Erich Wasmann

Erich Wasmann (* May 29, 1859 in Merano, † February 27, 1931 in Valkenburg aan de Geul, Netherlands) was a Jesuit priest and entomologist who primarily dealt with social insects.

Life

His father was the painter Friedrich Wasmann.

Wasmann was a student at the Jesuit College in Feldkirch in Vorarlberg Stella Matutina. There he joined the Jesuit Order. In 1875 he moved to a novitiate of the Order in Exaten (Province of Limburg, The Netherlands), later moving into a college in Wijnandsrade. His teachers included the Jesuit Father Louis Dressel. Because of poor health he did not seize the priesthood, but became editor of the Jesuit cultural magazine voices from Khajuraho. Wasmann was a lifelong without academic post and never was high school teacher. Inspired by a book by the British naturalist John Lubbock, he began to deal with ants. His particular interest was the myrmekophilen species in ant nests, and later in termite nests, of which he published several hundred scientific papers in decades. His classification of Myrmekophilen still serves as a basis. 1891 moved Wasmann to Vienna, where he studied at the university without a degree to acquire, later moving back to Exaten. Among his pupils there was one of the entomologist ( entomologist ) and Jesuit Hermann Schmitz. Wasmann published on instinct and intelligence in the animal kingdom and fought the reflex theory of Albrecht Bethe. In 1899 he moved to Luxembourg, where the editors of his journal had moved. Together with William Morton Wheeler, he managed to destroy the biological puzzle of the slave- ants. In his textbook Modern biology and developmental biology Wasmann presented his findings in the context of Darwin's theory of evolution, which was then still rejected by many in the Catholic Church. He remained cautious and avoided to apply the theory to humans. However, it took the Darwinian theory of evolution decided that from a parent form, in contrast to the fixity of species, recognizes the common descent of living things. Wasmann tried to reconcile Christian doctrine and theory of evolution in a " Christian monism " prove, and fell in sharp contrast to more decisive (even social) Darwinists such as Ludwig Plate and Ernst Haeckel. 1911 moved into Wasmann Valkenburger Jesuit College in the Netherlands, where he lived until his death. He was concerned with mimicry; a special case of Bates'schen mimicry, the similarity of ant guests and their host ants is sometimes referred to him as " Wasmannsche mimicry ".

Wasmann fought against the exploitation of evolutionary theory for the purpose of anti-religious propaganda by Ernst Haeckel and also representing the view that they could be reconciled with the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church.

The natural philosopher Bernard Bavink thought Wasmann have contributed most to the Catholic side to the fact that " the resistance which the whole theory of evolution found primarily in church circles, given up on the whole " was.

Writings (selection )

• Modern biology and the theory of evolution, 3rd ed strongly verm - Freiburg im Breisgau [ ua]: Herder, 1906
• Ludwig Plate: (ed.): Ultramontane philosophy and modern life skills, Orthodoxy and monism: the views of the Jesuit Father Erich Wasmann and held against him in Berlin speeches, Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena 1907