Queer Places:
Villa Medusa, Berggasse 7, 07745 Jena, Germany
Ernst
Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919[1])
was a German
zoologist,
naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist, and
artist who discovered, described and named thousands of new
species,
mapped a
genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined many terms in
biology,
including ecology,[2]
phylum,[3]
phylogeny,[4]
and
Protista.[5]
Haeckel promoted and popularised
Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the influential but no
longer widely held
recapitulation theory ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny") claiming that
an individual organism's biological development, or
ontogeny,
parallels and summarises its species' evolutionary development, or
phylogeny.
In his later years (from 1912 until his death in 1919), he became especially friendly with
Magnus Hirshfeld (1868-1935), a Jewish physician and free-thinker who specialized in research on various sexual practices (especially transvestitism and homosexuality) that would be strictly condemned and regarded as executable crimes by the Nazis. Hirshfeld dedicated his book Naturgesetze der Liebe (Natural laws of love, 1912) to Haeckel after securing the latter’s permission. The book urged that homosexuality was an innate condition and a natural form of love. Hirshfeld visited Haeckel in Jena several times between 1912 and 1917, and lectured on “Ernst Haeckel, ein deutscher Geistesheld” (Ernst Haeckel, a German spiritual hero, 1914). During the early 1930s, there were many efforts to support the fortunes of the Nazi party by associating it with the attitudes and ideas of stellar German intellectuals, among whom was Ernst Haeckel. So, for example, Alfred Rosenberg, chief party propagandist, declared
Alexander von Humboldt—cosmopolitan, friend of Jews, and homosexual—to be a supporter of the ideals of the
Nazi Party. In Haeckel’s case, the most visible effort to turn him to Hitler’s side was made by Heinz Brücher, in his Ernst Haeckels Bluts- und Geistes-Erbe (Ernst Haeckel’s racial and spiritual legacy, 1936). Notably, however, Brücher did not try to make Haeckel an anti-Semite, except, perhaps, by implication.
Ernst Haeckel was born on 16 February 1834, in
Potsdam
(then part of the
Kingdom of Prussia).[7]
In 1852 Haeckel completed studies at the Domgymnasium, the cathedral
high-school of
Merseburg.[8]
He then studied medicine in
Berlin and
Würzburg,
particularly with
Albert von Kölliker,
Franz Leydig,
Rudolf Virchow (with whom he later worked briefly as assistant), and with
the anatomist-physiologist
Johannes Peter Müller (1801–1858).[8]
Together with
Hermann Steudner he attended
botany
lectures in Würzburg. In 1857 Haeckel attained a doctorate in medicine, and
afterwards he received the license to practice medicine. The occupation of
physician appeared less worthwhile to Haeckel after contact with suffering
patients.[8]
Haeckel studied under
Karl Gegenbaur at the
University of Jena for three years, earning a
habilitation in
comparative anatomy in 1861, before becoming a professor of
zoology at
Jena, where he remained for 47 years, from 1862 to 1909. Between 1859 and 1866
Haeckel worked on many phyla, such as
radiolarians,
poriferans (sponges)
and annelids
(segmented worms).[9]
During a trip to the
Mediterranean, Haeckel named nearly 150 new species of radiolarians.[9]
From 1866 to 1867 Haeckel made an extended journey to the
Canary Islands with
Hermann Fol. During this period, he met with
Charles Darwin (in 1866 at
Down
House in Kent),
Thomas Huxley and
Charles Lyell.[8]
In 1867 he married Agnes Huschke. Their son Walter was born in 1868, their
daughters Elizabeth in 1871 and Emma in 1873.[8]
In 1869 he traveled as a researcher to
Norway, in
1871 to
Croatia (where he lived on the island of
Hvar in a
monastery),[10]
and in 1873 to
Egypt,
Turkey, and
Greece.[8]
In 1907 he had
a museum built in
Jena to teach
the public about
evolution.
Haeckel retired from teaching in 1909, and in 1910 he withdrew from the
Evangelical Church of Prussia.[8]
On the occasion of his 80th birthday-celebration he was presented with a
two-volume work entitled Was wir Ernst Haeckel verdanken (What We Owe to
Ernst Haeckel), edited at the request of the German Monistenbund by
Heinrich Schmidt of Jena.[11][12]
Haeckel's wife, Agnes, died in 1915, and he became substantially frailer,
breaking his leg and arm.[8]
He sold his "Villa Medusa" in
Jena in 1918 to
the
Carl Zeiss foundation, which preserved his library.[8]
Haeckel died on 9 August 1919 and was buried in the garden of the villa.
My published books:
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Haeckel
- http://home.uchicago.edu/rjr6/articles/Haeckel--antiSemitism.pdf