Karl August Möbius

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Karl August Möbius, painting by Ernst Hildebrand , 1895

Karl August Möbius (born February 7, 1825 in Eilenburg , Prussia , † April 26, 1908 in Berlin ) was a German zoologist and ecologist .

Life

Plaque at Möbius' birthplace in Eilenburg

When he was four years old, Karl August Möbius attended the mountain school in Eilenburg. His father sent him to a private teacher training college when he was 12. In 1844 he passed the teaching examination with distinction in Weißenfels .

He was employed in the secondary school in Seesen am Harz. Although he received great recognition as a teacher, he enrolled in science and philosophy at the University of Berlin in 1849 . After graduation, he became in 1853 teacher of zoology , botany , mineralogy , geography , physics and chemistry at the Johanneum the city of Hamburg . In 1863 he set up the first public seawater aquarium on German soil in the Hamburg Zoo . This was followed by a doctorate at the University of Halle . In 1860 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

Zoological institute and museum in Kiel designed in collaboration with the architects Gropius & Schmieden .

In 1868 Karl A. Möbius was appointed full professor to the newly established chair of zoology in Kiel ; his duties also included managing the zoological museum. There he dealt intensively with the research of sea animals, initially in his two-volume work, Die Fauna der Kieler Bucht (1865/1872), published together with Heinrich Adolph Meyer . This publication already has clear ecological features. He also taught at the Naval Academy and School (Kiel) .

In 1868 Möbius was commissioned by the Prussian government and the fishing association to inspect the artificial oyster farms . Therefore he undertook extensive research trips to France and England . In his first report from 1870 on oyster and mussel farming and uplifting them on the north German coast , he denied the possibility of artificial breeding for Germany. Despite the negative opinion, he was commissioned to carry out further research, including experience from the USA. In his final booklet, The Oyster and the Oyster Industry , he was therefore able to precisely illustrate the interrelationship between the oysters and the other animals and plants in an oyster bank.

Möbius had recognized the strong mutual dependency between all living beings in an oyster bank and coined the term biocenosis or "living community" for a selection and number of species and individuals corresponding to the average external living conditions, which are mutually dependent and measured through reproduction Area permanently preserved ”(after Schramm 1984, p. 161). The biocenosis concept is an essential concept in synecology .

When Möbius became rector of the University of Kiel in 1879 , he used his influence to demand more comprehensibility and complexity for natural history lessons in Germany: "Those who write difficult to understand have no clear insight into what they want to convey to others." His most important The improvement of the content of biology lessons was the expansion of the taxonomic method that was customary at that time to include lessons based on biological phenomena. This concept also had an impact on his student Friedrich Junge .

In 1888 Möbius took over the management and reorganization of the zoological collection in the new Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin and the professorship for systematic and geographical zoology at the university there . To the mutual benefit of visitors and researchers, he separated the main scientific collection in the museum from the public display collection. At the same time he became a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences . At the age of 80 he ended his scientific career on December 30, 1905. As the last of his works he published the " Aesthetics of the Animal World " (1908), through which he hoped to reintegrate the natural beauty into the discipline of aesthetics after it had been banned from the same for a long time by the philosophical discourse. With strict scientific deductions and numerous illustrations, aesthetic judgments about nature (landscapes, plants and animals) should be substantiated on the basis of empirical findings and criteria of aesthetic judgment formation stabilized. According to Möbius, the beauty value of an animal can neither be derived from its shape nor from its structure, but depends on the subjective constitution of the perceiver, his state of mind and his level of education. It is only through the effect of the animal on the state of mind of the viewer that an animal is 'beautiful' (cf. Karl Möbius: Ästhetik der Tierwelt. Foreword, p. 27). With “Aesthetics” Möbius was the first zoologist to enrich zoology with a subject area that was previously only art historical and literary.

In 1908 Möbius died at the age of 83 and was buried in Luisenfriedhof III in Berlin-Westend .

His brother-in-law was the philosopher Jürgen Bona Meyer (1829-1897).

Works (selection)

  • Animal life on the bottom of the German Baltic and North Sea: Lecture given on November 26th, 1870 in the Saale der Harmonie in Kiel . Lüderitz, Berlin 1871 ( digitized version )
  • Together with Heinrich Adolph Meyer : The fauna of the Kiel Bay: Vol. I: The Hinterkiemer or Opisthobranchia. (1865); Vol. II: The Prosobranchia and Lamellibranchia. (1872) With hand-colored lithographs.
  • On the term biocenosis. The oyster and the oyster industry . With introductions and comments by Günther Leps and Thomas Potthast, Frankfurt a. M .: Verl. H. Deutsch, 2nd exp. Edition 2006, ISBN 978-3-8171-3406-9 . (1877)
  • The formation, validity and designation of species concepts and their relationship to the theory of descent. In: Zoological yearbooks, journal for systematics, biology and geography of animals 1, 241-274. (1886)
  • Aesthetics of the wildlife . With 3 plates and 195 illustrations in the text. Jena: publ. By Gustav Fischer (1908). Now: with contemporary reviews and a foreword by Christoph Kockerbeck, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verl., 2008 (generally scientific culture around 1900, vol. 5), ISBN 978-3-515-09281-4 .

literature

  • Leander Scholz: Karl August Möbius and the politics of the community. Journal for Media and Culture Research (ZMK), ed. v. Lorenz Engell u. Bernhard Siegert, born 2016, issue 7/2, pp. 205–218.
  • Matthias Glaubrecht: Karl August Möbius: From communities to biodiversity . Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau 61 (5), pp. 230-236 (2008), ISSN  0028-1050
  • Christoph Kockerbeck: The zoologist Karl August Möbius (1825 - 1908) and the aesthetic exploration of the animal world. Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau 61 (10), pp. 510-515 (2008), ISSN  0028-1050
  • Herbert Weidner: The beginnings of marine biological and ecological research in Hamburg by Karl Möbius (1825–1908) and Heinrich Adolph Meyer (1822–1889) . In: Historisch-meereskundliches Jahrbuch 2: 69-84, 1994, ISSN  0943-5697 .
  • Engelbert Schramm (ed.): Ecology reader: selected texts on the development of ecological thinking from the beginning of the modern era to the Club of Rome (1971) . Frankfurt a. M .: S. Fischer, 1984, ISBN 3-596-24064-6 .
  • Günter Leps: Karl August Möbius (1825–1908) . In: Werner Plesse, Dieter Rux: Biographies of important biologists: a collection of biographies . Berlin: People and Knowledge VEB, 1977.
  • Herbert Weidner: History of Entomology in Hamburg . In: Treatises and negotiations of the Natural Science Association in Hamburg . tape IX . De Gruyter & Co, 1967, ISBN 978-3-11-140932-0 , pp. 387 . P. 123ff.
  • Ilse Jahn:  Möbius, Karl August. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , p. 606 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Friedrich Dahl : Festschrift for the 80th birthday of the secret government councilor Prof. Dr. Karl Möbius in Berlin in Zoological Yearbooks , JW Spengel (ed.), Supplement VIII, Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena, 1905, ( online , University of Kiel), contains a complete list of his work to date.
  • Hans-Joachim Böttcher : "Möbius, Karl August", in: Important historical personalities of the Dübener Heide, AMF - No. 237, 2012, pp. 67–68.
  • Ulrich van der Heyden / Matthias Glaubrecht / Uwe Pfullmann (eds.): The journey of the German researcher Karl August Möbius to Mauritius and the Seychelles 1874/75 , Wiesbaden 2012.

Foreign language

  • Lynn K. Nyhart (1998): Civic and economic zoology in nineteenth century Germany. The “living communities” of Karl Mobius. Isis 89: 605-630, ISSN  0021-1753 .
  • Lynn K. Nyhart (2009): Modern Nature. The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany. Chicago (ILL): University of Chicago Press, ISBN 978-0226610894 .

Web links

Commons : Karl August Möbius  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Karl August Möbius  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Möbius, Karl August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German zoologist and ecologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 7, 1825
PLACE OF BIRTH Eilenburg
DATE OF DEATH April 26, 1908
Place of death Berlin