Otto Volger

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Otto Volger, 1864

Georg Heinrich Otto Volger called Senckenberg (born January 30, 1822 in Lüneburg , Kingdom of Hanover , † October 18, 1897 in Sulzbach (Taunus) ) was a German scientist, geologist, mineralogist and politician. He was the founder of the Free German Hochstift and maintainer of the Goethe House .

Life

Otto Volger around 1848

Youth and Studies

Volger was born the son of the teacher and school director Wilhelm Friedrich Volger in Lüneburg in the Kingdom of Hanover. He initially studied law at the University of Göttingen , but after a semester switched to geology and mineralogy, where he also completed his habilitation. In Göttingen he became a member of the Corps Hannovera .

Stay in Switzerland

In 1849 he became a teacher of natural history in the Muri monastery in Aargau . During this time he published extensive illustrated works on natural history. His first work, the "Text and Reading Book for the Public. and private lessons ” comprised 1,226 pages and more than 2000 imprinted woodcuts. In 1851 he was appointed professor at the ETH Zurich . There he mainly worked on the history of the earthquake in Switzerland. He attempted to introduce a peculiar German-language designation for crystal forms, which was supposed to replace the previously common ancient language (based on Greek and Latin terms).

So he called z. B. the octahedron = Eckling; Rhombic dodecahedron = knuckle; Icositetrahedron = buckling; Pyramid octahedron = hump; Hemioctahedron = timing; Hexakisoctahedron = ball; Hexakistrahedron = ball timing; Tetrakis hexahedron = Kippling etc. This is the name of a common form of calcite: "but purposefully awl-counting, constant calcite awl"; a short-column apatite: "platelet-helical-spiral-double-spiral-double-spiral-spindle, helical apatite-ständling"

However, the proposed name did not find approval in crystallographic circles.

Appointment to Frankfurt and foundation of the FDH

Otto Volger's memorial plaque at the Goethe House in Frankfurt am Main: "Founder of the Free German Hochstift and maintainer of the Goethe House."
The Goethe House in Frankfurt am Main, which was acquired in 1863 at the instigation of Volger.

In 1856 he returned to Germany and got a position at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt am Main , where he was appointed lecturer in geology and mineralogy at the Senckenberg Natural Research Society in 1859 . On October 23, 1859, he founded the Free German Hochstift (FDH) as a free academy for the care of science and art. In the statutes of 1863 the FDH was referred to as the "General German Scholars and Artists Society " . It was open to everyone and was organized democratically. Membership could be acquired by any “friend of German science, art and general education” and, in contrast to the existing academic institutions of the time, was not tied to status or level of education.

At the top stood the honorary chairman elected by the members. Volger held this office until 1881 and determined the activities of the bishopric during this time. Once a month there was a two-hour meeting, which he chaired as chairman. The FDH mainly offered courses, but also individual lectures. The program was roughly similar to that of today's adult education centers. Courses in literature, architecture and the history of the earth, works by Kirchhoff and Bunsen, Beethoven's piano sonatas, health care and natural medicine, European butterflies, Australia were offered. Language courses in French and English were also given.

He was a member of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors . In 1863 Volger was also accepted as a member of the Imperial Leopoldine-Carolinian Academy of Natural Scientists and followed its tradition of taking the name of a previous member as an epithet. As an employee of the Senckenberg Natural Research Society, he called himself "Senckenberg". However, a collaboration between the academy and the FDH that he sought failed.

Acquisition of Goethe's birthplace

In his function as chairman Volger arranged in 1863 that the Free German Hochstift acquired Goethe's parents' house on Frankfurt's Großer Hirschgraben . He is therefore considered the "savior of the Goethe House ". On December 31, 1862, Volger concluded an interim purchase agreement for 56,000 guilders with the upholsterer Clauer . He had previously acquired the house for 40,000 guilders and had already applied to the city building authority to have the bars in the lower windows on the ground floor removed so that a shop could be set up there. 10,000 guilders were to be paid immediately when the house was handed over on March 1, 1863. As security for the payment of the remaining purchase price, Volger had a mortgage of 5000 guilders registered on his house in the Sachsenlager . In his idealism, Volger took a great financial risk to save the house from building and renovation and to keep it in its original state as a place of remembrance.

further activities

In the meantime, he joined the Société française de Wothlytypie around 1865 and received a license from them to produce pictures using the new Wothlytypie process.

Volger was also active as a political leader. During the revolution of 1848/1849 he was the leader of a republican and socialist group.

Among the geologists, Volger belonged to the Neptunists . In his book " On the phenomenon of earthquakes in Switzerland " he turned against the earthquake hypothesis of the plutonists .

Volger last lived in Sulzbach im Taunus. His grave still exists today in the Frankfurt main cemetery . His gravestone bears the inscription: “To the founder of the Free German Hochstift. The savior u. Preserver of Goethe's birthplace ”.

Fonts

Otto Volger in later years

Humanities writings

  • 1859: The Free German College for Sciences, Arts and General Education in Frankfurt am Main: Preliminary draft of a free suggestion and teaching association to represent the entire German education as a unified intellectual power and to stimulate the self-esteem in the German people. - Frankfurt / M .: publishing house of the Free German Hochstift [Sauerländer]
  • 1863: Goethe's father's house. A contribution to the history of the poet's development. 2nd presumed edition - Frankfurt / M .: Verlag des Freie Deutschen Hochstifts
  • 1864: The Margrave Karl Friedrich von Baden, the Duke Karl August von Sachsen-Weimar and Herder's draft for a union of the intellectual power of Germany and the attempt of its realization by the Free German High Foundation for Science, Arts and General Education in Goethe's father house in Frankfurt am Main. - Frankfurt / M .: publishing house of the Free German Hochstift
  • 1889: Life and achievements of the natural scientist Karl Schimper  : Lecture given at the first general meeting of the 62nd Assembly of German Natural Scientists and Doctors in Heidelberg on the 18th of the autumn month 1889. - Frankfurt / M .: Reitz & Koehler

Scientific writings

  • 1845: Dissertatio inauguralis de agri luneburgici constitutione geognostica. - Goettingae: Officina Dieterichiana.
  • 1846: Contribution to the geognostic knowledge of the north German lowlands. - Braunschweig: Vieweg
  • 1852: Methodical school of natural history as an introduction to the coherent understanding of anthropology, zoology, botany, mineralogy, anatomy, physiology, history of development, paleontology and geology. - Stuttgart: Rieger
  • 1853: Guide for the first stage of a lesson in zoology aimed at the formation of the mind. - Stuttgart: Rieger
  • 1854: The crystallography or theory of forms of the material natural bodies. Easily edited for public teaching and private study, at the same time as a guide for the use of the most famous mineralogical textbooks and as a key to the most common crystallographic methods. - Stuttgart: Rieger
  • 1854: Guide to the first stage of a mind-building lesson in mineralogy. - Stuttgart: Rieger
  • 1854: Studies on the history of the development of minerals as the basis of a scientific geology and rational mineral chemistry. - Zurich: Schulthess
  • 1855: Aragonite and Calcite: A solution to the oldest contradiction in crystallography. Along with studies on the asterism of crystals. - Zurich: Schulthess
  • 1855: The history of the development of the minerals of the talc mica family and their relatives as well as the petrographic and geognostic conditions caused by them. - Zurich: Schulthess
  • 1855: Epidote and garnet: observations on the mutual relationship of these crystals and on types of rock consisting of calcite, pyroxene, amphibole, garnet, epidote, quartz, titanite, feldspar and types of mica. / New memoranda of the general Swiss society for the whole natural sciences Vol. 14. - Zurich: Schulthess
  • 1855: Attempt to create a monograph on Borazites: a comprehensible, applied presentation of the current state of crystallology and its most recent direction; a contribution to the history of this science and to the knowledge of rock salt deposits and their formation. / Memoranda of the Natural Science Association for the Principality of Lüneburg Volume I. - Hanover: Rümpler
  • 1856: Investigations into last year's earthquake in Central Europe. Communications from Justus Perthes' Geographical Institute ... / from Dr. A. Petermann [year 2.] Booklet 3. - Gotha: Perthes
  • 1857–1858: Studies on the phenomenon of earthquakes in Switzerland: its history, its mode of expression, its connection with other phenomena and with the petrographic and geotectonic conditions of the soil, and its significance for the physiology of the earth's organism. - Part 1 - 3. - Gotha: Perthes
  • 1857: earth and eternity. The natural history of the earth ... in contrast to the natural geology of revolutions and catastrophes. - Frankfurt / M .: Meidinger
  • 1859: The Book of the Earth: Natural History of the Globe and its Inhabitants; a representation of physical geography. Volume 1 & 2. - Leipzig: Spamer
  • 1860: The coal production of Saxony: mining expert opinion on the courtesy of the authorization fields and the mining company of the Lichtensteiner Bergbaugesellschaft .... - Frankfurt / M .: Sauerlander
  • 1861: About straight horns and thunderbolts: a contribution to the knowledge of the Orthocerates and Belemnites, especially the Belemnitelles. - Offenbach / M .: Kohler & Teller
  • 1869: The Schwemmsiel question in view of Liernur's removal procedure with suction tubes: open testimony to the truth. 2., verb. Edition - Frankfurt / M .: Publishing house of the Free German High Foundation
  • 1873: Concerning the revaccination: for the reports of the minority.
  • 1877: The scientific solution to the water question with regard to the supply of the cities: Lecture of a new source theory held at the general meeting of the Association of German Engineers on August 27, 1877 in Frankfurt a. M. - Frankfurt / M .: Publishing house of the Free German Hochstift
  • 1892: The rays of light: Generally understandable justification of an important section of "physiological optics" that has so far only been treated in passing. - Emden: Horn

literature

  • Andreas W. Daum : Science popularization in the 19th century. Civil culture, scientific education and the German public, 1848–1914 . 2nd, supplementary edition, Oldenbourg, Munich 2002, ISBN 978-3-486-56551-5 .
  • Andreas W. Daum: Georg Heinrich Otto Volger , in: New German Biography . For the historical commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences ed. by Hans-Christof Kraus. Volume 27: Vockerodt - Wettiner. Duncker & Humblot, 2020, pp. 86-87.
  • Heinz Theile: Memory of Otto Volger on the centenary of his death on October 18, 1997. Geschichtsverein Reichsdorf Sulzbach, Sulzbach / Ts., ( Sulzbacher Geschichtsblätter October 1997, ZDB -ID 981525-9 ), (Contains the self-presentation as an attachment to the dissertation 1845) .
  • Andreas Hansert: Citizen culture and cultural policy in Frankfurt am Main - a historical-sociological reconstruction. In: Studies on Frankfurt History , Edition 33, W. Kramer, 1992, p. 94 ff.
  • Fritz Adler: Free German Hochstift. His story. First part: 1859–1885. Frankfurt am Main, 1959.

Web links

Commons : Otto Volger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Directory of the high protectors and all members of the Free German Hochstift , p. 8 in: Reports of the Free German Hochstift in Frankfurt am Main. Volume 5, Kumpf & Reis, 1864.
  2. ↑ Self-written curriculum vitae in the appendix to his dissertation Dissertatio inauguralis de agri luneburgici constitutione geognostica from 1845.
  3. ↑ Members of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors 1857
  4. ↑ Member entry of Otto Volger at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on June 18, 2016.
  5. ↑ a b Heinz Theile: Memory of Otto Volger on the hundredth anniversary of his death on October 18, 1997. P. 6.
  6. ↑ Site plan of Otto Volger's grave (Gewann J 815) in the Frankfurt main cemetery.
  7. ↑ http://www.frankfurter-hauptfriedhof.de/image/volger01.txt
personal data
SURNAME Volger, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Volger, Georg Heinrich Otto (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German scientist, geologist, mineralogist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 30, 1822
PLACE OF BIRTH Luneburg
DATE OF DEATH October 18, 1897
Place of death Sulzbach (Taunus)