Kielmeyer, Carl Friedrich

(b. Bebenhausen, Württemberg, Germany, 22 October 1765; d. Stuttgart, Germany, 24 September 1844)

Comparative physiology, anatomy, chemistry.

Born in a small swabian town near Tübingen. Kielmeyer was the son of Georg Friedrich and Anna Maria Oberreuter Kielmeyer. His father was an important official in the ducal forest and hunting service. In 1774 he entered the Karlsschule near Stuttgart, recently organized to prepare the most promising youths of Wüttemberg fo state service. Here Kielmeyer and other students—among his contemporaries were Friedrich von Schiller and Georges Cuvier—received comprehensive instruction in the classics, modern languages, public administration and law, mathematics, and all aspects of the natural sciences. Upon completion of the philosophical course Kielmeyer turned to that in medicine; he received medical certification in 1786, upon completing his formal studies, but never practiced. With ducal support he then undertook his Wanderjahre. Study at Göttingen with Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich Gmelin, and, most important, the physicist Georg Christoph Lichenberg, was followed by a tour of museums and chemical laboratories in northern Germany.

In 1790 Kielmeyer was made teacher (Lehrer) of zoology and associate curator of the natural history collections at the Karlschule. He assumed direction of chemical instruction and the small chemical laboratory in 1792. Upon suppression of the Karlsschule (1794) he again undertook scientific travels; on the Baltic and North Sea coasts he pursued exacting anatomical studies of marine invertebrate. Kielmeyer’s instructional role resumed in 1796 with appointment as professor of chemistry at the University of Tübingen; five years later he was charged with the additional responsibilities of the chair of botany, materia medica, and pharmacy. After leaving Tübingen in 1816, he assumed direction of the Württemberg state art and scientific collections and of the state library, all located in Stuttgart. He retained this position until hie retirement in 1839.

Kielmeyer’s professorial activity is of crucial importance in understanding of the influence the influence of the man and his views. Ever devoted to the broadest viewpoint and a master of the imaginative yet controlled development of an argument, he published very little. Apart from one celebrated essay, his great contemporary reputation and influence rested upon his friends and students. This effect resulted as much from exceptional personal character as from the boldness and cogent presentation of doctrine. Kielmeyer’s biographer, unfortunately cannot experience this personality and must deal with kielmeyer’s scientific views only through quite inadequate published material.

Almost no direct record remains of Kielmeyer’s anatomical investigations, which began at the Karlsschule and continued at least through the 1790’s. he was, in the opinion of qualified observers, an extraordinarily able and diligent practitioner of dissection and inspired many others to follow his interest. Foremost among these was Cuvier, who warmly acknowledged his indebtedness to Kielmeyer and whose accomplishments the latter proudly but not uncritically recorded.¹ Kielmeyer’s plan for his celebrated course on comparative anatomy at the Karlsschule (1790-1793) survives in manuscipt and deals with important generalities; it is possible that discovery of copies of students’ notes from this course—known to have been circulated and read in Germany—may cast light on the obviously great factual foundations upon which he built.

This lack of evidence is extremely harmful to a just assessment of Kielmeyer’s overall scientific endeavor. He was deeply concerned with problems of method. Although certain traits appear to link him closely to Naturphilosophie—in the 1790’s a body of doctrine just taking shape—n is clear that his great regard for Immanuel Kant and tenacious adherence to concrete evidence precluded his ever tumbling into the abyss of radical idealism. Friedrich schelling may have admired Kielmeyer²; the latter certainly could not applaud the extravagances of Schelling and his followers. Kantiann criticism was the first step in Kielmeyer’s scientific inquiry. “Prior to any research,” he wrote, “the human mind must first find agreement on the extent and limitations within which, with undivided and reciprocal support of all of its powers, it may advance the inquiry.”³ Kielmeyer then found that found that space and time are the fundamental categories of all understanding. But what we may deduce from them about the external world will find credit only insofar as concrete evidence supports our inferences. Kielmeyer always felt that his conclusions rested on sound empirical foundations; he stressed, moreover, that one’s first principles should necessarily be tentative in character. These prescriptions were difficult to observe faithfully.

Kielmeyer proposed a dynamic view of nature. Force and its modalities underlie all phenomena. Force induces effects not only; in the present but in the past and future; time is the decisive measure of all things. Kielmeyer’s debt to Johann Gottfried von Herder was greater. Herder had posited the total historicity of existence and of understanding; he explored the forces by which, ostensibly, changes occurred; he focused closely upon plants and animals and explicitly called for a “philosophical dissector”who would prosecute “comparative physiology” and establish, “through the determination of distance and identifiable forces,” the relations of animals to man and set these relations in close connection to the “whole organization of creation.”⁴ Here was Kielmeyer’ program. He sought to articulate an all-inclusive system of nature. Organisms, which he viewed from the dynamic stance of the comparative physiologist and not the static view of traditional anatomy, were the product of a developmental force—and that force was strictly analogous to (and perhaps identical with) the predominant forces of chemical transformation and, more fundamentally, the forces of physical change in general. Physics and chemistry were presumably the primary bases for interpreting biological change, and kielmeyer devoted considerable attention to the possible relationship between attraction, chemical affinity, and the developmental force of organisms. The imponderables— light, electricity, and, above all, heat and magnetism— were emphasized and a coherent doctrine of the interaction of opposites (Polaritä) advocated.

Nevertheless, while deriving the foundation of his general system from physics and devoting a major portion of his professional activity to chemistry, Kielmeyer exerted his greatest influence in biology. All anatomical and classificatory evidence suggested, he believed, the existence of a graduated scale of organisms (Stufenfolge) in the present world. The history of the earth as a whole, according to Kielmeyer’s “concept of natural history,” must deal“not only with its present condition, but also with that which has gone before and perhaps with that which will follow after, that is, [with the earth] as it is, as it was and as it will be.”⁵

These incessant transformations are guided by a developmental force, which constituted the heart of Kielmeyer’s biological doctrines (it stands as the primary force in the great Rede of 1793; irritability and sensibility are later acquisitions of the of the developing higher organism). Unity of phenomena is dictated by unity of cause, that is, a common developmental force: “I hold that the force which, in previous times, brought forth on our earth the series of organisms, is, in its essence and laws [of action], one and the same as the force by which today are produced in each organized individual the series of its developmental stages.”⁶ The sequence in both stages was comparable; and thus it was on the dual grounds of observed similarities and the commonality of the developmental force, the latter being decisive, that Kielmeyer gave early expression to what subsequently became known as the doctrine of ontogenetic recapitulation. He also recognized the expression of this force in the characteristic stages of a man’s lifetime and hoped to extend its power, through analogy with terrestrial magnetism, to the evolution of the earth itself.

The concept of a common development force satisfied Kielmeyer’s keen ambition to introduce “unity into all human knowledged,” to create “a genealogy of our knowledge” and to do so without the self-deception and arrogance characteristic of contemporary Naturphilosophen.⁷ As for the nature of the developmental force, Kielmeyer shrewdly offered no inflexible opinions. He accepted it as testimony and concomitant to the essential fact of organic existence, the self-sufficient directedness of vital processes. Following Kant, he declared that the “organs stand in a purposeful relationship to one another. . . Each is the effect and cause of the other—and for us, therefore, the relationship is purposeful” and not mechanical. ⁸ And here the analysis must terminate: the author of force in nature is surely also the source of nature’s purposefulness. On these matters Kielmeyer maintained a spiritualistic, antimechanistic, and probably Christian outlook.

Kielmeyer’s instruction and methodological cautions bore rich fruit. Few if any of his students participated in the more excessive forms of Naturphilosophie, and some became biologists of great distinction. Cuvier, the celebrated experimental plant hybridizer Carl Friedrich von Gärtner, the anatomist and paleontologist Georg Jäger, Christian Heinrich Pfaff, George Louis Duvernoy, Johann von Autenrieth, and numerous others found their inspiration in Kielmeyer’s teaching and informal instruction. To a man they celebrated his exceptional powers and compassionate personality; many looked to him also as a leader of the German people and an outspoken advocate of human dignity and freedom in a period of war, reaction, and national self-definition. He was perhaps the preeminent teacher of physiology in Germany in the generation before Johannes MÜller and fully deserved both Alexander von Humboldt’s designation as the “foremost physiologist of Germany” and Müller’s own tribute: “Germans may proudly claim that it was Kielmeyer who first viewed comparative anatomy from this, its inner side; he who first called it to life and endowed it with [its] intellectual orientation.” ⁹

NOTES

1. G. Cuvier, “Mémoires pour servir à celui qui fera mon éloge,” in P. Flourens, Recueil des éloges historiques. Premiéresérie (Paris, 1856), pp. 173-174; Kielmeyer, “Einige Notizenüber. . .G. Cuviers,”s pp. 163-186, esp. 177-178.

2. F. Schelling, Von der Weltseele (1798); cited in Balss, “Kielmeyer als Biologe,” p. 269.

3. Kielmeyer, Gesammelte Schriften, pp. 112-113.

4. J. G. von Herder, “Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit. Erste Theil (1784),” in Sämmtliche Werke. Zur Philosophie und Geschichte, pt. 4 (Stuttgart-Tuuml;bingen, 1827), pp. 101-102.

5. Kielmeyer, Gesammelte Schriften, p. 228.

6. Ibid., p. 205.

7. Ibid., pp. 239-236.

8. Ibid., p. 180. See I. Kant, Critique of Teleological Judgement, translated by J. C. Meredith (Oxford, 1928), § 66 (pp.24-25).

9. Humboldt, cited in Balss, op. cit., p. 270; Müller, cited in Kielmeyer, Gesammelte Schriften, p.6.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Kielmeyer’s publications are few in number, diverse in nature, and exceedingly difficult to obtain. Two items are indispensable for understanding his thought. At the birthday celebration (11 Feb. 1793) for Duke Karl Eugen of Württemberg, Kielmeyer pronounced his most important single statement of doctrine. This was soon published as Ueber die Verhältnisse der organischen Kräfte unter einander in der Reithe der verschiedenen Organisationen, die Gesetze und Folgen dieser Verhältnisse (Stuttgart, 1793; repr. Tübingen, 1894), extracts apparently trans. into French by Oelsner (Paris, 1815), modern repr. by Heinrich Balss in Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften23 (1930), 247-267. Kielmeyer’s widow left her husbands’s unpublished scientific MSS to the Württemberg state library (today the württembergische Landesbibliothek). A selection of exceptional importance and interest from these MSS was published as Kielmeyer’s Gesammelte Schriften, F. H. Holler, ed., with the collaboration of Julius Schuster (Berlin, 1938). This work is of extraordinary rarity (the publisher’s stock was destroyed during World War II), and no copy could be located in the United States; the principal contents are therefore listed here (the titles are the editor’s): I.“Selbstbiographie”; II. “Das älteste Programm der deutschen vergleichenden Zoologie”; III. “Naturforschung. Infusionstierchen”; IV. “Die Bewegungslehre. Dynamik”; V. “Organische Kräfte”; [the 1793 Rede published from the original MS, and including material notfound in Balss’s ed.]; V.[sic] “Die Natur. Gesprochene Urfassung”; VI. [sic] “Geschichte und Theorie der Entwicklung”; VII. “über den Organismus”; VIII. “über Erde und Leben”; IX. “über Naturgeschichte”; X. “ü Kant und die deutsche Naturphilosophie. Ein Schreiben an Cuvier”; X. “Lethe. Ein Gedicht”; XI.“Die Württembergischen Botaniker”; XII. “Zu Dissertationen.”

Gesammelte schriften, pp. 12, 254, lists Kielmeyer’other publications; these include his medical dissertation (an analysis of mineral waters) and lectures and reports on chemistry, plant development, and animal magnetism. There is no census or any certain ed. Of lecture notes kept by Kielmeyer’s students . Some authors (most notably Balss, “Kielmeyer als Biologe”) have accepted Gustav Willhelm Münther’s Allgemeine Zoologie oder Physik der organischen Körper (Halle, 1840) as an authentic representation of his teacher’s viewpoint. There seems to be little evidence either to support or to deny this claim.

II. Secondary Literature. While no comprehensive biography of Kielmeyer exists, there are several valuable notices concerning both his life and his doctrines. Foremost among these are Carl Friedrich von Martius, “Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer” [1845], in Akademische Denkreden (Leipzig, 1866), pp. 181-209; and Georg Friedrich von Jäger, “Ehrengedächtniss des königl. württembergischen Staatsraths von Kielmeyer,” in Nova acta physico-medica Academiae Caesareae Leopoldino Carolinae germanicae naturae curiosorum, 21 , pt. 2 (1845), xvii-xcii; Jäger presents often quite full discussion of the content of Kielmeyer’s various lecture courses . See also “Selbstbiographie,” in Gesammelte Schriften, pp. 7-12. Heinrich Balss, “Kielmeyer als Biologe,” in Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften, 23 (1930), 268-288, describes Kielmeyer’s scientific work but bases his analysis exclusively on the contestable ground that Münther fairly restated the master’s views. Balss also (p. 288) provides a good bibliography of publications dealing with Kielmeyer. Among these are Max Rauther, “Ungenütze Quellen zur Kenntnis K. F. Kielmeyers,” in Besondere Beilage des Staatsanzeiger fü Württemberg (Stuttgart), no. 6 (1921), 113-122, which examines MSS relating to Kielmeyer’s students; and J. H. F. Kohlbrugge, “G. Cuier and K. F. Kielmeyer,” in Biologische Centralblatt, 32 (1912), 291-295, a brief analysis of Curier’s unbroken communication with his Karlsschule friends and based on the Fonds Cuvier of the Institut de France. Cuvier’s letter to his German friends are printed in George Cuvier’s Briefe an C. H. Pfaff, W. F. G. Behn, ed. (Kiel, 1845), trans. into French by L. Marchant (Paris, 1858); see index for references to Kielmeyer. See also Max Rauther, “Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer zu Ehren,”in Sudhoffs Archiv Fü Geschirchte der Medizin und der Wissenschaften, 31 (1938), 345-350; Felix Buttersack, “Karl Friedrich Kielmeyer (1765-1844). Ein vergessenes Genie,” in ibid., 23 (1930), 236-246; and the derivative Klïpfel, “Karl Friedrich Kielmeyer,” in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, XV (Leipzig, 1882), 721-723.

The basic work for comprehending the context of Kielmeyer’s scientific views, above all those on the developmental force and historical understanding, is Owsei Temkin, “German Concepts of Ontogeny and History Around 1800,” in Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 24 (1950), 227-246. On the Karlsschule and intellectual life in Kielmeyer’s Württemberg, see E. Stübler, Johann Heinrich Ferdinand Autenrieth 1775-1835. Professor der Medizin und Kanzler der Universität Tübingen (Stuttgart, 1948). The rise of Naturphilosophie and the emergence of “romantic medicine” is brilliantly chronicled by Ernst Hirschfeld, “Romantische Medizin. Zu einer Künftigen Geschichte der naturphilosophischen ära,” in Kyklos, 3 (1930), 1-89, see pp. 10-11; Hirschfield’s bibliography of primary and secondary materials dealing with these issues is outstanding. On the background of Schelling’s scientific work, see Rudolf Haym, Die romantische Schule. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Geistes. 3rd ed. (Berlin, 1941). pp. 636-645. On Kielmeyer’s doctrinal relations with Schelling see Ludwig Noack, Schelling und die Philosophie der Romantik. Ein Beitrag zur Culturgeschichte des deutschen Geistes (Berlin, 1859), I, 216 ff., and the very full and careful discussion, including an accurate restatement of the argument of the 1793 Rede, by Kuno Fischer, Schellings Leben, Werke und Lehre, which is his Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, 3rd ed., VII (Heidelberg, 1902), pp. 342-347.

William Coleman