thereafter to apply for an open mountain judge position in the county of Falkenstein . The Minister of State Dominique in Koblenz and Count Joseph Thaddäus von Sumerau , as regional chief in the Upper Austrian region , wanted to support him with an application. However, due to the handover of territory to the French on July 15, 1794, he returned to Frankfurt am Main. There the chief judge from Carado offered him to run fifty grenade grinding mills, which had no sales, but had many workers to have other stones processed there; However, there were no sponsors for this company.

He turned down another offer on the advice of his father when a colony of Rhinelander , Swabian and Swiss people wanted to settle in North America and had already bought land for this purpose. He should now travel to the colony, generally survey it and examine it zoologically, botanically and mineralogically, explore trade routes and look for a suitable place to build a city.

At his father's request, however, he returned to Plauen, provided his father with legal support and studied mathematics and physics. He invented a clock with no weights and no springs, powered only by a magnet , and wrote some small treatises.

After the death of his former teacher and friend Johann Jacob Ebert , he received his chair for mathematics at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Wittenberg, so that he traveled there in 1806 and took up the professorship; He turned down appointments to Greifswald , Dorpat and Charkow in southern Russia .

After the University of Wittenberg had been merged with the University of Halle in 1815 , he moved there in 1817 to take on a professorship in mountain sciences .

Scientific work

Johann Gottfried Steinhäuser dealt intensively with magnetism and wrote to a friend in 1819: “I no longer doubt the existence of a satellite in the interior of the earth, which directs the earth's surface with its iron scepter. In Luther's time he was closest to us. "

He also exchanged writing with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about problems of geomagnetism . His special request to stone houses was the production of magnetic irons and information about their effectiveness. After Goethe received the magnets, he transferred 17 Reichstaler to Plauen for them.

Memberships

Fonts (selection)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Carl Kirchner: The Pforta State School in its historical development: since the beginning of the XIX. Century to the present: Invitation to the third secular celebration of your foundation on May 21, 1843 . Die Schule, Naumburg 1843 ( google.de [accessed June 4, 2020]).
  2. ^ University of Halle, Inst. Math., Virtual Museum. Retrieved June 5, 2020 .
  3. ^ University of Halle-Wittenberg: To celebrate the fiftieth year unification of the universities of Halle and Wittenberg . Printed by O. Hendel, Halle 1867 ( google.de [accessed June 5, 2020]).
  4. ↑ Werner Frick, Jochen Golz, Edith Zehm: Goethe-Jahrbuch 123, 2006 . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-2196-0 ( google.de [accessed on June 5, 2020]).
personal data
SURNAME Stone houses, Johann Gottfried
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Steinhaeuser, Johannes Godofredus; Steinhaeuser, Jean Godefroi; Steinhaeuser, Ioannes Godofredus; Steinhäuser, Johann G .; Steinhäuser, Johannes Gotfried; Steinhaeuser, Johann Godofredus; Flavius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist, mathematician, montanist and lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH September 20, 1768
PLACE OF BIRTH Plauen , Vogtland
DATE OF DEATH November 17, 1825
Place of death Hall