Ludwig Plate (zoologist)

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Ludwig Plate. Photo from 1901.

Ludwig Hermann Plate (born August 16, 1862 in Bremen , † November 16, 1937 in Jena ) was a German zoologist, social Darwinist and from 1909 professor in Jena; he wrote papers on genetics and genetics.

origin

His parents were the teacher Heinrich Plate (1813-1880) and his English wife Phoebe Hind (1826-1911). His father was a neophilologist as well as a teacher at the community and secondary school in Bremen. He also wrote textbooks for the English and French languages. The engineer Ludwig Plate (1883–1967) was his nephew.

Life

Plate studied mathematics and natural sciences in Bonn , Munich and Jena . In 1885 he published his dissertation "Contributions to the natural history of rotatories ". He was a student of Ernst Haeckel and was encouraged by him. Like Haeckel, he was organized in the Deutscher Monistenbund and was one of its co-founders. The state examination for the higher teaching post (1887) was followed by the habilitation in Marburg in 1888. In 1896/97 he worked for a year as an assistant at the Zoological Institute at Berlin University.

In 1898 he became titular professor for zoology at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Berlin , where he worked until March 1905 " as an assistant teacher of zoology ". At the same time he was from 1901 " curator of the biological department of the Institute for Oceanography in Berlin ". On April 1, 1905, he was appointed " regular professor at the agricultural college in Berlin ".

Shaped by Haeckel, eugenics and racial hygiene were of particular interest to Plate . In 1904 the first issue of the journal Archives for Racial and Social Biology including Racial and Social Hygiene was published . Work on the subject of racial hygiene was collected and published here, and a comprehensive scientific exchange was promoted. The publisher and founders included Plate, Alfred Ploetz , Ernst Rüdin and Anastasius Nordenholz . The magazine saw itself as the organ of the German Society for Racial Hygiene, founded in Berlin in 1905 . As Ernst Haeckel's successor, Plate held the post of director of the Zoological Institute and the Phyletic Museum in Jena from 1909 , which was opened in 1912; Haeckel himself had decided not to participate after a dispute with Plate. In 1934 he retired. In 1933 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . He was also a member of the Hungarian and Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Plate traveled to the West Indies , South America and the Red Sea for research purposes . He was the old man of the Corps Agronomia-Jenensis.

Act

Plate was among the opinion leaders that before the time of Nazism to anti-Semitism actively promoted and actively transpose. At the end of 1922, the Jena clinics decided to reserve the first four benches in their auditorium only for Aryans . In a 1924 lecture, Plate asserted: "The Jewish question is undoubtedly a race question and therefore belongs in a zoological lecture. It is my duty to point out on the basis of the facts that the Jews as a race or as a people have some good qualities, but a great many have more bad ones, and that therefore we urgently warn against a mixture of Jews and Aryans. Every teacher should be an educator at the same time, and as a race and hereditary researcher it is (...) my duty to educate my listeners in racial pride and awareness . " This was followed by disciplinary proceedings against Plate, which ended in an acquittal. Plate relied on the professors' claim to independence. A general ban on Jews at the University of Jena, as requested by Plate, could not yet be enforced at that time.

In 1930, under the guise of science , Plate published a diatribe against Mathilde Vaerting , one of two women who were given a chair for the first time in Germany, under the guise of science . Vaerting was appointed "full professor" for education in Jena in 1923. Plate's tireless attempts to fight her and to cast doubt on her competence ultimately resulted in her dismissal from university after the Nazis seized power in 1933.

family

In 1902, Plate married Hedwig von Zglinicki (1861–1933), a daughter of Major General Karl Friedrich Pruss von Zglinicki (1818–1886) and, after her death in 1933, Klara König (* 1880). The marriages remained childless, with the exception of one stepson.

Works

  • On the importance of Darwin's selection principle and problems of speciation , Plate, Ludwig 2nd ed. Leipzig, 1903
  • (Ed.): Ultramontane Weltanschauung and modern life studies, orthodoxy and monism: the views of the Jesuit father Erich Wasmann and the speeches held against him in Berlin , Verlag Gustav Fischer, Jena 1907
  • Principle of selection and problems of speciation, a handbook of Darwinism. 3rd, very enlarged edition, Plate, Ludwig, Verlag Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1908
  • The current status of the theory of descent , Plate, Ludwig, Leipzig, 1909
  • Heredity (handbooks of the theory of parentage), Plate, Ludwig, Verlag W. Engelmann, Leipzig, 1913
  • Guide to the theory of descent. Reprinted from the ' Concise Dictionary of Natural Sciences '. Vol. 2, Plate, Ludwig, Verlag Jena Gustav Fischer, 1913
  • Feminism under the guise of science , Plate, Ludwig, in: Sex character and people power. Basic problems of feminism. Darmstadt / Leipzig 1930
  • Guide through the Museum of Descent Theory (Phyletic Museum) of the University of Jena , Plate, Ludwig, publication of the Phyletic Museum 1933

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ GStA PK I. HA Rep. 89 No. 31929, fol. 136 BC
  2. ^ Andreas W. Daum: Science popularization in the 19th century. Civil culture, scientific education and the German public 1848–1914 . Oldenbourg, Munich 2002, p. 430, 434 f., 505 .
  3. ↑ Erwin Willmann (Ed.): Directory of the old Rudolstädter Corps students. (AH. List of the RSC.) , 1928 edition, no.3625
  4. ↑ Uwe Hoßfeld / Jürgen John / Oliver Lemuth / Rüdiger Stutz: " Combative Science": On the profile change of the Jena University during National Socialism. In this. (Ed.), "In the service of the people and fatherland". The Jena University in the Nazi era. Böhlau, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-412-16704-5 , p. 36.
  5. ↑ Quotation in: Notker Hammerstein : Anti-Semitism and German Universities 1871–1933, Frankfurt / Main-New York 1995, p. 93.
  6. ↑ Tom Bräuer / Christian Faludi (edit.): The University of Jena in the Weimar Republic 1918-1933. A source edition. Steiner, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 9783515106085 , pp. 163–191.
personal data
SURNAME Plate, Ludwig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Plate, Ludwig Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German zoologist and social Darwinist
DATE OF BIRTH August 16, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH November 16, 1937
Place of death Jena