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Goethe's interest in British mineralogy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2018

John Hennig
John Hennig*
Affiliation:
Bord na Mona (Irish Peat Development Board), Newbridge, Co. Kildare
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Extract

Johann Wolfgang von Goetiie (1749-1832), the bicentenary of whose birth at Frankfurt-on-Main will be commemorated on August 28, 1949, gave us extensive accounts of the development of his studies in optics, botany, and meteorology; with regard to the history of his studies in mineralogy and geology, his most concise statement is his essay ‘Geology, in particular that of Bohemia’. This essay, written in 1817, starts with three quotations. The first is in English:

What is the inference ? Only this, that geology partakes of the uncertainty which pervades every other department of science.

The source of this quotation still remains to be discovered. At the end of this essay, Goethe said that he was:

fortunate in obtaining a series of minerals from all the principal countries. Herr Mawe, the mineral merchant in London, provided me with a most satisfactory collection from Cornwall, and to Herr Ritter v. Giesecke I am indebted for an important addition to my collection of English stream tin and Malacca tin. All these materials have now been well arranged in my collection, but my plan to write something conclusive on this subject could not be carried out, as so many other things I should have liked to do in the scientific field.

Type
Research Article
Information
Mineralogical magazine and journal of the Mineralogical Society , Volume 28 , Issue 205 , June 1949 , pp. 534 - 546
Copyright
Copyright © The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1949

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References

Boyd, J., Goethe's knowledge of English literature. Oxford, 1932.Google Scholar
Weiss, F. E., Goethe as naturalist. Publications of the English Goethe Society, 1890, vol. 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Linck, Gottlob, Goethes Verhältnis zur Mincralogie und Gcognosie. Jena, 1906.Google Scholar
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Leitmeir's, H. article on Goethe as mineralogist in Goethe-Handbuch, vol. 2, Stuttgart, 1917.Google Scholar
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Waterhouse, Gilbert, Goethe, , Giesecke, , and Dublin, . Proc. Royal Irish Acad., 1933, vol. 41, sect. C, pp. 210–218; and Minutes of Proc. Royal Irish Acad., Session 1943–44, pp. 18–22. Goethe's relations with Sir Charles Giesecke, the German-born professor of mineralogy at the Royal Dubhn Society, are outside the scope of the present paper. The 1933 paper gives a descriptive list of 63 specimens sent by Giesecke in June 1819 to Goethe. These include, besides Greenland minerals, several of Cornish cassiterite (crystals of various habits, and stream tin, from St. Agnes and St. Roach), also vivianite from Cornwall, wavellite from Devonshire, graphite from Borrowdale, and meteorite from Tipperary.Google Scholar