Max Wellmann

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Max Wellmann (born March 15, 1863 in Stettin , † October 9, 1933 in Potsdam ) was a German classical philologist and medical historian . In his time he was considered to be one of the best experts on ancient medicine and natural sciences. His intensive research work was made difficult by the heavy burden of his teaching post at the school and by his tight financial situation. His writings are cited many times in medical history research to this day; as a university professor, however, he had no decisive effect.

Life

Max Wellmann was born on March 15, 1863, the third of eleven children of the businessman Theodor Wellmann (1834–1889) and his wife Wilhelmine (1836–1909, née Meyer). He attended the Szczecin City High School, where he passed the school leaving exam on March 22, 1881. He then studied Classical Philology at the University of Greifswald . He heard lectures and attended seminars with Georg Kaibel , Adolph Kießling and Franz Susemihl . Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff had a particular influence on Wellmann ; he also encouraged him to write his dissertation on Callimachos before moving to Göttingen in 1883. Wellmann was in 1886 because of his dissertation De Istro Callimachio with the distinction magna cum laude doctorate. A few days later he passed the teaching examinations for Latin, Greek and French.

High school teacher in Szczecin

After graduating, Wellmann returned to Stettin. By Easter 1887 he completed his probationary year at the Marienstiftsgymnasium , where he then worked for two years as an extra-budgetary assistant teacher (member of the Royal Seminary for learned schools). On April 1, 1889 he was hired as a regular assistant teacher, which meant a tripling of his salary. From the 1890s onwards, Wellmann was able to return to scientific work. He published essays in Greifswalder Commentationes philologicae , in the year books for classical philology and in the journal Hermes . In the winter of 1889/1890 Wellmann also trained as a gymnastics teacher in Berlin. The prescribed period of four years as an assistant teacher ended at Easter 1893, and Wellmann was permanently employed at the Marienstiftsgymnasium and appointed senior teacher.

During his work in the school service, Wellmann could only afford his research work at great financial sacrifice. For example, he had to pay for his own representation if he took special leave for research purposes. Only from October 1, 1894 to April 1, 1896, he received a research grant from the Göttingen Royal Society of Sciences , presumably at the instigation of his mentor Wilamowitz. Wellmann's health was damaged by his financial situation and the double burden. The school principal Gustav Weicker valued his research very much, but considered regular school operations to be more important. His colleague Albrecht Tiebe wrote a letter to the Ministerial Director Friedrich Althoff proposing that Wellmann be transferred to the university. At the time, Wellmann was still ceding most of his salary to repay a loan he had taken out to finance his university studies. His chronic overwork led to his hourly workload being reduced by seven hours in February 1901. His untenable situation was also known to the scholars who worked with him. In a letter (unknown addressee), Professor Georg Wissowa from Halle spoke out in favor of responding to Wellmann's poor health and difficult financial situation and making his research easier.

Change to Potsdam

On October 1, 1902, after consultation with Friedrich Althoff, Wellmann moved to the Viktoria-Gymnasium in Potsdam. At the same time he asked for a one-year research leave, which he was initially offered for April 1, 1903. But only after numerous letters and petitions, after the intervention of the Göttingen university professor Friedrich Leo , Wellmann was granted a six-month vacation from October 1, 1903. He used it to examine various manuscripts. In addition, the Berlin professor Hermann Diels and the Copenhagen professor Johan Ludvig Heiberg won him over to work for the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum / Latinorum , which was being prepared at the time by the Prussian and Danish Academy of Sciences . From 1901 to 1906 Wellmann helped with great commitment in the creation of the manuscript catalog for the edition project. He began studying medicine in Berlin in the winter semester of 1904/05, for which he unsuccessfully asked the Ministry of Education for financial support. After his appointment as a high school professor (January 1906), Wellmann received a travel grant for Italy from the Leipzig Puschmann Foundation, for which he had to apply for special leave again. During his stay in the Vatican Library (1906/07) he discovered the previously unknown De venenatis animalibus des Philumenos in a manuscript , which he published as the first volume of the Corpus Medicorum in a critical edition the next year . In 1910 he was awarded the silver Leibniz Medal of the Prussian Academy of Sciences for his work .

Retirement and seeking a professorship

After long years of turmoil between school and research, Wellmann took his planned transfer to the Kaiserin-Augusta-Gymnasium in 1914 as an opportunity to apply for his retirement. At the same time, Hermann Diels tried to set up an honorary professorship for Wellmann for the history of ancient medicine and natural sciences at Berlin University . The proposal was supported by Professors Wilamowitz, Eduard Norden and Franz Eilhard Schulze . However, given the tight budget of the university during the First World War , this proposal was not implemented until October 23, 1919. On November 29, 1919, Max Wellmann was commissioned to represent the history of ancient medicine and the natural sciences in lectures and exercises. Apart from the lecture fees, he received no remuneration, but the Philosophical Faculty promised him “remuneration, depending on the available funds” .

Wellmann was supposed to start teaching in the summer semester of 1920. He withdrew the announced lecture and exercise because the expected increase in his pension had not materialized. Wellmann did not offer any courses in the next semester after the war either and instead gave private lessons in order to increase his income. It was not until the summer semester of 1922 that Wellmann gave his first lecture on the history of medicine and natural sciences since the Hellenistic period . In the following semester he took a break again. It was not until 1924, when the university gave him a fee-based teaching assignment , that he regularly gave lectures, but these only attracted a few students. Even in his farewell lecture he only read to three listeners: Walter Artelt , Paul Diepgen and Edith Heischkel . Wellmann continued to receive recognition for his research. The Comité international d'histoire des sciences in Paris appointed him a corresponding member in 1929, and the Medical Faculty of Berlin University awarded him an honorary doctorate on the occasion of his 70th birthday on March 15, 1933. On his birthday, the third volume of the sources and studies on the history of natural sciences and medicine was dedicated to him.

On October 9, 1933, Wellmann died of a stroke in the Potsdam municipal hospital. His legacy at that time was small, as he had sold most of his library in 1931. The remaining personal belongings and a balance of about 1,100 marks were divided between his three heirs; his estate, consisting of letters and notes, is kept in the archive of the Humboldt University in Berlin. In accordance with his last will, Wellmann was cremated and buried in the New Cemetery in Potsdam.

Services

Max Wellmann was considered a leading expert on ancient medicine and natural sciences of his time and was generally recognized as such. Despite his difficult personal situation, he published dozens of essays and several monographs. From 1893 to 1910, Wellmann wrote a total of 297 articles for the revision of the Realcyclopedia of Classical Classical Studies .

His extensive dissertation was already well received. In a review, Julius Kaerst praised Wellmann's source work. After a few essays on ancient medicine and individual questions about tradition, Wellmann brought out his second monograph in Berlin in 1895 ( The development of the pneumatic school except for Archigenes ), which appeared as the 14th volume of the Philological Studies edited by Wilamowitz . Wellmann provided biographical details of the most important representatives of the so-called pneumatic school and explained their physiology, pathology and dietetics in detail. He also indicated the connections between the various medical schools, including many fragments for the first time.

His next monographs were Krateuas (Berlin 1897), in which Wellmann recognized most of the fragments by the doctor Krateuas as not belonging, and The oldest herb book of the Greeks (Leipzig 1898), a celebratory gift for his Greifswald teacher Franz Susemihl on his retirement. Wellmann developed into a specialist in the transmission history of ancient medical texts. In addition to the essays on Dioscurides , his collection of sources, entitled The Fragments of the Sicilian Doctors Akron, Philistion and Diocles von Karystos (Berlin 1901), has been the subject of much discussion. His Dioscurides edition appeared from 1906 to 1914. His next independent publication was A. Cornelius Celsus, a source investigation (Berlin 1913), which in turn appeared in the Philological Investigations (Volume 23).

Wellmann worked tirelessly on his source research and presentations until his death. His last essays appeared in 1934. To this day, his work is widely cited in medical-historical treatises.

literature

  • Max Wellmann on his seventieth birthday March 15, 1933. (= Sources and studies on the history of natural sciences and medicine 3, 4). Springer, Berlin 1931.
  • Herbert Jennings Rose : Review of Max Wellmann: Marcellus von Side as a doctor and the Koiranids of Hermes Trismegistos . In: The Classical Review , Volume 49 (1935), pp. 40-41.
  • Christoph Ingo Kleiber: Bio-Bibliography Max Wellmann: 15.03.1863-09.10.1933. Dissertation, University of Mainz 1996.

Web links

Wikisource: Max Wellmann  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kleiber (1996) p. 1.
  2. a b William M. Calder III , A supplementary bibliography to the history of classical scholarship , Bari 2000, p. 170.
  3. Kleiber (1996) 6.
  4. Kleiber (1996) 7.
  5. Quoted from Kleiber (1996) 12.
  6. Wolfhart Unte , Wilamowitz after 50 years , Darmstadt 1985, p. 743, note 119.
  7. Max Wellmann: Krateuas. Berlin 1897 (= treatise of the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen, New Series. Volume 2, No. 1).
  8. Max Wellmann (ed.): Pedanii Dioscuridis Anazarbei De materia medica libri quinque. I-III, Weidmann, Berlin 1906-1914; Reprint there in 1958.