Richard Woltereck

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Richard Woltereck (born April 6, 1877 in Hanover , † February 23, 1944 in Seeon (Seeon-Seebruck) ) was a German zoologist and hydrologist . He was one of the first to point out the biological balance and the ecology or the ecosystem .

Life

He studied natural sciences and medicine in Leipzig and Freiburg / Br. From 1895 to 1898. and took part in a deep-sea expedition near Cameroon in 1898 . He received his doctorate in 1898 as Dr. phil. in zoology at the University of Freiburg on the formation and development of the ostracodal egg . In 1901 he completed his habilitation in comparative anatomy and zoology at the University of Leipzig on the finer structure of the Polygordius larva in the North Sea and the emergence of the annelid in the same . From 1901 to 1905 he was a private lecturer in zoology and comparative anatomy at the University of Leipzig, from 1905 to 1909 ao. Professor of Zoology and from 1909 to 1944 full Professor of Zoology at the University of Leipzig. He founded the International Review of the Entire Hydrobiology and Hydrography . Since 1933 he was a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. In 1933 he signed the confession of professors at German universities and colleges about Adolf Hitler .

After 1915 Woltereck worked from Switzerland with Hermann Hesse in the welfare of prisoners of war , especially the supply of reading. Woltereck prevented Hesse's convocation in 1917. He and Franz Carl Endres gave a pacifist and life-reforming magazine Vivos voco in 1919 . Journal for New Germanism and worked in the International Reconciliation Alliance around Arthur Pfeifer . In the service of the magazine, which received the title Werkland after Hesse's departure , he founded the German welfare office in Leipzig and a youth center in Holzhausen (Leipzig) , which offered war-damaged children accommodation, work and education. In 1926 in Seeon am Chiemsee he headed a biological laboratory and set up a factory farm. In 1919 he co-founded numerous adult education centers in Saxony and Thuringia.

plant

Woltereck observed the behavior of small crustaceans under different living conditions for many years and found that they had specific hereditary norms of shape and behavior. This behavior did not seem to be compatible with a purely causal-materialistic explanation.

Just as the life philosopher Hans Driesch assumed non-material entelechies for the design of living beings , Woltereck was also of the opinion that guiding factors that could not be found in space were indispensable in living events. He attributed an “inside” to the living beings, which he saw as “subjective centers”, which above all contained the determinants ( norms , imagoids, ideas) for their becoming and being. With reference to Hermann Lotze, he simply countered the difficulty of how immaterial factors can affect material processes by referring to the “validity” of these determinants, just as in the inorganic area the “constants” help determine the essence of things.

Woltereck developed these ideas in his main work "The Ontology of the Living" (1940) philosophically into a " Monism of the One, Whole, Progressive Events". A main aspect of his considerations is anamorphosis , the fact that in the course of its history the living is differentiated more and more richer and “higher”, whereby a direction towards refinement, sublimation is mapped out. The living consists of processes. These are all causal- mechanical and form the “apparatus”, which is essentially determined from the inside by the applicable determinants. All life events come from a multitude of inner vital factors and tendencies. It is these that direct and use the physiological energy and metabolism and turn physico-chemical processes into life - vitality is a process that cannot be adequately explained in space.

Hermann Keyserling reviewed the book in his magazine Das Erbe der Schule der Weisheit. The way to completion , 32./33. Issue, 1942.

Publications (selection)

  • Variation and speciation. Analytical and experimental investigations on pelagic daphnids and other cladoceras , Bern 1919.
  • About the specificity of the habitat, the food and the body shape of pelagic cladoceras and about "ecological shape systems" , In: Biologisches Zentralblatt. 48, 1928, pp. 521-551
  • Basics of general biology. The organisms as structure, gears and norms , Stuttgart 1932.
  • Philosophy of Living Reality , 2 vols., Stuttgart 1932–1940
    • Outlines of a General Biology , 1932
    • The ontology of the living , 1940

literature

Web links
personal data
SURNAME Woltereck, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German zoologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 6, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH February 23, 1944
Place of death Seeon (Seeon-Seebruck)