Georg Wilhelm Steller

By Georg Steller no portrait is known but many animals are named after him. above: Steller's Sea Eagle (English Steller's Sea Eagle ) Steller (Cyanocitta stelleri ) middle: Steller's eider ( Polysticta stelleri ) Steller Sea Lion shear Below: Steller's Sea Cow ( extinct)

Georg Wilhelm Steller (actually Georg Wilhelm Stöller; * March 10, 1709 in Bad Windsheim, Free Imperial City, .. † 12 Novemberjul / November 23 1746greg in Tyumen, Russian Empire ) was a German physician and naturalist. He took part in the led by Danish captain Vitus Bering Kamchatka Second. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " controller ".

Life

Georg Wilhelm Steller was the fourth child of Johann Jakob Stöller (1664-1743), a native of Nuremberg and since 1702 has worked in Windsheim as cantor and organist of the grammar school of the town church, and his wife Susanna Loysa. The son grew up in modest circumstances. After visiting the Windsheimer high school he studied with a scholarship of his native city, first reformed theology in Wittenberg. The unloved theology studies, he gave up when after a major fire in his home town of his scholarship was canceled. His major field of study was more obvious in the direction of medicine and natural sciences. He later studied in Leipzig, Jena and Halle, where he first came into contact with Russia customer. In Halle he attended botany lectures at the famous researcher Friedrich Hoffmann, who discovered the mineral springs of Bad Lauchstaedt and to this day is known with its Hoffmann's drops. Later he was allowed to keep as a lecturer some lectures on botany. In 1734 he put his exam from a doctor. Because he saw no prospect of an academic career in Prussia, he went to Russia. Since he hardly had financial means to go to Saint Petersburg to Steller closed wound as surgeon in the Russian army. A Russian army was stationed just because of the Polish Succession War in Gdansk. From here Steller came on a hospital ship to Saint Petersburg. During this voyage, he changed his original family name Stöller in Steller because it was utter better for the Russians.

Nearly penniless, he reached in 1734 the Russian capital. In the Botanical Garden of Saint Petersburg he learned the Orthodox Archbishop Theophanes Prokopowitsch, who became his patron and introduced him to the scholarly circles of the city. 1737 he was appointed co-factors of the natural sciences of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In the same year he was appointed a member of the Great Northern Expedition and sent to Kamchatka. He was the famous professor Johann Georg Gmelin assumed. Shortly before his departure from St. Petersburg, he married the widow of the German Siberia researcher Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt Brigitte Helene, born Böchler († June 26, 1761 in St. Petersburg ). This marriage did not last very long, on the way to Siberia - in Moscow - the couple separated again. After arduous journey and ongoing field studies on a variety of subjects ( inter alia, botany, zoology, geology, and last but not least ethnography ), he achieved his goal in early October 1740, led there immediately continued the field research, together with the Russian students Stepan Petrovich Krasheninnikov, who was on site since 1737. In February 1741 he received a letter from Bering, who asked him, Bering, to accompany him instead of resigning expedition doctor on the planned trip to America. After initial hesitation, he finally agreed.

On 15 June 1741 expedition left with the two ships St. Peter ( with Bering and Steller ) and St. Paul the Awatscha Bay. In the course of this journey, the St. Peter ( land in sight on July 25, 1741) reached ( after some navigational problems) Alaska. The ratio of Steller on Bering was always problematic. To a scandal arose when Bering on July 30, 1741 Steller first refused, on the so-called St. Elias Island (now Kayak Island ) to study the relationships to land. Vitus Bering wanted to take fresh water there only. Only when Steller swore that he would ensure that Bering and his officers would have to justify themselves after their return to higher authority for this refusal, Bering relented. He was the first European naturalist who entered Alaska. Narrated jibe is still the adjuster, you should probably come here, " to bring American Water to Asia ". However, Steller had only 10 hours for his explorations. After all, this was enough to document some 160 species of plants. He also discovered a repository of the local Aleutians and took a number of utility and decorative objects for his ethnological collection. Later he caused that iron cookware, knives and similar objects of exchange were taken to the depot. As the locals but hidden for fear of the stranger deep in the forest, he could not make contact with them.

On the stormy return the St. Peter finally stranded on November 16, 1741 on the later so-called Bering Island, where the expedition commander Vitus Bering died on December 19, 1741. During the following nine -month survival battle itself proved to be a master regulator of improvised survival skills. He and the Swedish Lieutenant Waxell were the leaders who organized a reasonably orderly camp life. Finally, from the remains of St. Peter were able to build a boat, with the survivors finally reached on September 6, 1742 Peter and Paul's port in Kamchatka ( Petropavlovsk- Kamchatsky ).

Besides all the hardships and dangers brought on by the struggle for survival on the Bering Island with him, knew Steller still continue his natural history observations. So he made at that time, his description of the so-called Steller's sea cow ( Hydrodamalis gigas, formerly Rhytina stelleri or Rhytina borealis ) on, through which he came to some fame. He was the first and only scientist who ever saw a living Steller's sea cow. Then they saw primarily trappers who were responsible for the extinction of the species soon.

After his happy return, he spent another three years in Kamchatka to continue his scientific and ethnological research. On August 14, 1744 he left Kamchatka with a packed in 16 boxes collection to return to St. Petersburg. Even during the return journey, he was put in the spring of 1745 in Irkutsk under indictment. He was accused of the peoples of Eastern Siberia incited against Russian rule and even distributed weapons among them. But he was eventually acquitted for lack of evidence. Christmas In 1745 he moved on into the middle of the Siberian winter. Already drawn by the previous exertions, he soon fell ill seriously. With his last strength he escaped to Tyumen. He died there on 23 November 1746.

At his work memory a statue imputed in Tyumen September 14, 2009 memorial stone.

Appreciation

More than his numerous scientific writings, which he made during the Great Northern Expedition and which are preserved to a part, it is mainly his report of Bering 's Alaskafahrt and its dramatic end, which has continued to bear his name to this day. While there have been other arrangements made by boaters, records from this trip. But this strongly emphasized the purely technical aspects of the trip. Steller provided a more comprehensive picture of the circumstances and events by he incorporated in addition to the natural history descriptions also moods and judgments about events that are not reduced the purely factual content of his report, but rather the emergence of a "round" total image contributed.

According to him, the Georg Wilhelm Steller Secondary School ( Bad Windsheim) and the Steller Secondary School Anchorage is named. Since 2008, decorated with a wooden figure of the artist Christian Rosner, the controller and named after him Steller's sea cow is, a place in the town of Bad Windsheim in Franconia.

Works

  • GW Steller: journey from Kamchatka to America with the Commander - Captain Bering, St. Petersburg, 1793, edited by PS Pallas (online).
  • Georg Wilhelm Steller: From Siberia to America. The discovery of Alaska with Captain Bering. Ed Volker Mathies. Thienemann, Stuttgart 1986. ISBN 3-522-61170-5
  • Georg Wilhelm Steller: Description of the land of Kamchatka. Yakutsk in 1737, Hall 1753, St. Petersburg 1793, Butcher, Frankfurt 1774, 2009 ( Repr ). - Digital available on Internet Archive, a transcribed version below ethnography on the website of the Cultural Foundation Siberia.
  • Wieland Hintzsche (ed.): Sources for the history of Siberia and Alaska from Russian archives. Bd I. Georg Wilhelm Steller -. Letters and documents 1740 Edit by Wieland Hintzsche, Thomas Nickol and Olga V. Novochatko. Hall, 2000. ISBN 3-930195-61-5
  • Bd II Georg Wilhelm Steller, Stepan Kraseninnikov, Johann Eberhard Fischer: Travel diaries 1735-1743 Edit Wieland Hintzsche with the collaboration of Thomas Nickol, Olga V. Novochatko and Dietmar Schulze.. Hall, 2000. ISBN 3-930195-64- X
  • Bd III. Georg Wilhelm Steller -. Letters and documents 1739 Edit by Wieland Hintzsche with the collaboration of Thomas Nickol, Olga V. Novochatko and Dietmar Schulze. Hall, 2001. ISBN 3-930195-67-4

Media

  • A Franke discovered Alaska. The Adventurous Life of Georg Wilhelm Steller; by Peter Prestel and Rudolf Sporrer ( Bayerisches Fernsehen; Original Air Date: November 30, 2009)
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