Julius Schuster (botanist)

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Julius Schuster (born April 7, 1886 in Munich , † September 14, 1949 in Berlin ) was a German botanist , paleobotanist and historian of science . Its official botanical author abbreviation is " J.Schust. ".

Life

Julius Schuster , the son of a tobacco wholesaler, attended the Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich until 1905 and then studied natural sciences, especially geology and botany, at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . After receiving his doctorate in 1909 ( "The morphology of the grass blossom" ) he was at the Biological Reichsanstalt in Berlin-Dahlem. By 1912 he had already had 47 scientific publications in botany and paleontology. In 1911 he completed his habilitation in botany and palaeontology in Munich, but renounced the habilitation after allegations of scientific fraud arose. This also happened under pressure from the reviewers August Rothpletz and Karl Ritter von Goebel , who demanded that he be dismissed as a private lecturer and who obtained it in 1912. Julius Schuster had published images of two preparations that did not come from him and “had nothing to do with the matter” . The Swedish paleobotanist Alfred Gabriel Nathorst (1850–1921) first pointed out discrepancies in his habilitation .

After the unsuccessful habilitation, he worked as a research assistant at the Botanical Museum in Berlin-Dahlem and also as an assistant at the Prussian Artillery Examination Commission (dealing with ballistics). He was also an employee of the German Pharmacopoeia at the Reich Health Office . However, his list of publications only contained occasional publications until his publications on the history of science began in the early 1920s. In 1917 he joined the Berlin Society for the History of Natural Science and Medicine and had contacts with Georg Schweinfurth and Karl Sudhoff . He works on Sudhoff's archive and became its co-editor. From 1920 he was a research assistant and in the same year he became a library councilor at the Berlin State Library. From 1928 he was an assistant at the Paleontological Museum in Berlin and at the University's Geological-Paleontological Institute. In 1932 he became an assistant there and in 1934 he took over the department head for biology (organic natural sciences) at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Natural Sciences in Berlin-Steglitz, founded by Paul Diepgen in 1930, and in 1940 he received the title of adjunct professor (after living on an assistant's salary until then had to).

He was close to the National Socialists , but did not become a member of the NSDAP until 1941 . In the task force of Reichsleiter Rosenberg , who organized the robbery of cultural assets from the occupied territories, he was responsible for scientific publications. In addition, under Rosenberg he was a member of the working group led by Heinrich Härtle for the study of the Bolshevik threat to the world and dealt there with “Bolshevik” science in the Soviet Union .

In 1945 he lost his position due to his National Socialist burden. In 1949 he committed suicide (he drowned in the Müggelsee ) shortly before the Spruchkammer should announce its verdict on his involvement in National Socialism . A substitute professorship for the history of medicine at the newly founded FU Berlin, which was considered in 1948, failed due to the resistance of his former superior, the medical historian Paul Diepgen . Before the ruling chamber he was charged mainly because of his work at the Rosenberg office. He “looked after” lecturers there, which they perceived as spying (the main witness was Alfred Siggel ).

In 1922 he received the Lorenz Oken Medal from the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors .

As a science historian, he dealt with, among other things, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , the history of botany and pharmacy.

He also published on the psychology of sadism and masochism (including the section Confessions of Dr. X, which was autobiographical after Thomas Junker ). One motive was the suicide of his mother Julie by drowning in the Isar near Freising in 1919. In the 1920s he was friends with Iwan Bloch .

Paleobotanical and pharmaceutical historical writings (selection)

  • Monograph of the fossil flora of the Pithecanthropus strata. In: Treatises of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences, mathematical-physical. Class. 25, 6th treatise, Munich 1911. (Archives)
  • Weltrichia and the Bennettitales. (= Kungl. Svenska Vetenskapsakademiens Handlingar Ny Följd. Volume 46, 11). Uppsala / Stockholm 1911.
  • IV.1. Cycadaceae. In: A. Engler (initial); L. Diels (arr.): The vegetable kingdom. Issue 99, Verlag Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1932.
  • Secreta Salernitana and Gart der Gesundheit. In: Medieval manuscripts. Ceremony for the 60th birthday of Hermann Degering. Leipzig 1926, pp. 203-237.

literature

  • Thomas Junker , Hannelore Landsberg: The two deaths of a naturalist. Julius Schuster's (1886–1949) path from botany to the history of biology. In: Medical History Journal. International Quarterly Journal for the History of Science, Volume 29, 1994, pp. 149–170. (on-line)
  • Thomas Junker: Julius Schuster and the Berlin Institute for the History of Medicine and Natural Sciences (1930–1945). A forgotten episode in pharmacy historiography. In: History of Pharmacy. 48, 1996, pp. 9-17.
  • Thomas Junker: A forgotten episode in the history of pharmacy: The Berlin Institute for the History of Medicine and Natural Sciences (1930-1945). In: Actes du XXXIIe Congrès d'Histoire de la Pharmacie. Paris, September 25-29, 1995. Societe d'Histoire de la Pharmacie, Paris 1996, pp. 267-268.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Annual report from the K. Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Munich 1904/05
  2. ↑ Julius Schuster: Weltrichia and the Bennettitales. Habilitation thesis . (= Kgl. Svenska Verenskapsakader ens Handlingar. Volume 46, No. 11). Swedish Akad. Der Wiss., Stockholm / Uppsala 1911.
  3. ↑ Julius Schuster: Pain and Sex Drive. Attempt to analyze and theory algolagnia (sadism and masochism). (= Monographs on gynecology and eugenics, sexual biology and genetics. No. 5). Leipzig 1923.
personal data
SURNAME Schuster, Julius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German botanist, paleobotanist and historian of science
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH September 14, 1949
Place of death Berlin