On the Origin of Romantic Biology and its Further Development at the University of Jena Between 1790 and 1850

Abstract

The last ten years of the 18th century are reputed to be the most brilliant period of the University of Jena. Scholars such as the philosophers Karl Leonhard Reinhold and Johann Gottlieb Fichte, physicians like Justus Christian Loder and Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, the historians and editors Friedrich von Schiller and Christian Gottfried Schuetz, attracted and inspired young students in different ways. Moreover, the spirit of the little residence of Weimar, where Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Wilhelm von Humboldt and M.H. Wieland lived and worked together, also influenced the academic life and teaching at the university. The scientific interests of the liberal Duke of Weimar, Carl August, furthered scientific institutions such as botanical gardens, natural history collections and libraries in Weimar and Jena. Art and poetry joined together with naturalistic studies to form a unity; observation of nature was cultivated both artistically and empirically. After 1789 the botanist August Johann Georg Karl Batsch (1761–1802) layed out a new botanical garden — encouraged by Goethe, who at that time discussed with him his idea of Metamorphosis — and in 1793 he founded the Natural History Society of Jena, where all the interested men of Jena, Weimar and surroundings assembled, and where Goethe and Schiller met in July 1794.KeywordsBotanical GardenComprehensive DoctrineGerman NaturalistNatural History SocietyNatural History CollectionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.