Johann Rudolf Meyer (writer)

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Johann Rudolf Meyer (1791-1833). Lithograph by R. Lehmann and R. Rey, 1852.

Johann Rudolf Meyer (born March 6, 1791 in Aarau ; † November 6, 1833 there ) was a Swiss scientist, writer and alpinist . Descendant of supporters of the Enlightenment and the Helvetic Revolution , he switched to the camp of romanticism and political reaction .

Life

Raised in the spirit of Pestalozzi

Meyer was the oldest child of the silk ribbon manufacturer, natural scientist and alpinist Johann Rudolf Meyer Sohn (1768-1825) and Margarete Saxer (1769-1805). The best-known bearer of his name was his grandfather, the silk ribbon manufacturer, philanthropist, patron and revolutionary Johann Rudolf Meyer Vater (1739-1813). Meyer and his siblings Justine (1792–1806) and Johann Gottlieb (1793–1829) were tutored by a private tutor. This position was held in 1801 by the Bavarian Pestalozzi student Andreas Moser (1766–1806). But because Moser was to help found the canton school in Aarau and to introduce the Pestalozzi teaching method at the city schools there, the father sent the two sons to Pestalozzi's institute in Burgdorf . When they visited their parents from there, their car ran into the downhill Emme on December 30, 1801 . Courageous men rescued them from the ice-cold floods, for which the Helvetic Republic erected a memorial for them.

Loss of mother

At fourteen Meyer lost his mother. Immediately afterwards, the father married Marie Gruner. When this illegitimate daughter of his friend Johann Samuel Gruner (1766–1824) was born is not known, but she was probably only a little older than her stepson. The newlyweds moved to Polling ( Weilheim-Schongau district ). From there, the father administered the Bavarian property of the Meyer family and at the same time published an encyclopedia of chemistry dedicated to the King of Bavaria. Meanwhile, Meyer attended the city school in Aarau and the canton school from 1806-1809, where both the poet and natural scientist Franz Xaver Bronner and the German national rector Ernst August Evers seem to have influenced him. In 1807 the father was deposed as administrator by his grandfather and returned to Aarau. This without his young wife, who may have died in the first birth. In 1809 the father married the third marriage of his brother Hieronymus (1769–1844), Luise Vinnassa (1793–1859). Meyer got a stepmother who was two years younger than himself.

Competition with the father

Finsteraarhorn, highest peak in the Bernese Alps (4274 m).

Meyer studied medicine in Tübingen from 1809 to 1813 . According to his biographer Abraham Emanuel Fröhlich , he inherited physical strength from his father and was a master in gymnastics and vaulting. In 1811, the father and Hieronymus climbed the 4158 m high Jungfrau , making them the first people in Switzerland to climb a four-thousand-meter peak. The 21-year-old Meyer tried to surpass them and conquer the highest peak in the Bernese Alps , the 4274 m high Finsteraarhorn . On August 16, 1812, however, he had to stay just below the summit and leave the (unconfirmed) first ascent to his guides Arnold Abbühl, Joseph Bortis and Alois Volken.

Reactionary positions

1813 doctorate Meyer with a mineralogical dissertation on the Jura in Aarau occurring Strontianite Dr. med. He then traveled through the Bohemian mountains and to Freiberg (Saxony), where, like his father at the time, he heard the mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner . In Dresden and Leipzig he visited the battlefields of the Sixth Coalition War . Other travel stops were Berlin , the Danish islands and Göttingen . In the same year, 1813, Meyer published a book in which, based on Friedrich Gentz , he represented opposing reactionary positions to the worldview of his father. When Switzerland, which had previously been allied with France, joined the coalition against Napoleon in 1815, Meyer took part in the siege of the French fortress of Hüningen as an officer in Aargau .

Marriage with an aunt

Was it longing for the lost mother that Meyer moved to live with her half-sister Emilie Saxer (1790–1856)? Since the marriage between nephew and aunt was not possible in Aargau, Meyer renounced his citizenship in 1816. In 1817 the couple married in an unknown location and then settled in Konstanz . It had four daughters: Johanna Emilie (1818–1835), Bertha Karoline married von Känel (1819–1894), Sophie Adelheid (* 1820) and Justine Adrienne (1830–1919). In Constance in 1820 Meyer published Die Geister der Natur. Inspired by Humboldt's views of nature , he aestheticized scientific objects. In the same year his father was convicted of counterfeiting in Karlsruhe and arrested.

The last great moment of the Meyerhaus

In 1821 Meyer was able to return to Aarau as a professor of natural sciences at the Cantonal School. He was also given citizenship again. With his political views, however, he was in the minority in the teaching staff. In 1822 his father was sentenced to three years in prison by the Baden judiciary. 1822–1831 Meyer was also a member of the Aargau Sanitary Council. In 1823/24 he was the rector of the canton school. In this capacity, he received the participants of the annual meeting of the Swiss Natural Research Society in the Meyerhaus in 1823 . This was the final moment of the villa, which Meyer and his father's factory had given to his brother Johann Gottlieb. In 1824 he traveled to London and Paris.

Sale of his father's library

Meyer's father died in the year he would have been released. When Johann Gottlieb also died in 1829, the factory and Meyerhaus passed into the possession of his associé Friedrich Heinrich Feer. Meyer published an expanded revision of the Spirits of Nature in 1829 . In 1831 he had to auction his father's natural science library, which with around 40,000 volumes is said to have been the third largest in the German-speaking area, in Schaffhausen.

Opponents of the radicals

In 1831 Meyer criticized the radicals who had come to power. He did this in the short-lived magazine Free Voices and under the image of a mine in revelations from ancient times . In Fröhlichs Alpenrosen he published short stories and poems from 1831 to 1833. His last publication, published in 1833, contained animal fables with political swipes. According to Fröhlich, Meyer died of gout.

literature

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Systematic presentation of all experiences in the study of nature, designed by Johann Rudolph Meyer the Younger, edited by several scholars. 4 volumes (no longer published), Aarau 1806–1808.
  2. ↑ Ludwig Thilo mentioned by Schumann (see literature) did not teach in Aarau until 1810–1821, after Bronner had emigrated to Kazan (Russia) as an opponent of Evers.
  3. ↑ Heinrich Zschokke: Journey to the ice mountains of the canton of Bern and climbing their highest peaks in the summer of 1812. With a map of the glaciers traveled. Aarau 1813. Meyer's report on which it is based is reproduced in the original in Fröhlich (see literature) on pp. X – XXXVII.
  4. ↑ Joannes Rodolphus Meyer: Dissertatio inauguralis sistens examen mineralogico-chemicum strontianitarum in monte Jura, juxta Aroviam, obviarum. Tubingae 1813. Compare the letter from Meyer's teacher Bronner on this subject in the paperback for the entire mineralogy, edited by Carl Caesar Leonhard, 4th year, Frankfurt am Main 1810, pp. 378–382.
  5. ↑ Historical representation of the destruction of Mount Olympus up to the founding of the religion of Jesus, based on Virgils Aeneide (published anonymously). (Aarau) 1813.
  6. ↑ Rudolph Meyer: The spirits of nature. Constanz 1820. (Review: Supplement to the Aarauer Zeitung, October 28, 1820, p. 161 f.)
  7. ↑ Karlsruher Zeitung, November 8, 1820, p. 1468, repeated on November 10, 1820, p. 1487. Königlich-Württembergisches Staats- und Regierungs-Blatt, December 6, 1820, p. 620 f.
  8. ^ Franz Xaver Bronner: The Canton Aargau. Volume 2, St. Gallen / Bern 1844, p. 41.
  9. ↑ Rudolph Meyer: The spirits of nature. A new work, not a second edition. Aarau 1829.
  10. ^ Catalog on the scientific library bequeathed by Johann Rudolph Meyer sel. Aarau 1827 (pasted over: Schaffhausen 1831).
  11. ^ Free votes on the Aargau constitution. (Aarau) February – May 1831.
  12. ↑ Revelations from ancient times (published anonymously). Aarau 1831.
  13. ↑ Trinklieder and Der Geist des Gebirges (1831), Der Heimathlose, The apparitions in the Balmfeste and Fridolin, a fairy tale (1832), The ancestors in Roththal (1833).
  14. ↑ Rudolph Meyer: Characteristic animal drawings for entertaining instruction for young and old. Zurich 1833.
personal data
SURNAME Meyer, Johann Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss scientist, writer and alpinist
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1791
PLACE OF BIRTH Aarau
DATE OF DEATH November 6, 1833
Place of death Aarau