Karl Friedrich Schimper

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Karl Friedrich Schimper (born February 15, 1803 in Mannheim , † December 21, 1867 in Schwetzingen ) was a German naturalist , botanist , geologist and private scholar . He is a co-discoverer of the Pleistocene Ice Age , discoverer of the folds of the Alps and pioneer of paleoclimatology . Its official botanical author abbreviation is " KF Schimp. "

Karl Friedrich Schimper

biography

Karl Friedrich Schimper belonged to a family from the Rheinpfalz. His parents were Friedrich Ludwig Heinrich Schimper (1771-1823) (geometer and teacher of mathematics in Buchsweiler (Alsace) ) and his wife Margarethe von Furtenbach (April 4, 1785, † January 26, 1833), daughter of Jobst Wilhelm von Furtenbach (June 8, 1738 - February 14, 1819) and Margarethe Dorothea Pestel (February 14, 1749 - April 27, 1819). The family produced four great botanists. He was a cousin of the bryologist and phytopalaeontologist Wilhelm Philipp Schimper (1808-1880), whose son Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper (1856-1901) was a famous plant geographer. His brother Wilhelm Schimper (1804–1878) was a scientist who undertook botanical collecting trips to North Africa, among other places.

Schimper was only able to attend grammar school with the help of friends of the poor family . After graduating from high school in 1822, his hard work and intellectual talent earned him a scholarship to study theology at the University of Heidelberg . Because of his greater interest in the natural sciences, especially botany, he left Heidelberg after two years and traveled to southern France and the Pyrenees on behalf of a stock corporation to collect plants. Returning in the fall of 1825, he was busy identifying and shipping the collected plants to the shareholders . In the fall of 1826 he went back to Heidelberg, this time to study medicine. He acquired the means for this, among other things, through private lessons. But this subject did not really captivate him either, he pursued his own diverse scientific studies. In doing so, the discontinuity that was so characteristic of his further life became apparent: he was constantly tackling new areas of research, but never ending it and publishing the results. In Heidelberg a friendship developed with the botanist Alexander Braun and the zoologist Louis Agassiz , which continued with the move to Munich in 1828, but which later broke up in a fateful way. In 1829 he was supported by the Faculty of Arts University of Tübingen " in absentia " Dr. med. PhD. In Munich he informed about his research mainly in lectures and found the support of famous personalities like Friedrich Schelling and Lorenz Oken . His listeners included the embryologist Ignaz Döllinger , the doctor Johannringenis and the botanists Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius , Joseph Gerhard Zuccarini and Otto Sendtner .

In the second part of the work on the symphytum plant genus, published in 1829 and 1830, he published the first information about the regularities of leaf position he had determined, which received a great response from experts. Alexander Braun immediately applied the new findings to the position of the scales near the pine cones by referring to Schimper, but obviously without giving him the manuscript. Schimper, on the other hand, did not give lectures again until 1834. Despite warnings from Braun, he was unable to bring himself to a comprehensive publication and is said to have thought that he could prepare a compilation. With express reference to Schimper's authorship, Braun then published a summary of the lectures. However, the fact that he had not given him notice of the manuscript before it went to press triggered Schimper's violent indignation. Braun's apology did not appease him either, and a complete break occurred. This reaction proves further unfavorable character traits, as shown in letters from his cousin Wilhelm Philipp Schimper (Götz 1980: p. 26 ff.). The established regularities of leaf position still exist in science today, they are mostly referred to as Schimper-Braun's leaf position theory.

In the years 1835 to 1836 Schimper also gave lectures in Munich on " World Summer and World Winter ", in which he developed ideas about times of icing and, among other things , postponed the dragging of erratic blocks into the foothills of the Bavarian Alps to the time of " World Winter ". Perhaps he was inspired by the publication by Albrecht Reinhard Bernhardi , which appeared in a renowned magazine in 1832 . There is no evidence of this, but no one else mentioned this landmark work either. In 1836 he took part in the 21st annual meeting of the General Swiss Society for the Whole Natural Sciences in Solothurn , where he got to know, among others, the glacier researchers Franz Joseph Hugi and Johann von Charpentier , lived for four months with Charpentier in Bex in the canton of Vaud, and got tough with them discussed formerly much larger glaciations in the Alps and the problem of erratic blocks on the Jura mountains known. From December 1836 to May 1837 he stayed with his friend Louis Agassiz from his Munich days in Neuchâtel . On the recommendation of Alexander von Humboldt, the Prince of Neuchâtel, the King of Prussia ( Friedrich Wilhelm III. (Prussia) ), set up a professorship for Agassiz at the Lyceum (from 1838: Académie de Neuchâtel ). During his extensive hikes, Schimper found glacier cuts in several places, for example at Le Landeron on Lake Biel and also at Olten , as unmistakable signs that the entire Swiss plateau , except for the heights of the Jura Mountains, was once filled with ice. In his own poetic way, a focus of his work were poems, he wrote the ode "Ice Age" on this knowledge and distributed it on February 15, 1837. For the announcement at the 22nd annual meeting of the General Swiss Society for the Whole Natural Sciences in July In 1837 in Neuchâtel, in which he could not take part, he unsuspectingly sent an extensive letter to Louis Agassis about the discovery. He recognized the scope of the discovery and took on the matter. As President of the Society, he only presented an excerpt, which was also published later, and in the opening lecture he developed his own hypothesis, which was apparently drawn up in great haste (→ Quaternary research ) and did not mention Schimper afterwards. Schimper could not win the exaggerated priority dispute, Agassiz was far too eloquent and urbane. The hushed up fought on anyway and, with the support of his cousin Wilhelm Philipp Schimper, presented a “reply and explanation” with precise chronological information about the history of his discovery at the Congrès scientifique de France in Strasbourg in 1842 . However, this had a negative effect and brought him into disrepute in the professional world (Götz 1980: p. 28).

In the spring of 1840, Schimper was commissioned by Crown Prince Maximilian of Bavaria with the geological investigation of the Alps and the Bavarian Palatinate . His research led him to the fundamental realization that the Alps could not have been created, as Leopold von Buch taught, by a sudden elevation from below, but by horizontal pressure, which led to the formation of folds. He sent an interim report on the most important results to the assembly of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors , which met in Erlangen in September 1840 . Interestingly enough, this letter was read out by Leopold von Buch, who was present. His reaction to this was appropriate, because Buch was known that he admitted no other opinion. Thirty-five years later, Eduard Suess also made use of Schimper's findings in his fundamental work The Origin of the Alps . He didn't even mention Schimper, although he couldn't have missed its publication in one of the most important magazines.

The year 1842 became the fateful year for Schimper. After a dispute over the pending report on the geological survey in the Alps, it broke with the Bavarian state. He buried his hopes for employment and lost all income. As a private scholar he returned to Mannheim and was only able to keep himself alive with difficulty by giving lessons. It was not until 1845 that he received a small pension from Grand Duke Leopold von Baden . He started with physiological studies on mosses . He discovered the capillary water conduit of the mosses and studied the direction of growth of the mosses, developing terms such as hyponastia, epinasty and diplonasty and also looking for violent arguments with his cousin Wilhelm Philipp Schimper (Götz 1980: p. 30). His preoccupation with river currents, the investigation of which he called "rhoology" (no longer in use today as a disciplinary term), led him to the principles of the shape and arrangement of the river pebbles when researching the prehistoric climate. His work "On the Wetterungsphasen der Vorwelt" (1843) is a pioneering work on paleoclimatology. Since 1849 Schimper continued to live in poor conditions and without employment in Schwetzingen, but was able to live in Schwetzingen Castle . He gave lectures at meetings of natural scientists in Jena (1854/55), Göttingen (1854), Bonn (1857), Karlsruhe (1858) and Stettin (1863), among others.

Membership and Honors

Fonts

  • Description of the Symphytum Zeyheri and its two German relatives the S. bulbosum Schimp. and S. tuberosum Jacq. 1st chapter. Heidelberg 1829
  • Description of the Symphytum Zeyheri and its two German relatives the S. bulbosum Schimp. and S. tuberosum Jacq. Part 2. Heidelberg 1830
  • To the explanations of Prof. Dr. Brown. Regensburg 1835
  • Extract from the lecture of Dr. CF Schimper from Munich in the botanical section. Solothurn 1937
  • About the ice age . Neuchâtel 1837
  • Poems by Karl Schimper. Erlangen 1840
  • Over the Bavarian Limestone Alps. Erlangen 1841
  • About the weather phases of the past. Draft for a lecture on the occasion of the tenth foundation ceremony and general assembly of the Mannheim Association for Natural History. Mannheim (Schmelzer) 1843. 20 pp.
  • Poems by Karl Schimper 1840-1846. Erlangen 1847
  • Water and sunshine ... Emden 1864
  • Division and succession of organisms. Mannheim 1885

Secondary literature

  • Hermann von Leonhardi (1855): Some news about Carl Friedrich Schimper. In: lotus. Journal of Science. 5th year. Prague (Gerzabek). Pp. 145-151. [17]
  • Wilhelm Hofmeister (1868): Karl Fr. Schimper. In: Botanische Zeitung. Volume 26, No. 3. Leipzig (Felix). Pp. 33-40. [18] .
  • Melchior Meyr & Mathäus Trettenbacher (1868): Friends' voices about Karl Schimper. In: Flora or general botanical newspaper Neue Reihe. 26th year, No. 2. Regensburg. Pp. 17-25. [19] .
  • Ludwig Eyrich (1885): Speech to Karl Friedrich Schimper's lecture on the classification and succession of organisms. In: Annual report of the Mannheim Association for Natural History. 50th annual report. Mannheim (Walther) 1885. pp. 37-64. [20]
  • Ernst Wunschmann (1890): Carl Schimper. In: General German biography. Volume 31. Leipzig (Duncker & Humblot). Pp. 274-277. [21] .
  • Robert Lauterborn (1907): Karl Schimper and the "boulder blocks" near Mannheim. In: Mannheim history sheets. 8th year. Mannheim. Pp. 41-43. [22]
  • Robert Lauterborn (1934): Karl Friedrich Schimper. Life and work of a German natural scientist. In: Reports of the Natural Research Society in Freiburg im Breisgau. Volume 33 (Robert Lauterborn: The Rhine. Natural history of a German river. 1. Volume). Freiburg. Pp. 269-325. [23] .
  • Egbert Haase (1966): A memory of Karl Schimper. In: Reports of the Natural Research Society in Freiburg im Breisgau. Volume 56. Freiburg 1966. pp. 151-154. [24]
  • Karl Mägdefrau (1968): Karl Friedrich Schimper. A commemoration on the 100th anniversary of his death. In: Contributions to natural history research in Southwest Germany. Volume 27. Karlsruhe. Pp. 3-20. [25] .
  • APM Sanders (1973): Karl Friedrich Schimper's Last Months. In: Contributions to natural history research in Southwest Germany. Volume 32. Karlsruhe. Pp. 205-218. [26]
  • Hans Götz (1980): Wilhelm Philipp Schimper and Karl Friedrich Schimper. - two naturalists on the Upper Rhine. In: Contributions to natural history research in Southwest Germany. Volume 39. Karlsruhe. Pp. 19-35. [27]
  • Hans Götz (1985): Karl Friedrich Schimper. Return to Mannheim. 261 S. Writings of the Schwetzingen City Archives. No. 22.
  • Hans Götz (1991): Karl Friedrich Schimper in Munich. Volume 2. 177 S. Writings of the Schwetzingen City Archives. Volume 17. 2nd unchanged edition.
  • Hans Götz (1991): Karl Friedrich Schimper in Munich. Volume 3. 132 pp. + Maps. Writings from the Schwetzingen City Archives. Volume 18. 2nd unchanged edition.
  • Gudrun S. Baumgärtl (2002): Evolution of Organisms: Perceptions and Interpretation Approaches around 1835; an unknown manuscript by KF Schimper. Augsburg 286 S. Series: (Algorismus 36; Münchener Universitätsschriften) ISBN 3-9807122-5-7 .
  • Willi Schäfer (2003): Karl Friedrich Schimper: History and poems of a natural scientist. 171 pp., KF Schimper-Verlag GmbH, ISBN 3-87742-173-3 .
  • Wilhelm Kühlmann & Hermann Wiegand (Eds.) (2005): Karl-Friedrich Schimper - Poetry and didactic poems. Ubstadt-Weiher: regional culture publisher. ISBN 3-89735-420-9 .
  • Ilse Jahn (2005): Schimper, Carl. In: New German Biography. Volume 22. Berlin (Duncker & Humblot). P. 783. [28]

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Karl Friedrich Schimper: Description of Symphytum zeyheri and his two German related S. bulbosum Schimp. and S. tuberosum Jacq., together with explanations of the Asperifolia in general, especially of their leaf position and inflorescence and the plant egg. In: Magazine for Pharmacy and the related sciences. 7th year, Volume 28. Heidelberg (Winter) 1829. pp. 3–49. [1]
  2. ↑ a b Karl Friedrich Schimper: Description of Symphytum zeyheri and his two German related S. bulbosum Schimp. and S. tuberosum Jacq., together with explanations of the Aspero foils in general, namely their leaf position and inflorescence and the plant egg. In: Magazine for Pharmacy and the related sciences. 8th year, Volume 29. Heidelberg (Winter) 1830. pp. 1–71. [2]
  3. ↑ Alexander Braun: Comparative study on the order of the scales on the pine cones. As an introduction to the examination of the leaf position in general. In: Negotiations of the Imperial Leopoldine-Carolinian Academy of Natural Scientists. Volume 15. Bonn 1831. pp. 195-402, panels XVII-L. [3]
  4. ↑ Alexander Braun: Dr. Carl Schimper's lectures on the possibility of a scientific understanding of the leaf position, along with an indication of the main leaf position laws and in particular the newly discovered laws of the stringing together of cycles of different dimensions. In: Flora or general botanical newspaper. Volume 18, Volume 1, No. 10–12. Regensburg 1835. pp. 145-191. 1 board. [4]
  5. ↑ a b Karl Friedrich Schimper: On the explanations of Prof. Dr. Brown. In: Flora or general botanical newspaper. Volume 18, Volume 2, No. 47. Regensburg 1835. pp. 748–758. [5]
  6. ↑ Alexander Braun: Subsequent explanations to my essay in No. 10, 11 and 12 of the Flora current year about Dr. Schimper's lectures, about the possibility of a scientific understanding of the leaf position, etc. In: Flora or general botanical newspaper. Volume 18, Volume 2, No. 47. Regensburg 1835. pp. 737–748. [6]
  7. ↑ Albrecht Bernhardi: How did the rock fragments and debris from the north, which can be found in northern Germany and the neighboring countries, get to their current location? In: Yearbook for Mineralogy, Geognosy, Geology and Petrefactology. 3rd year. Heidelberg 1832. pp. 257-267. [7]
  8. ↑ a b Karl Friedrich Schimper: Excerpt from the lecture of Dr. CF Schimper from Munich in the botanical section. In: Negotiations of the general Swiss society for the total natural sciences in their 21st annual meeting in Solothurn. Solothurn (Tschan) 1937. pp. 113–117. [8th]
  9. ^ A b Karl Friedrich Schimper: About the Ice Age (excerpt from a letter to L. Agassiz). In: Actes de la Société Helvétique des Sciences Naturelles. 22nd session. Neuchâtel 1837. pp. 38–51 [9]
  10. ^ Louis Agassiz: Discours prononcé a l'ouverture des séanes de la Société Helvétique des Sciences Naturelles, a Neuchatel le 24 Juillet 1837, par L. Agassiz, president. In: Actes de la Société Helvétique des Sciences Naturelles. 22nd session. Neuchâtel 1837. S. V – XXXII [10]
  11. ^ A b Karl Friedrich Schimper: About the Bavarian Limestone Alps. In: Official report on the eighteenth meeting of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors in Erlangen in September 1840 (meetings on September 19 and 21, 1840). Erlangen 1841. pp. 93-101. [11]
  12. ↑ Eduard Suess: The emergence of the Alps. Vienna (Braumüller) 1875. S. IV, 1–168. [12]
  13. ^ List of members Leopoldina, Karl Friedrich Schimper
  14. ^ Karl Friedrich Schimper: Poems by Karl Schimper. Erlangen (Enke) 1840. S. VI, 1–347. [13]
  15. ^ Karl Friedrich Schimper: Poems by Karl Schimper 1840–1846. Mannheim (Hoff) 1847. pp. 1-352. [14]
  16. ↑ Karl Friedrich Schimper: Water and Sunshine or: The transparency and shine of the waters. In: Festschrift of the natural research society in Emden published on the occasion of the jubilee of its 50th anniversary. Emden (Hahn) 1864. pp. 37-66. [15]
  17. ^ Karl Friedrich Schimper: Division and succession of organisms (lecture, given in the winter of 1834/35 in Munich). In: Annual report of the Mannheim Association for Natural History. 50th annual report. Mannheim (Walther) 1885. pp. 1-36. [16]

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Schimper, Karl Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German scientist, botanist and geologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 15, 1803
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 1867
Place of death Schwetzingen