Johann Heinrich Ziegler

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Johann Heinrich Ziegler, 1796, by Anton Graff . The painter was from Winterthur and painted the portrait during one of his visits to his hometown.

Johann Heinrich Ziegler (born March 23, 1738 in Winterthur ; † November 15, 1818 there ) was a Swiss chemist , doctor , entrepreneur , translator and preacher . He was involved in the founding of the first chemical factory in Switzerland, the laboratory , as well as the very first factory in Switzerland, the Spinnerei Hard .

Life

Johann Heinrich Ziegler was born in 1738 as the son of David Ziegler, a white tanner. He had an older brother named Jakob, who died at the age of 35.

Ziegler first turned to theology , which he studied in Zurich and graduated in 1758. He then continued his education in oriental languages, physics and chemistry before working as a French preacher in Zurich. However, since this job did not satisfy him, he went on trips abroad to France and England . In England he studied medicine and chemistry. He finally graduated as a doctor on May 31, 1769 in Basel . He then returned to England, where he worked on an improvement to the water wheel , for which he was awarded a gold medal by the Royal Society of Arts in 1770 . In addition to the work on the water wheel, Ziegler translated four books by the chemist William Lewis into German and published them in Zurich. There he is also a founding member of the "Society for the Promotion of Art and Natural Sciences", and since 1762 he has also been an honorary member of the Natural Research Society in Zurich .

After these years of traveling, Ziegler returned to Winterthur as a doctor. There he was elected to the Grand Council in 1771. He is the initiator of the laboratory , the first chemical factory in Switzerland, which he opened in 1778 together with Johann Sebastian Clais and Johann Jakob Sulzer . In 1780 he became a member of the Small Council. While looking for lignite he found it in Birmenstall near Elgg in 1782 , which he then managed to mine . In 1798 he founded a mineral water factory . He was involved in founding the Hard spinning mill in Wülflingen (now part of Winterthur), the first factory in Switzerland.

Ziegler died in 1818. The collection of minerals , fossils and stuffed birds he had expanded by his son Jakob formed the basis for the collection of the Winterthur Museum of Nature . His private library, which comprises more than 180 books and which he had already set up as a student around 1755, can be found today in the special collections in the “Old Prints” section of the Winterthur libraries .

Web links

Wikisource: Johann Heinrich Ziegler  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ekhart Berckenhagen: Anton Graff - life and work. Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin 1967, p. 376.
  2. ↑ JC Poggendorff: Biographical-literary concise dictionary for the history of the exact sciences . Publisher by Johann Ambrosius Barth, Leipzig 1863, p. 1409 . ( Digitized on Google Books)
  3. ^ Johann Heinrich Merck: Correspondence . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0105-4 , p. 472 . ( Preview of the digitized version on Google Books)
  4. ↑ Entry “Winterthur Libraries” ( memento from October 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) in the “Handbook of Historical Book Holdings in Switzerland”
personal data
SURNAME Ziegler, Johann Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss chemist, doctor and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1738
PLACE OF BIRTH Winterthur
DATE OF DEATH November 15, 1818
Place of death Winterthur