Primal plant
Urpflanze is a term that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe used from time to time in the context of his botanical studies and in particular his examination of Carl von Linné's botanical system . He imagined a plant underneath, "which embodies the type of a flowering plant and from which one can imagine all plant shapes to have emerged". Goethe hoped one of the Linnean superior plants based on the idea of the archetypal plant or the vegetable systematics to develop.
As far as can be seen from the sources, Goethe used the term for the first time in 1787 during his trip to Italy : "I ask Herdern to say that I will soon be able to deal with the original plant, only I'm afraid that no one will want to recognize the rest of the plant world in it." Goethe understood the original plant as a conceptual construct, a basic blueprint ; From a statement made about his visit to the public garden of Palermo on April 17, 1787, however, it becomes clear that, given the abundance of plants there, he also considered their real existence to be possible: “Wouldn't I be able to discover the original plant among this crowd? There must be such a thing! How else would I know that this or that structure is a plant if they weren't all formed according to a pattern. "
In a draft of a letter to Nees von Esenbeck in August 1816, Goethe looks back with amusement at the fact that he hoped to find the original plant as a real plant: “In the diaries of my Italian trip, which is now being printed, you will, not without a smile, notice the strange ways in which I pursued the vegetative transformation; At that time I was looking for the primordial plant, unconscious that I was looking for the idea, the concept according to which we could train it. "
Goethe finally came up with the idea, the concept of the primordial plant: “I followed all the forms as they appeared to me, in their changes, and so at the final destination of my trip, in Sicily, the original identity of all parts of the plant was perfectly clear to me, and I did now seeks to follow them everywhere and to become aware again. ”He also writes there how the inclination, the passion that arose through the discovery accompanied his whole life. One result of this passion is his main botanical work, attempt to explain the metamorphosis of plants (1790).
literature
- Bernd Witte u. a. (Ed.): Goethe manual. Volume 4/2: People, things, terms L – Z , edited by Hans-Dietrich Dahnke and Regine Otto, Verlag J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1998, ISBN 3-476-01447-9 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Quoted from: Goethe-Handbuch, Volume 4/2, p. 1077.
- ↑ Quoted from: Goethe-Handbuch, Volume 4/2, p. 1078.
- ^ Digital library special volume: Goethe: Leben und Werk , Letters p. 27815, cf. Goethe-WA-IV, Vol. 27, p. 144.
- ↑ Dorothea Kuhn : Goethe The writings on natural science. Articles, fragments, studies of morphology. Volume 10, Weimar 1964, p. 334.