Samuel Thomas from Soemmerring

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Samuel Thomas Soemmerring, portrait by Wendelin Moosbrugger (1813)

Samuel Thomas Soemmerring , Knight of Soemmerring since 1808 , also Sömmerring (born January 28, 1755 in Thorn , † March 2, 1830 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German anatomist , anthropologist , paleontologist and inventor . Soemmerring discovered the “ yellow spot ” in the retina of the human eye . His research on the brain and the nervous system, on the sense organs, on the embryo and its malformations, on the structure of the lungs, on theEntrails etc. made him one of the most important German anatomists. In later years he shifted his fields of work to physics, chemistry and paleontology. In 1809 he developed an electrochemical telegraph .

Life

Göttingen memorial plaque for Soemmerring
Soemmering's Telegraf, 1809

Samuel Thomas Soemmerring was the ninth child of the doctor Johann Thomas Soemmerring and the pastor's daughter Regine Geret. The father had settled in Thorn as a doctor. In 1774 Soemmerring finished school in Thorn and began studying medicine at the University of Göttingen at the age of 19 . In 1778 he became a doctor of medicine. In his dissertation entitled De basi encephali et originibus nervorum cranio egredientium , he describes the division of the twelve cranial nerves . His study is still valid today. In 1779 he became professor of anatomy at the Kassel Collegium Carolinum , where he prepared, among other things, an elephant whose skull Goethe borrowed in 1784 to pursue his studies on the intermaxillary bones. During one of his study trips (1778/79) he met John Hunter among others in Great Britain and researched the lymphatic system there. Soemmering was a member of the Royal British Society of Sciences in Kassel and an employee of the Göttingen scholarly display . In 1779 he became a member of the crowned lion lodge in Kassel and in 1780, with the name “Marmessos”, director of the Kassel Rosicrucian Circle . Here he was such a trusted friend of Georg Forster that both were assumed to have “a kind of homosexual marriage”. In fact, there is evidence that they had at least an enthusiastic love affair. Forster wanted to give his future wife only "second place" on his "list" after Soemmering. In 1780 Soemmering was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

From October 1784 he taught anatomy and physiology at the University of Mainz . In his book On the Physical Difference between Moors and Europeans , published in November 1784, Soemmerring described his observations while dissecting the corpses of Europeans and Africans and compared them with the anatomy of different species of apes such as orangutan and mandrill . The dissected Africans were ex-slaves brought to Europe who had died of climatic diseases or who had committed suicide. Nevertheless, “ the conclusion seemed to him not unfair, nor unfounded, that in general, on average, the African Moors are somewhat closer to the ape sex than the Europeans. “He did not derive a general inferiority of black people compared to Europeans from this: But they nevertheless remain human beings, and are very elevated above that class of true quadruped animals, and very strikingly differentiated from them and separated from them. Even among the blacks there are some who come closer to their white brothers and who even outperform some of them intellectually. The Göttingen physician, anthropologist and race theorist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach , on the other hand, rejected the distinction between inferior and superior races in principle and sharply criticized Soemmerring for it.

In 1787, Elector Friedrich Karl Joseph von Erthal appointed him court counselor and personal physician. In the same year he became a Freemason in London . From 1789 to 1792 he was dean of the medical faculty. During this time he wrote his main work, The Structure of the Human Body .

On March 6, 1792, after long doubts in Mainz, he married the painter and copper engraver Margarethe Elisabeth Grunelius (1768–1802) from Frankfurt . The marriage resulted in a son ( Detmar Wilhelm Soemmerring , 1793–1871) and a daughter (Susanne Katharina, 1796–1867). Previously, his friend Georg Christoph Lichtenberg had urged him several times in letters to marry, after he had warned him exactly against it in 1785 (“Check first ...”): “Do, (...) Otherwise you will get married never, and I should be sorry for the world and you. I name the world first because I believe you could handle yourself in any state, but there are degrees of coping. "

With the occupation of Mainz by the French Revolutionary Army in October 1792, the establishment of the short-lived Mainz Republic in 1793, the siege of Mainz and the reconquest by the Prussians, teaching at Mainz University gradually came to a standstill. Soemmering moved to Frankfurt am Main in 1795 and practiced as a doctor in the house of his in-laws at Saalgasse 122. In 1797, Sömmerring finally left the University of Mainz. From 1796 to 1802 he lived in a house in Kleiner Hirschgraben , and later bought a house on Roßmarkt . His patients included respected Frankfurt families such as Bansa , Bethmann , Brentano and Gontard . He made friends with the tutor of the Gontards, Friedrich Hölderlin . As one of his many important companies, Soemmerring and Georg Philipp Lehr introduced the smallpox vaccination against the resistance of influential opponents, including Johann Christian Ehrmann . In 1796 his work appeared on the organ of the soul , which was published with a remark by Immanuel Kant .

He received offers from the Universities of Halle, Jena, Heidelberg, St. Petersburg and St. George's Hospital in London, but in 1805 accepted an offer at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich . King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria awarded him the Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown on May 11, 1808 in Munich - as Samuel Thomas Ritter von Soemmerring, he was thus elevated to the personal knighthood . In the same year he was electoral Palatinate Bavarian court councilor and in 1808 raised to the nobility. In 1810 he became a privy councilor .

In Munich, Soemmerring devoted himself increasingly to palaeontology, astronomy , physics , chemistry and philosophy . Among other things, he wrote about primeval crocodiles and pterosaurs , including a pterodactylus antiquus found in Solnhofen in 1812 .

Soemmerring also developed a telescope for observing the sky and in 1809 presented an electric telegraph to the members of the Royal Academy of Sciences , in which individual letters and numbers were to be transmitted over 35 lines by galvanic decomposition of water. The construction, however, was never put to practical use. He later brought the original with him to Frankfurt, where it was owned by the Physikalischer Verein until 1905 . Today it is exhibited in the Deutsches Museum in Munich, a model is in the Museum for Communication in Frankfurt . Moreover Soemmering worked on the refinement of the wine, on drawings, which the etching of Meteo traveling form on the same, over the sunspots and many others. He drew many illustrations in his works himself.

Due to the weather and his poor health, Soemmerring left Munich in 1820 and moved back to Frankfurt am Main. In 1817 he became a founding member of the Senckenberg Natural Research Society , and in 1824 of the Physical Society. He died there in 1830 and was buried in the Frankfurt main cemetery.

Honors

On December 9, 1811 he was accepted as a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences . In 1816 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . Soemmerring was a recipient of the Guelph Order and numerous other orders and awards. In 1820 he was accepted into the order of the crazy court councilors founded by Ehrmann and Friedrich Christian Matthiä in Frankfurt . A gold commemorative coin was minted for his golden jubilee in 1828. In 1829 the Soemmerring Foundation of the Senckenberg Natural Research Society was established.

The lunar crater Sömmering , a plant genus ( Soemmerringia from the legume family ), the Sömmerring gazelle ( Nanger soemmerringii ), an extinct sea ​​crocodile ( Geosaurus Soemmerringii ) and the asteroid (189398) Soemmerring are named after Soemmerring . A street in the north end of Frankfurt , a street and a square in the Neustadt district of Mainz and the Samuel Thomas von Soemmerring Prize of the Physikalischer Verein for astronomical work bear his name . Eduard Schmidt von der Launitz and Christoph Albrecht Lenz created a bronze Soemmerring memorial that stood in front of the Frankfurt Zoo from 1897 to 1941/42 and was then melted down .

Works (selection)

Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring, portrait by Carl Wilhelm Bender
  • On the physical difference of the Moor from the European , Mainz 1784 ( digitized version) (Newly edited and commented by Sigrid Oehler-Klein, Fischer-Verlag Stuttgart, 1998)
  • Vom cerebral and spinal cord , Mainz 1788 (2nd ed. 1792) ( digitized (2nd ed.) )
  • On the harmfulness of the laced breasts , Mainz 1788 ( digitized version )
  • From the construction of the human body , 6 vols., Frankfurt am Main 1791–1796 (digitized vol. 1 , vol. 2 , vol. 3 , vol. 4 , vol. 5.1 , vol. 5.2 ) (2nd ed 1800; further editions in 8 volumes by Bischoff, Henle et al., Leipzig 1839–1845; newly edited and commented by Reinhard Hildebrand, until 2012)
  • De corporis humani fabrica , 6 vols., Frankfurt am Main 1794–1801 (digitized vol. 1 , vol. 2 , vol. 3 , vol. 4 , vol. 5 , vol. 6 )
  • De morbis vasorum absorbentium corporis humani , Frankfurt am Main 1795 ( digitized version )
  • Illustrations and descriptions of some miscarriages that were formerly at the Anatomical Theater in Cassel , Mainz 1791 ( digitized version) (Newly edited and commented by Ulrike Enke, Schwabe-Verlag Basel, 2000.)
  • About the organ of the soul , Königsberg 1796 (with a contribution by Immanuel Kant). ( Digitized version) (Newly edited and commented by Manfred Wenzel, Schwabe-Verlag Basel, 2000.)
  • Tabula sceleti feminini juncta descriptione , Frankfurt am Main 1797
  • Icones embryonum humanorum , Frankfurt am Main 1799 (Newly edited and commented by Ulrike Enke, Schwabe-Verlag Basel, 2000.)
  • Illustrations of the human eye , Frankfurt am Main 1801 (reissued and commented on by Jost Benedum)
  • Images of the human hearing organ , Frankfurt am Main 1806 ( digitized version )
  • Images of the human organ of taste and voice , Frankfurt am Main 1806 ( digitized version )
  • Illustrations of the human organs of smell , 1809 ( digitized version )
  • Via an electric telegraph. In: Memoranda of the Royal Academy of Sciences. Class of mathematics and physics. 1809/1810 (1811), pp. 401-414. ( Digitized and full text in the German text archive )

Soemmerring's correspondence with Georg Forster was published by Hermann Hettner (Braunschweig 1877). Soemmerring's correspondence with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was edited by Manfred Wenzel (Stuttgart 1988).

  • Samuel Thomas Soemmerring: Works. Founded by Gunter Mann, ed. by Jost Benedum and Werner Friedrich Kümmel. [Edition of the works of Samuel Thomas Soemmerring in 20 volumes]. Edited by the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz. Stuttgart, Jena et al .: Fischer (until 1999); Basel: Schwabe (from 2000 to 2012).

literature

Web links

Commons : Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Goethe's letters to Soemmering and Frau von Stein in June 1784 . In: Goethe's letters. Volume I. 1764-1786 . Verlag CH Beck: München 4th ed. 1988, pp. 438-443
  2. ^ Franz Dumont: Soemmering, Samuel Thomas (von). 2005, p. 1341.
  3. ↑ "Soemmering" is a possible variant of the name, as used by Goethe.
  4. ↑ Klaus Harpprecht: Georg Forster or Die Liebe zur Welt, Hamburg 1987, p. 263
  5. ↑ Hermann Kettner (ed.): Johann Georg Adam Forster's correspondence with S. Th. Sömmerring , Braunschweig 1877, p. 212 f.
  6. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 229.
  7. ↑ a b On the physical difference between the Moor and the European , Mainz 1784, p. 32
  8. ↑ Kornelia Grundmann: The race skull collection of the Marburg Museum Anatomicun as an example for the craniology of the 19th century and its development up to the time of National Socialism. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 13, 1995, pp. 351-370; here: pp. 351–354.
  9. ^ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: Schriften und Briefe, Munich 1967, p. 624
  10. ^ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: Schriften und Briefe, Munich 1967, p. 793
  11. ↑ About the publication and Soemmerring's contact with Immanuel Kant, incidentally also about the negative reception of the script, with reactions and the like. a. by Wilhelm von Humboldt and Friedrich Schiller , Friedrich Hölderlin (who sent two short poems) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe the essay by Peter McLaughlin: Sömmerring und Kant. On the organ of the soul and the dispute between the faculties . The font was reissued in 1999 in the Samuel Thomas Soemmerring, Works (Basel: Schwabe) series as Volume 9 and provided with an extensive foreword and commentary by Manfred Wenzel
  12. ^ Samuel Thomas Soemmerring: Correspondence 1792–1805. Edited by Franz Dumont . Basel 2001. Letter No. 921, Note 1.
  13. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter S. Académie des sciences, accessed on March 3, 2020 (French).
  14. ^ List of members Leopoldina, Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring
  15. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Soemmerring, Samuel Thomas von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sömmerring, Samuel Thomas von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1755
PLACE OF BIRTH Thorn , Prussia
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1830
Place of death Frankfurt am Main