Johann Wilhelm Meigen
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Johann Wilhelm Meigen | |
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Born | 3 May 1764 |
Died | 11 July 1845 | (aged 81)
Johann Wilhelm Meigen (3 May 1764 – 11 July 1845) was a German
Life
Early years
Meigen was born in Solingen, the fifth of eight children of Johann Clemens Meigen and Sibylla Margaretha Bick. His parents, though not poor, were not wealthy either. They ran a small shop in Solingen. His paternal grandparents, however, owned an estate and hamlet with twenty houses. Adding to the rental income, Meigen's grandfather was a farmer and a guild mastercutler in Solingen.
Two years after Meigen was born, his grandparents died and his parents moved to the family estate. This was already heavily indebted by the Seven Years' War, then bad crops and rash speculations forced the sale of the farm and the family moved back to Solingen.
Meigen attended the town school but only for a short time. He had learned to read and write on his grandfather's estate and he read widely at home as well as taking an interest in
Meigen became Berger's assistant, going to Mülheim with him. There he saw for the first time a
In the autumn of 1779 he returned to Solingen to help his parents, at first by giving private lessons in French, but in the following year he started a French school that lasted until early in 1784. During his few free hours in this period he studied history from Charles Rollin's 15-volume Roman History and that author's four-volume Ancient History (both in French). The only entomological work in his possession at this time was Moder's (or Kleemann's) Caterpillar Calendar.
Later in 1784 he was recommended to Pelzer, a tradesman in Aachen, for the position of resident tutor. On taking up the post, he was treated as a family member. Pelzer had a cousin in Aachen by the name of Mathias Baumhauer (1759–1818), a wool merchant's son, who was a very able entomologist. Baumhauer had a butterfly collection including about 1200 species as well as numbers of insects of all other orders.
Early entomology
Meigen's first attempts to identify his collection which was mainly of
He soon found that wing venation alone was not enough to classify the Diptera correctly and he began to make drawings of the antennae viewed under a 20-power wooden-framed microscope purchased at the fair in Aachen, This and also a lens of about 6-power, and his own very sharp eyesight and visual memory led him to the next important conclusion, that the Diptera could only be classified using character combinations; what is now known as an eclectic system.
Return to Solingen
In 1786 the Solingen organist, a younger brother of his former teacher Berger died in Solingen. That position, with a French school connected with it, was offered to Meigen and he went back to Solingen.
There he became closely acquainted with a man called Weniger, who shared his interests in botany and entomology. His enthusiasm for entomology and botany became broader and he decided to extend his studies to world species. Weniger felt likewise and they contacted the banker and collector Johann Christian Gerning in Frankfurt. Gerning wrote to his son in the Netherlands, who bought insect specimens for him. A Swiss, Count von Meuron, who was in the Dutch service and whose brother was governor of Trincomalee on Ceylon heard of their wishes and obtained for them the offer of positions as surgeons on an East Indiaman, with an additional stipend. This plan was given up when Meigen's mother opposed it.
To Burtscheid
In 1792 Meigen took instruction in drawing. Then he was offered a teaching position in Burtscheid near Aachen. However, he could not leave Solingen because it was occupied by the French army during the Battle of Jemappes. Only when the French withdrew after the Battle of Neerwinden was he able to leave for Burtscheid and Aachen, where he then taught as well as collecting assiduously.
In 1796, Meigen took a job teaching French in Stolberg, 2 hours from Aachen. Here he remained without further change of residence until his death. In Stolberg outside of school hours he taught drawing, geography, history and piano. He also met a brass-worker named J. A. Peltzer, who was a mathematician and owned a 60-power Tiedemann achromatic telescope. Soon Meigen was teaching astronomy as well.
In 1801 Meigen met the French naturalist
In 1802 Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger who must have heard of Meigen from Count Lacépède and was at the baths in Aachen with Johann Centurius Hoffmannsegg invited him to join them. Meigen took his drawings along, and made arrangements with Illiger and Hoffmannsegg for future work. Illiger had captured a new and unknown Dipteron and showed a pen drawing of it to Meigen, asking him how it should be classified. Meigen described it as Loxocera Hoffmannseggi. Illiger also agreed to proofread Meigen's first work on Diptera which was then published in 1804 by Reichard in Braunschweig.
Controversy
In 1804 the only classification of Diptera was that of Fabricius. Despite Meigen's more advanced, and more natural classification, Meigen's Die Fliegen found little favor with most entomologists, who were adherents of Fabricius, but that did not deflect Meigen.
In the same year Fabricius visited Paris and saw Meigen's work. On returning home, he wrote Meigen and arranged to meet him in Aachen. A few days later Fabricius came to Stolberg. Here he was shown all of Meigen's new genera in order that he might use them in the projected new edition of Systema Antliatorum. Fabricius criticized Meigen for his eclectic method, asserting that a classification should be based upon one part of the body, (mainly mouthparts) not on several different parts. Meigen pointed out that Fabricius himself did not consistently follow his own precepts but even so Fabricius refused to use the eclectic method.
Marriage
In 1801 Meigen married Anna, the sister of the Reverend Mänsse, a preacher at Hückelhoven near Linnich. Anna was clearly devoted to Meigen which was as well since hard times were ahead. Until 1808 the number of students of French steadily declined, resulting of course in a considerable reduction in Meigen's income. In this crisis, a merchant in Stolberg, one Adolf Pelzer, obtained for him the secretaryship for the Stolberg commercial committee, including keeping minutes of meetings and carrying on correspondence in both German and French. Then, in another reversal, he was replaced by a voluntary secretariat.
Coal fossils
In 1812 the French government provided Meigen with the job of finishing drawings of
From 1812 to 1814 Meigen drew some maps for the municipality of Stolberg. He also corresponded again with Count von Hoffmannsegg, until the latter sold his collection to the Natural History Museum of Berlin.
Offer from Wiedemann
In 1815, Meigen received a letter from State Attorney (Justizrat)
In 1818, Meigen's longtime friend, the tireless collector, Baumhauer died in Paris. His widow brought his collection to Aachen and got Meigen to determine it. He took on the determination of at least 50,000 specimens from Germany, France, the Pyrenees, the Alps and northern Italy and worked on it for a year and a half. The collection was then sold for 1100 Dutch guilders, part of it going to Leiden and part to Liège (German: Lüttich).
These years were very certainly hard. Because of poor harvests in 1816 and 1817, food prices rose enormously. There were 7 children in his family at this time and his income was extremely low, there being now no demand for a French teacher, the French Empire having collapsed. Eventually, through the intervention of the inspector of water supply, he got a well paid contract for some map-drawing lasting a couple of years. Astronomy also brought him some map-work.
He was able, however to make a trip to the Siebengebirge chiefly for botany and Meigen made some drawings of plants for Prof. Johann Georg Christian Lehmann a Hamburg botanist.
In 1821, Meigen made the acquaintance of Professor Heinrich Moritz Gaede of Liège, whose name he gave to Trypeta gaedii and the tachinid genus Gaedia.
In 1822, Wiedemann made a second visit to Meigen, proposing that Meigen come to Kiel and revise the Fabrician collection, and offering to defray expenses. Meigen accepted, leaving for Hamburg on 23 June 1823. He was met in Hamburg by the entomologist
On 23 July, Wiedemann and Meigen returned to Copenhagen, where Meigen stayed. On 30 July they were back in Kiel, where everything in the collections of Fabricius and Westermann was carefully examined and compared and the unknown species drawn and described. After completing the research in Kiel, both left for Hamburg. There Meigen examined the Winthem collection, but there were so many new species in it that Winthem decided to send it all to Stolberg, where it could be worked on more conveniently. Also in Hamburg, Meigen met the entomologist Sommer from Altona and the botanist Johann Georg Christian Lehmann.
The trip to Denmark and Sweden lasted altogether 12 weeks, the result of which was a series of colored drawings of more than 400 species of insects, together with their descriptions and a large number of notes and corrections. Studies of his collection of the Diptera in Fabricius' collection led to a very substantial revision.
Last years
Soon after 1822, the French school closed down completely and Meigen took the unpaid position of organist for his parish but he wrote a choral book, for which the church board paid him well. Meigen continued in this capacity until 1831.
In 1825, Meigen made a translation of
Von Winthem visited Meigen in 1826. Meigen also made a trip in that year to
After discontinuance of the work on Lepidoptera and the completion of that on Diptera with its 6th volume, Meigen had Diptera sent to him for identification from many sources. Outstanding among them were contributions from Joseph Waltl and Heinrich Georg Bronn. These induced him to work up a supplementary volume, which was notable for the division of the genera Tachina, Musca and Anthomyia into a number of genera based upon more critical characters than those used by previous French and English workers.
At the same time Meigen worked industriously, on a Flora of Germany, which was not completed until a few years before his death. The last volume of this work, also containing numerous drawings made largely from nature by Meigen himself, appeared in 1842. It was his last work.
When the French dipterologist
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Systematische Beschreibung Taf CLXVII
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Systematische Beschreibung Taf CLXVIII
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Systematische Beschreibung Taf CCLVII
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Systematische Beschreibung Taf CCXLIII
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Systematische Beschreibung Taf CXCVI
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Systematische Beschreibung Taf LXXVII
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Systematische Beschreibung Taf CCLIX
Meigen then disposed of his library and the remainder of his collections. His books and fruit and plant collections were bought by the Verein für natürliche Wissenschaften und Gewerbe (Society for natural sciences and industry) in Aachen. All of his insects other than Diptera were bought by
In 1839, the Crown-Prince of Prussia awarded Meigen a pension of 200 thalers a year.
On 3 May 1845 Meigen was presented with a doctor's diploma from the University of Bonn.
Meigen died in Stolberg near Aachen (=Aix-la-Chapelle), on 11 July 1845 at the age of 81.
Achievements
Meigen is universally recognized as the "father" of
Meigen described a vast number of European Diptera (mostly valid) and his work laid the foundations of all later work on this important insect group.
Flies described by Meigen (not complete)
Meigen described over 3,000 taxa. Here is a list of a few well-known ones.
- the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, which is a model organism in the study of genetics.
- Tephritis neesii
- Phormia regina
- Lucilia silvarum
- Criorhina berberina
- Thaumatomyia notata
- Lucilia sericata
- Muscina pascuorum
- genus Microdon
- genus Ctenophora
- genus Chrysops
- genus Haematopota
- family Culicidae
Works
Diptera The two major works are:
- Meigen, J. W., 1804 Klassifikazion und Beschreibung der europäischen zweiflügeligen Insekten in English, Classification and description of the European two-winged insects Reichard, Braunschweig.
- Meigen, J. W., 1818-1838 Systematische Beschreibung der bekannten europäischen zweiflügeligen Insekten in English, Systematic description of the known European two-winged insects. This is a seven-volume work. The first volume was published in 1818, the last in 1838.
These masterworks were preceded by
- 1800 Nouvelle Classification des Mouches A Deux Ailes(Diptera L.)d'apres un plan tout nouveau (Paris, chez J. J. Fuchs, Librairie, Rue des Mathurins, No. 334. De I'lmprimerie de H. L. Perronneau/Rue du Battoir, No. 8).
Nouvelle Classification is an octavo pamphlet of forty pages print dated both according to the
- 1803 Meigen published Versuch einer neuen Gattungseintheilung der europäischen zweiflügeligen Insekten. in Magazin für Insektenkunde (2: 259-281). This proposes a revised scheme. Meigen makes no reference to the 1800 Nouvelle Classification and only two of the new names proposed in 1800 are used. The total number of genera recognised in Gattungseintheilung der europäischen zweiflügeligen Insekten is 114, each with a brief diagnosis, and each with one or more nominal species referred to it. This is the basic plan for the two later works.
In 1908
- 1828-1830 Plates for Christian Rudolph Wilhelm Wiedemann, Aussereuropäische Zweiflügelige Insekten / beschrieben von Christ. Rud. Wilh. Wiedemann; als Fortsetzung des Meigenischen Werkes. Hamm: in der Schulzischen Buchhandlung.[3]
Lepidoptera
- Systematische Beschreibung der Europäischen Schmetterlinge Aachen; Leipzig, [1827]-1829-32.pdf including colour plates
Collections
Most of the Meigen collection is in the
External links
- Wikisite in German. Portrait.
- Biography by J. A. Förster
- animalbase Full texts of Klassifikazion und Beschreibung der europäischen zweiflügligen Insekten. (Diptera Linn.) and Systematische Beschreibung der bekannten europäischen zweiflügeligen Insekten at AnimalBase (University of Göttingen).
- „Systematische Beschreibung der bekannten europäischen zweiflügeligen Insekten“, Bd. 6, 1830
- „Systematische Beschreibung der bekannten europäischen zweiflügeligen Insekten“, Bd. 7, 1838
- Systematische Beschreibung der bekannten europäischen zweiflügeligen Insekten at BHL
- EOL Encyclopedia of Life Taxa described by Johann Wilhelm Meigen. Sometimes has very detailed links to older literature.
- Systema Dipterorum Nomenclator Full list of Diptera taxa described by Johann Wilhelm Meigen
- Gaedike, R.; Groll, E. K. & Taeger, A. 2012: Bibliography of the entomological literature from the beginning until 1863: online database - version 1.0 - Senckenberg Deutsches Entomologisches Institut. Full bibliography dates of the parts of Systematische Beschreibung der bekannten europäischen zweiflügeligenInsekten
- MNHN collections database MNHN type holdings by taxonomy
- Images of the Meigen collection via gbf
Sources and references
- J.A. Förster (1974). On the life and influence of J.W. Meigen, Mosquito Systematics, 6 (2): 79-88.
- Morge, G. 1975. Dipteren Farbtafeln nach den bisher nicht veroofentlichen Original Handzeichnungen Meigens. Tafel 1-80. Beitrage zur Entomologie 25: 383-500.
- Morge, G. 1976 Dipteren Farbtafeln nach den bisher nicht veroofentlichen Original Handzeichnungen Meigens. Tafel 81-160. Beitrage zur Entomologie 26: 441.
- Morge, G. 1976b. Dipteren Farbtafeln nach den bisher nicht veroofentlichen Original Handzeichnungen Meigens. Tafel 161-305. Beitrage zur Entomologie 26: 543.
- Pont, A. 1986 A Revision of the Fanniidae and Muscidae described by J. W. Meigen (Insecta: Diptera) Ann. Natur hist. Mus. Wien 87 B 197-253 Wien, Mai pdf
References
- ^ International Plant Names Index. Meigen.
- ^ Stone, Alan, 1941 The generic names of Meigen 1800 and their proper application (Diptera) Annals of the Entomological Society of America Volume 34, Number 2, June 1941, pp. 404-418.
- ^ Meigen, Christian Rudolph Wilhelm & Wiedemann, Johann Wilhelm (1828). Aussereuropäische Zweiflügelige Insekten. Vol. 1. in der Schulzischen Buchhandlung.