Friedrich Meisner

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Karl Friedrich August Meisner (born January 6, 1765 in Ilfeld , † February 12, 1825 in Bern ) was a German educator and naturalist .

Life

family

Friedrich Meisner was born in Ilfeld in the Electorate of Hanover and was the son of the rector of the Ilfeld pedagogy Karl Friedrich Meisner (1724–1788) and his wife Justine Wilhelmine (née Spangenberg). Of his six siblings are known by name:

Friedrich Meisner married the patrician Rosina Elisabetha (* January 25, 1765; † 1802), daughter of Bailiff of Zweisimmen Karl von Steiger (1714-1800), in 1799 , but his wife died early with the birth of the third child. Together they had a son and a daughter. In 1805 he married the singer and composer Margaritha (born May 22, 1781 in Bern; † unknown), daughter of the businessman David Fueter.

He had not applied for Swiss citizenship . Only his son Carl Meissner , who lived in Basel and worked at the university there , received Basel and thus Swiss citizenship.

education

He and his siblings received lessons from various private teachers, attended the Ilfeld Pedagogy from 1775 and began studying natural sciences , philology , philosophy and ancient languages at the University of Göttingen in 1782 ; He was particularly interested in lectures given by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach , with whom he later corresponded; He also heard the lectures by Abraham Gotthelf Kästner , Christian Gottlob Heyne , Johann Dominik Fiorillo and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg . During his study visit he also became a member of the philological seminar, which was headed by Christian Gottlob Heyne, and joined a circle in which essays and treatises were reviewed and discussed; This circle also included the later writer Leonhard Wächter . Due to illness he had to interrupt his studies, stayed in Ilfeld during this time and made the acquaintance of the writer Leopold Friedrich Günther von Goeckingk during this time .

Career in Germany

He then got a job as a teacher in Bremen in 1786 , initially in a private household and later in an educational institute; in Bremen, he also acted, through the mediation of Daniel Schutte , whom he knew from Göttingen and he accidentally met in Bremen, where by Adolph Knigge led amateur theater as Musikdilettant with and played cello .

In 1793 he decided to take a position as a teacher in Ilfeld; a position as a teacher at the pedagogy, which had already been promised by Christian Gottlob Heyne, was, however, filled by the son of the vice-principal Heinrich Alexander Günther Pätz (1734-1808) without consulting Christian Gottlob Heyne . Thereupon he received an offer from Christian Gottlob Heyne to fill the position of private tutor with the governor of Blankenburg , von Wattenwyl . He immediately accepted this offer and traveled to Bern and took up his new office.

Career in Switzerland

In 1799 he founded a college for boys in Bern, which Bernhard Studer later attended. When the private schools were dissolved by the state in 1805, after their restoration, he got a job at the Bern Academy (today: University of Bern ) as a professor of natural history and geography. In 1807, however, he reopened his college and continued it for five years. His students came from the families of Emanuel Friedrich von Fischer , Albrecht Viktor von Tavel (1791-1854), Johann Rudolf Friedrich Ith, Gottlieb Anton Simon , among others . In 1815 he founded a school for girls and continued it until 1824. He also got help from Germany for his educational institution and so the later university professor Karl Jahn came to Switzerland through his call and got his first job in 1805 in his teaching institution.

Musicians traveling through Bern were also accepted into his house who also made music in his house, including Carl Maria von Weber , Conradin Kreutzer , Louis Spohr and Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart ; he was on friendly terms with Conradin Kreutzer and in factual correspondence with Louis Spohr.

When he died, he left behind important mineralogical and zoological private collections as well as handwritten works.

Writing and scientific work

Friedrich Meisner roamed the Alps, collecting, observing and drawing, and in 1801 published his first travelogue, which was followed by four volumes from 1820 to 1825. Since 1801 he has been supervising the bird collection from Daniel Sprüngli and has compiled a systematic directory of Swiss birds for this purpose. As a result, he made outstanding contributions to the establishment, the scientific order and the management of a public natural history collection (today: Natural History Museum Bern ) in Bern. Together with Heinrich Rudolf Schinz , he wrote the first Swiss avifauna, Die Vögel der Schweiz , in 1815 .

August Gottfried Ferdinand Emmert (1777-1819) taught him dissection so that he could combine comparative anatomy with zoology .

He was in correspondence with many scholars, including Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Martin Hinrich Lichtenstein , Louis Jurine , Georg Friedrich Treitschke , Ferdinand Ochsenheimer , Arnold Escher von der Linth , Samuel Thomas von Soemmerring , Coenraad Jacob Temminck , Georges Cuvier , and Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied , Joseph Koechlin-Schlumberger (1796–1863), Johann Gottfried Bremser , Blasius Merrem and Johann Friedrich Eschscholtz .

In 1806 he wrote a manual of zoology , from 1807 to 1811 a museum of natural history in 6 booklets with illustrations, and in 1816, together with Heinrich Rudolf Schinz from Zurich , The Birds of Switzerland . He was also an employee of the Bernese Almanac Die Alpenrosen .

Memberships

  • In 1802, with some friends, he re-established the Bernische Naturforschende Gesellschaft, founded by Pastor Jakob Samuel Wyttenbach in 1786 , to promote natural history in general and patriotic in particular, and to encourage and support young people in this study, and held the first scientific lecture.
  • In 1804 he became a corresponding member of the naturalistes in Geneva and in 1808 of the Wetterau Society for the whole of natural history .
  • Since 1813 he was a full member of the Society for the Entire Mineralogy of Jena and of the ducal Saxe-Gothaischen and Meiningischen Society of Forestry and Hunting in Thirty-Ackers .
  • In 1815 he became a founding member of the Bern Music Association .
  • He also worked for the General Swiss Society for the Whole Natural Sciences in Geneva from 1815. He was her first secretary and on her behalf, supported by the Geneva botanist Nicolas Charles Seringe , published a journal, first from 1817 to 1823 under the title Naturwissenschaftlicher Anzeiger , and then from 1824 to 1825 in 2 volumes the annals of the general Swiss society for Science out.
  • In 1818 he became a full member of the Imperial Natural Research Society in Moscow .
  • In 1822, he became a member of the Senkenberg Natural Research Society in Frankfurt am Main .

Fonts (selection)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans-Joachim Heerde: The audience of physics: Lichtenbergs Hörer . Wallstein Verlag, 2006, ISBN 978-3-8353-0015-6 ( google.de [accessed January 1, 2020]).
  2. ↑ Bernese families - persons. Accessed January 1, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Carl Maria von Weber - Complete Edition. December 16, 2017, accessed January 1, 2020 .
  4. ↑ scopeArchiv - archive plan search. Accessed January 2, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Tavel, Albrecht Viktor von. Accessed January 1, 2020 .
  6. ^ Ith, Johann Rudolf Friedrich. Accessed January 1, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Natural Research Society in Bern. Accessed December 31, 2019 .
  8. ^ 235 years "Society for the entire mineralogy of Jena". Accessed January 2, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Meisner, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meisner, Friederich; Meisner, Fr .; Meisner, Karl Friedrich August; Meisner, Carl Friedrich August; Meissner, Friedrich; Meissner, Karl Friedrich August; Meissner, Carl Friedrich August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German educator and naturalist
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1765
PLACE OF BIRTH Ilfeld
DATE OF DEATH February 12, 1825
Place of death Bern