PLATE, LUDWIG HERMANN

PLATE, LUDWIG HERMANN (b. Bremen, Germany, 16 August 1862; d. Jena, Germany, 16 November 1937)

zoology.

Plate was a proponent and defender of Darwin’s theory of evolution who allowed the inheritance of acquired characters and certain other factors to supplement natural selection.

Plate’s parents were Heinrich Plate, a language teacher, and the former Phoebe Hind. As a boy, Plate collected plants and animals and attended lectures of the local group of natural scientists. He studied mathematics and natural science at the University of Jena, where he was fascinated by Haeckel’s evolutionary theories, although he considered the concepts too dogmatic. At Bonn and Munich, Plate studied invertebrate zoology under Richard Hertwig and completed his dissertation in 1885, returning to take the examinations for his doctorate at Jena. He qualified as lecturer at Marburg in 1888 after further study and became Privatdozent there.

From 1898 he was titular professor at Berlin, where he was named curator of the Museum für Meereskunde in 1901; he was also ordinary professor at the Landwirtschafiliche Hochschule. Plate’s museum experience especially impressed Haeckel, whom he succeeded in 1909 as professor of zoology and director of the Phyletische Museum at Jena. Haeckel, who had strongly favored Plate’s appointment, expected to have his wishes followed; but bitter dissension soon broke out between the two. No doubt there were contributing factors in both personalities, but the former pupil and protégé did his best to derogate Haeckel and to make his position untenable.

Under Plate’s administration the facilities of the museum and the Zoological Institute were expanded and the collections augmented, in part with material gathered in the course of his travels. He made expeditions to South America (1893–1896), Greece and the Red Sea area (1901–1902), and the West Indies (1904–1905). His trip to Ceylon and India (1913–1914) yielded data and specimens for research and museum use at Berlin and Jena.

Plate was a founder and the coeditor for biology of the Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie from its establishment in 1904. The publication was dedicated to the study of the laws of variability and inheritance, of the development of races, and the relation of the family, society, and the state to “racial and social hygiene,” a goal perhaps initially eugenic but later having increasingly political application. Plate’s views on zoological matters became entwined with his political opinions; and for years he digressed freely during his biological lectures to express his convictions as an avowed member of the Right, as a Pan-Germanist, and as an anti-Semite. He expounded his ideas on the labor movement and was a declared pro-Fascist long before 1933.

Plate married Hedwig von Zglinicki in 1902, and after her death he married Klara König (1933). He became professor emeritus in 1934.

Plate’s most influential work was in the exposition and defense of Darwin’s theory of natural selection; he also worked in genetics and studied problems of Mendelian heredity. In the wake of the enthusiasm engendered by Darwin’s Origin of Species, new uncertainties had arisen when many observers had experienced difficulties in applying the single all- encompassing theory. The mechanism of evolution was still unclear, and the post-Darwinians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries devised various syntheses. Some biologists thought that Darwin’s theory of natural selection had been superseded, while among those who considered themselves faithful Darwinists two factions developed. The strict selectionists, such as Weismann, argued that natural selection alone could account for the evolutionary process; others maintained, when they supported natural selection with auxiliary theories, that they were actually following in Darwin’s footsteps—for had not Darwin himself admitted some influence of external conditions upon heredity and a certain degree of Lamarckism?

Plate, competent and painstaking in his zoological investigations, was a member of the latter group although he was a staunch Darwinist. He examined the theory of natural selection as it might apply to numerous specific instances in which evolutionary changes were discernible. Plate experimented and evaluated the various theories of heredity and evolution of his colleagues before coming to his own neo-Darwinist conclusions. His studies were widely cited by his contemporaries; and his Über Bedeutung unci Tragsveite des Darwin’schen Selectionsprincips (Leipzig, 1900), first published the previous year in Verhandlungen der Deutschen zoologischcn Gcscltschaft was enlarged and, with change of title, in its fourth edition by 1913. Plate also wrote numerous articles on evolution, genetics, the Mollusca (Chiton), and on more general zoological subjects. His texts appeared in various editions into the 1930’s. He was a member of scientific academies in Germany, Hungary, and Sweden.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. The work on evolution cited in text was retitled Selectionsprinzips und Problem der Artbildung. Ein Handbuch des Darwimsmus, 3rd ed. (Leipzig-Berlin, 1908; 4th ed., 1913). “Vererbungslehre und theorie,” in Festschrift zum sechzigsten Geburtstag Richard Hertwigs, II (Jena, 1910), 535–610, was Plate’s inaugural lecture as professor at Jena. Ailgemeine Zoologie und Abstammungslehre, 2 vols. (Jena, 1922–1924), is a more general text. Plate gave a brief account of his life and outlook in “Kurze Selbstbiographie,” in Archie für Rassen- und Gesellschafts-biologic, 29 (1935), 84–88.

II. Secondary Literature. Vernon L. Kellogg, in Darwinism Today (New York, 1908), 145, 147, 166, 188 ff., 203, 247, 264, 272–273, 278–279, discusses Plate’s ideas and studies, and outlines some of the problems that concerned him in relation to the climate of post-Darwinian evolutionary theory in the early 1900’s. The best account of Plate’s life and work is in Georg Uschmann’s Geschiehte der Zoologie und der zoologischen Anstalten in Jena1779–1919 (Jena, 1959), 141, 172–174, 176, 196, 201 ff., which describes Plate’s relations with Haeckel and his activities at the educational institutions of Jena and contains an invaluable bibliography with comprehensive listings of MS material. Certain key letters pertaining to Plate’s career and differences with Haeckel are reproduced in Georg Uschmann, ed., Ernst Haeckel, Forscher, Kimsller, Mensch (Leipzig-Jena-Berlin, 1961). References to Plate’s role at the University at Jena, especially in regard to politics, appear in Geschichte der Vniversitat Jena 1848/58–1948, 2 vols. (Jena, 1958), I, 510, 540, 543, 545, 552, 564, 584, 601, 605; II, 160, 447 ff., 603 ff., 608.

Gloria Robinson