Johann Wilhelm Meigen
Johann Wilhelm Meigen (born May 3, 1764 in Solingen , † July 11, 1845 in Stolberg (Rhld.) ) Was a German entomologist and he also dealt with botany, his author's abbreviation is Meigen .
Live and act
His parents were Johann Clemens Meigen (1732-1802) and his wife Sibylla Margaretha Bick (1732-1814). They ran a grocer's shop in Solingen with modest means. Meigen was born the fifth of eight children.
He became interested in nature from a young age and began collecting butterflies at the age of ten . He received his first training in mathematics and especially in French . In 1784 he started his apprenticeship with the dealer Pelzer in Aachen .
A cousin of his, the wool merchant Johann Matthias Baumhauer (1759-1818), was a passionate entomologist and owned a sizable collection, especially butterflies. The young Meigen soon helped him look after his collection, which comprised around 1,200 pieces. He began to proceed more scientifically and he managed to get some entomology works for the determination of the species, among others from Johan Christian Fabricius (1745-1808). He made his first scientific observations in particular with the wing veins of the flies and thus questioned the genera defined by Linnaeus , without knowing that Thaddeus William Harris (1795-1856) in Great Britain and Louis Jurine (1749-1819) in Geneva were too similar Conclusions came. In order to be able to examine the wings of the two-winged animals better, he acquired a microscope with 20x magnification at a trade fair in Leiden .
The organist from Solingen died in autumn 1786. Meigen was offered this post as it included teaching the French language. He accepted the position which, among other advantages, allowed him to be close to his family. In 1792 he began to study drawing while continuing to teach French in schools in the Aachen area. Meigen mainly taught the children of the wealthy copper masters in Stolberg, where he worked from 1796 until his death. He gave private lessons in the subjects of drawing, geography, world history and music (piano).
In 1801 he met Bernard Germain Lacépède (1756–1825), who had come to Stolberg to visit the breweries. Meigen showed him his two-winged drawings. In 1802 he was invited by Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger (1775–1813) and Johann Centurius von Hoffmannsegg (1766–1849) to visit Aachen, where they stayed as spa guests. It is thanks to Illiger that Meigen's first works were able to appear. In the same year, Fabricius discovered Meigen's work while visiting Paris and asked him to meet, which then took place in Stolberg. Fabricius accused Meigen of not using a classification method that was based only on a specific part of the body, but changed each time according to requirements.
The year 1808 was difficult because of the drastic decline in the number of French students. Meigen then received a post as secretary at the Stolberg Chamber of Commerce . In 1812 he was employed by the French government in the Aachen administration. Meigen created topographic maps for the Département de la Roer , the mayor's office in Stolberg as well as an overview map and eleven district maps for the Cologne district. The period from 1816 to 1817 was also very difficult for Meigen, as after losing most of the teaching opportunities he had great problems supporting his family, which included seven children.
The kings of Prussia, Denmark and Württemberg and the emperors of Austria finally commissioned him to reissue his 1804 publication. In return, he was entrusted with the collections of the museums in Vienna and Berlin (where the Hoffmannseggs collection is kept), as well as those of Peter Simon Pallas (1741–1811). In 1818 he published the first volume of an insect fauna: Systematic description of the known European two-winged insects , followed by six more, the last appeared in 1838.
Baumhauer's widow commissioned him in 1818 to determine his collection of at least 50,000 pieces that came from Germany, France, the Pyrenees, the Alps and northern Italy. After this work, the collection was sold to the museums of Leiden and Liège for 1,100 Dutch guilders . He was also allowed to bring order to the collection of the now deceased Fabricius, for which he was invited to Hamburg in 1823 by Christian Rudolph Wilhelm Wiedemann (1770–1840). During his subsequent visit to Sweden and Denmark, he created more than 600 nature drawings.
In 1822/23 Meigen published a series of astronomical maps, such as "The starry sky or description of all constellations visible in Europe", a sky atlas made up of 16 tables and an auxiliary book. Shortly before his death on May 3, 1845, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Philosophical Faculty of the Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Bonn for his work on the two-winged aircraft.
family
In 1804 he married Adelhaid Mänß (1787–1883) the daughter of the cooper Peter Maenß (1752–1827) from Wanheim (now part of Duisburg ). The couple had 8 sons and 5 daughters.
Works
- Systematic description of the known European two-winged insects , 7 volumes, Aachen / Halle 1818–1873 Digitized in the Biodiversity Heritage Library .
- Systematic description of European butterflies , 3 volumes, Aachen / Leipzig 1829–1832.
literature
- Ulrich S. Soénius: Johann Wilhelm Meigen (1764-1845) . In: Rhenish and Westphalian Chamber of Commerce secretaries and syndici from the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century. Aschendorff, Münster 1994 (Rheinisch-Westfälische Wirtschaftsbiographien, Vol. 15), pp. 175–196 ISBN 3-402-06751-X [reprinted in: Meine Heimat. Stolberg citizens of high standing on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the death of Johann Wilhelm Meigen. Ed. Working group Stolberger Geschichte. Red .: Heinz Foltz, Stolberg 1995, pp. 4-21].
- Herbert Weidner: Meigen, Johann Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , p. 652 f. ( Digitized version ).
- New Nekrolog der Deutschen, Volume 23, S.599ff
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Meigen, Johann Wilhelm |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German entomologist, specialist in two-winged animals |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 3, 1764 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Solingen |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 11, 1845 |
| Place of death | Stolberg |