Anders
Celsius
Anders Celsius (27 November 1701 –
25 April 1744) was a Swedish astronomer. He was professor of
astronomy at Uppsala University from 1730 to 1744, but traveled from
1732 to 1735 visiting notable observatories in Germany, Italy and France. He
founded the Uppsala Astronomical Observatory in 1741, and in 1742 he
proposed the Celsius temperature scale which takes his name. The
scale was inverted in 1745 by Carl Linnaeus, one year after Celsius' death
from tuberculosis.
Life
Early
life
Anders Celsius was born in Uppsala,
Sweden on 27 November 1701. His family originated from Ovanåker in
the province of Hälsingland. Their family estate was at Doma, also
known as Höjen or Högen (locally as Högen 2). The
name Celsius is a latinization of the estate's name
(Latin celsus "mound").
As the son of an astronomy professor,
Nils Celsius, and the grandson of the mathematician Magnus Celsius and
the astronomer Anders Spole, Celsius chose a career in science. He was a
talented mathematician from an early age. Anders Celsius studied atUppsala
University, where his father was a teacher, and in 1730 he too, became a
professor of astronomy there.
Career
In 1730, he published the Nova
Methodus distantiam solis a terra determinandi (New Method for Determining
the Distance from the Sun to the Earth). His research also involved the study
of auroral phenomena, which he conducted with his assistant Olof Hiorter,
and he was the first to suggest a connection between the aurora borealis and
changes in the magnetic field of the Earth.He observed the variations of a
compass needle and found that larger deflections correlated with stronger
auroral activity. At Nuremberg in 1733, he published a collection of
316 observations of the aurora borealis made by himself and others over the
period 1716–1732.
Celsius traveled frequently in the early
1730s, including to Germany, Italy, and France, when he visited most of the
major European observatories. In Paris he advocated the measurement of an arc
of the meridian in Lapland. In 1736, he participated in the
expedition organized for that purpose by the French Academy of Sciences,
led by the French mathematician Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759)
to measure a degree of latitude. The aim of the expedition was to measure
the length of a degree along a meridian, close to the pole, and compare the
result with a similar expedition to Peru, today in Ecuador, near
the equator. The expeditions confirmed Isaac Newton's belief that the
shape of the earth is an ellipsoid flattened at the poles.
In 1738, he published the De
observationibus pro figura telluris determinanda (Observations on
Determining the Shape of the Earth). Celsius' participation in the Lapland
expedition won him much respect in Sweden with the government and his peers,
and played a key role in generating interest from the Swedish authorities in
donating the resources required to construct a new modern observatory in
Uppsala. He was successful in the request, and Celsius founded the Uppsala
Astronomical Observatory in 1741. The observatory was equipped with
instruments purchased during his long voyage abroad, comprising the most modern
instrumental technology of the period.
In astronomy, Celsius began a series of
observations using colored glass plates to record the magnitude (a measure of
brightness) of certain stars. This was the first attempt to measure the
intensity of starlight with a tool other than the human eye. He made
observations of eclipses and various astronomical objects and published
catalogues of carefully determined magnitudes for some 300 stars using his own
photometric system (mean error=0.4 mag).
Celsius was the first to perform and
publish careful experiments aiming at the definition of an international temperature scale on
scientific grounds. In his Swedish paper "Observations of two persistent
degrees on a thermometer" he reports on experiments to check that the
freezing point is independent of latitude (and of atmospheric pressure). He
determined the dependence of the boiling of water with atmospheric pressure
which was accurate even by modern day standards. He further gave a rule for the
determination of the boiling point if the barometric pressure deviates from a
certain standard pressure.He proposed the Celsius temperature scale in a paper
to the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala, the oldest Swedish scientific
society, founded in 1710. His thermometer was calibrated with a value of 100°
for the freezing point of water and 0° for the boiling point. In 1745, a year
after his death, the scale was reversed by Carl Linnaeusto facilitate more
practical measurement.Celsius originally called his scale centigrade derived
from the Latin for "hundred steps". For years it was simply referred
to as the Swedish thermometer.
Celsius conducted many geographical
measurements for the Swedish General map, and was one of earliest to note that
much of Scandinavia is slowly rising above sea level, a continuous process
which has been occurring since the melting of the ice from the latest ice
age. However, he wrongly posed the notion that the water was evaporating.
In 1725 he became secretary of the Royal
Society of Sciences in Uppsala, and served at this post until his death
from tuberculosis in 1744. He supported the formation of the Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm in 1739 by Linnaeus and
five others, and was elected a member at the first meeting of this academy. It
was in fact Celsius who proposed the new academy's name.
Jón
Ólafsson of Grunnavík
Jón Ólafsson of Grunnavík (Jón
Ólafsson frá Grunnavík, also known as Jón
Grunnvíkingur or Grunnavíkur-Jón, 1705 – 1779) was an Icelandic
scholar. Originally from Grunnavík, Westfjords, northwestern Iceland,
he was active in Copenhagen, where he served as assistant to Árni
Magnússon.
He is the author of an Icelandic
dictionary and a 1732 Runologia, a treatise on runology. As in
the fire of Copenhagen of 1728, the original manuscript of the Heiðarvíga
saga was lost along with a recent copy made by Jón Grunnvíkingur, he wrote
down a summary of the saga from memory, which is the only form in which the
saga's contents survive today.
The character of Jón
Grindvicensis in Halldór Laxness's historical novel Iceland's
Bell is based on Jón Grunnvíkingur.
Wilhelm
Grimm
Wilhelm Carl Grimm (also
Karl 24 February 1786 – 16 December 1859) was a German author,
the younger of the Brothers Grimm.
Life
and work
He was born in Hanau, Hesse-Kassel and
in 1803 he started studying law at the University of Marburg,
one year after his brother Jacob started there. The whole of the
lives of the two brothers was passed together. In their school days, they had
one bed and one table in common. As students, they had two beds and two tables
in the same room. They always lived under one roof, and had their books and
property in common.
In 1825 Wilhelm married a pharmacist's
daughter; Henriette Dorothea Wild, also known as Dortchen, at age 39. Wilhelm's
marriage in no way disturbed the harmony of the brothers. As Richard
Cleasby said, “they both live in the same house, and in such harmony and
community that one might almost imagine the children were common
property.” Together, Wilhelm and Henriette had four children: Jacob Grimm
(3 April 1826–15 December 1826), Herman Friedrich Grimm (6 January 1828–16 June
1901), Rudolf Georg Grimm (31 March 1830–13 November 1889), and Barbara Auguste
Luise Pauline Marie (21 August 1832–9 February 1919).
Wilhelm's character was a complete
contrast to that of his brother. As a boy he was strong and healthy, but as he
grew up he was attacked by a long and severe illness, which left him weak all
his life. His was a less comprehensive and energetic mind than that of his
brother, and he had less of the spirit of investigation, preferring to confine
himself to some limited and definitely bounded field of work; he utilized
everything that bore directly on his own studies, and ignored the rest. These
studies were almost always of a literary nature.
Wilhelm took great delight in music, for
which his brother had but a moderate liking, and had a remarkable gift of
story-telling. Cleasby, in the account of his visit to the brothers quoted
above, relates that “Wilhelm read a sort of farce written in the Frankfort
dialect, depicting the ‘malheurs’ of a rich Frankfort tradesman on a holiday
jaunt on Sunday. It was very droll, and he read it admirably.” Cleasby
describes him as “an uncommonly animated, jovial fellow.” He was, accordingly,
much sought in society, which he frequented much more than his brother.
From 1837-1841, the Grimm Brothers
joined five of their colleague professors at the University of Göttingen to
form a group known as the Göttinger Sieben (The Göttingen Seven).
They protested against Ernst August, King of Hanover, whom they
accused of violating the constitution. All seven were fired by the king.
Wilhelm Grimm died in Berlin of an
infection at the age of 73.
Guido
von List
Guido Karl Anton List, better known
as Guido von List (October 5, 1848 – May 17, 1919) was an Austrian/German (Viennese)
poet, journalist, writer, businessman and dealer of leather goods, mountaineer,
hiker, dramatist, playwright, and rower, but was most notable as an occultist and völkisch author
who is seen as one of the most important figures in Germanic revivalism, Germanic
mysticism, Runic Revivalism and Runosophy in the late 19th
century and early 20th century, and continues to be so today.
He is the author of Das Geheimnis
der Runen (The Secret of the Runes), which is a detailed study of
the Armanen Futharkh, his intellectual world-view (as realised
in the years between 1902 and 1908), an introduction to the rest of his work
and is widely regarded as the pioneering work of Runology in
modern occultism.
Biography
Guido von List was born in Vienna in
the Austrian Empire to Karl Anton List, a prosperous middle class
leather goods dealer, and Maria List (née Killian). He grew up in
the Leopoldstadt district of Vienna. Like the majority of his fellow
Austrians at that time, his family was Roman Catholic, and he was
christened "Guido Anton List" as an infant in St Peter's Church in
Vienna on October 8, 1848.
In 1862 a visit to the catacombs beneath
the Stephansdom (St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna) made a deep
impression, and List regarded the catacombs as a pagan shrine.
As an adult he claimed he had then sworn to build a temple to Wotan when
he grew up. This he recounted in volume 2 (page 592-593) of his book Deutsch-Mythologische
Landschaftsbilder:
It was in the year 1862 - I was then in
my fourteenth year of life - when I, after much asking, received permission
from my father to accompany him and his party who were planning to visit the
catacombs [under St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna] which were at
that time still in their original condition. We climbed down, and everything I
saw and felt excited me with a kind of power that today I am no longer able to
experience. Then we came - it was, if I remember correctly, in the third or
fourth level - to a ruined altar. The guide said that we were now situated
beneath the old post office (today the Wohlzeile House No. 8). At that point my
excitement was raised to fever pitch, and before this altar I proclaimed out
loud this ceremonial vow: "Whenever I get big, I will build a Temple to
Wotan!" I was, of course, laughed at, as a few members of the party said
that a child did not belong in such a place… I knew nothing more about Wuotan
than that which I had read about him in Vollmer's Wörterbuch der
Mythologie.
Despite these artistic and mystical
leanings, Guido was expected, as the eldest child, to follow in his father's
footsteps as a businessman. He appears to have fulfilled his responsibilities
in a dutiful manner, but he took any and all opportunities to develop his more
intense mystical and naturesque interests. The trips that List had to make for
business purposes gave him the opportunity to indulge his passion for hiking
and mountaineering. This activity seems to have provided a matrix for his early
mysticism.
His father died in 1877 when List was 29
years old. It appears that neither he nor his mother had his father's keen
sense of business, and as economic times became difficult List quit the family
business to devote himself full time to his writing, at this time still of a
journalistic kind.
During this time List wrote articles for
newspapers, such as the Neue Welt (New World), Neue deutsche
Alpenzeitung (New German Alpine Newspaper), Heimat (Homeland),
and the Deutsche Zeitung (German Newspaper), which dealt with his
earlier travels and mystical reflections on the Loci (land spirits). Many of
these written newspaper articles were anthologised in 1891 in his famous Deutsch-Mythologische
Landschaftsbilder. He also had articles appear in the Leipziger Illustrierte
Zeitung and on a regular basis in the newspaper Ostdeutsche Rundschau (East
German Review), owned by the powerful publicist and parliamentary deputy Karl
Heinrich Wolf. At this time he also came to know well Georg von Schönerer,
a leading political figure and Pan-German member of the Imperial
Parliament.
He also had many articles appear in
periodicals such as Laufers Allgemeine Kunst-Chronik, Der Sammler, Das
Zwanzigste Jahrhundert, Die Gnosis, Der Deutsche, Neue
Metaphysische Rundschau, Die Nornen, Österreichische Illustrierte
Rundschau andJohannes Balzli's occult magazine Prana.
In 1878 List married his first
wife, Helene Föster-Peters. However, the marriage was not to last through
this difficult period.
Through the years 1877–1887 List was
also working on his first book-length (two-volume) effort, Carnuntum, an
historical novel based on his vision of the Kulturkampf between
the Germanic and Roman worlds centred at Carnuntum around
the year 375 CE that was published in 1888 by the Wannieck
family's organisation and publishing house Verein "Deutsche
Haus" ("German House" Association) in Brno, where
List made the acquaintance of the industrialist Friedrich Wanniheg. This
association was to prove essential to List's future development.
Throughout this period in List's life he
devoted himself to writing more neo-romantic prose, such as Jung Diethers
Heimkehr ("Young Diether's Homecoming") in 1894 and Pipara in
1895. An anthology of his earlier journalism Deutsch-Mythologische
Landschaftsbilderwas published in 1891, and List developed his writing skills
in poetic and dramatic genres as well.
In 1892 he delivered a lecture on the
ancient Germanic cult of Wuotan to the Verein Deutsche
Geschichte (German History Association), and it is said that numerous
other associations allied with this one proliferated in Austria at this time.
Another group, theBund der Germanen (Germanic League), sponsored a
performance of List's mythological dramatic poem, Der Wala Erweckung ("The
Wala's Awakening") in 1894. In another performance of this drama in 1895,
which was attended by over three thousand people, the part of Wala was read
by Anna Wittek von Stecky, a young actress who in August 1899 became
List's second wife.
During the years 1888–1899 List was
involved with two important literary associations. In May 1891 Iduna,
which had the descriptive subtitle of "Free German Society for Literature",
was founded by a circle of writers around Fritz Lemmermayer. Lemmermayer
acted as a sort of "middle man" between an older generation of
authors (which included Fercher von Steinwand, Joseph Tandler, Auguste
Hyrtl,Ludwig von Mertens, and Josephone von Knorr) and a group of younger
writers and thinkers (which included Rudolf Steiner, Marie Eugenie
delle Grazie, and Karl Maria Heidt). The name Iduna was provided by List
himself and is that of a North Germanic goddess of eternal youth and
renewal. Richard von Kralik and Joseph Kalasanz Poestion,
authors with specifically neo-Germanic leanings, were also involved in the
circle. The other organisation List was involved with was the Literarische
Donaugesellschaft (Danubian Literary Society), which was founded by List
and Fanny Wschiansky the year the Iduna was dissolved in 1893. At
this time List met Rudolf Steiner and Lanz von Liebenfels but
his association with Liebenfels did not develop until Lanz had left the Heiligenkreuz
monastery in 1899.
In August 1899, List married Anna
Wittek von Stecky.
Mountaineering
In 1871, List's writing talents were
given full rein as he became a correspondent of the Neue deutsche
Alpenzeitung ("New German Alpine Newspaper"), later called
the Salonblatt. He also began to edit the yearbook of the Österreichischer
Alpenverein (Austrian Alpine Association), of which he became secretary in
that year.
List was an ardent, enthusiastic
mountaineer and hiker. On one of these adventures List came very close to
losing his life. While climbing a mountain on May 8, 1871 in the Großes
Höllental (Larger Valley of Hell) leading up to the Rax mountain
in Lower Austria, a mass of ice gave way under his feet and he fell some
distance. He was apparently saved only by the fact that he had landed on a soft
surface covered by a recent snowfall. In memory of his good luck and to help
others, at his own expense List had the track equipped with a chain put up and
officially opened by him on June 21, 1871. It was also named (now calledGaislochsteig)
after him the "Guido-List-Steig"
On June 24, 1875, List was camping with
four friends near the ruins of Carnuntum. As the 1500th anniversary of the
Germanic tribes' defeat of this Roman garrison in 375, the evening carried a
lot of weight for List. Carnuntum became the title of List's first
full-length novel, published in two volumes in 1888. After its success, it was
followed by two more books set in tribal Germany; Jung Diethers
Heimkehr ("Young Diether's Homecoming", 1894)
and Pipara (1895). These books led to List being celebrated by
the pan-German movement. Around the start of the 20th century, he
continued with several plays.
Nobility
and title
Between 1903 and 1907, he began using
the noble title von on occasion, before finally settling on it
permanently in 1907.
Death
In late 1918, the 70 year old List
was in poor health during the final stages of World War I in which
the naval blockade of the Central Powers created food shortages in
Vienna.
In the spring of 1919, at the age of 71,
List and his wife set off to recuperate and meet followers at the manor house
of Eberhard von Brockhusen, a List society patron who lived at Langen in Brandenburg, Germany.
On arrival at the Anhalter Station at Berlin,
List was too exhausted to continue the journey. After a doctor had diagnosed a
lung inflammation, his health deteriorated quickly, and he died in a Berlin
guesthouse on the morning of May 17, 1919. He was cremated in Leipzig and
his ashes laid in an urn and then buried in Vienna Central Cemetery, Zentralfriedhof,
in the gravesite KNLH 413 - Vienna's largest and most famous cemetery
(including the graves of Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert and Strauss.)
in Vienna's 11th district of Simmering.
Philipp Stauff, a Berlin journalist,
good friend of List and Armanist, wrote an obituary which appeared in the Münchener
Beobachtercalled "Guido von List gestorben" on May 24, 1919,
Runic
revivalism
The row of 18 so-called "Armanen
Runes", also known as the "Armanen Futharkh" came to List while
in an 11 month state of temporary blindness after a cataract operation
on both eyes in 1902. This vision in 1902 allegedly opened what List referred
to as his "inner eye", via which he claimed the "Secret of the
Runes" was revealed to him. List stated that his Armanen Futharkh were
encrypted in the Hávamál (poetic Edda), specifically in stanzas 138 to
165, with stanzas 146 through 164 reported as being the 'song' of the 18 runes.
It has been said this claim has no historical basis.
The Armanen runes are still used today
by some Ásatrú adherents who consider the Armanen runes to have some
religious and/or divinatory value.
Futharkh
spelling
List noted in his book, The Secret
of the Runes, that the "runic futharkh (= runic ABC) consisted of
sixteen symbols in ancient times.".
As a side note to this, in the English
translation of the work, Stephen Flowers notes that "(the
designation futharkh is based on the first seven runes it is for this reason
that the proper name is not futhark -- as it is generally and incorrectly
written -- but futharkh, with the h at the end; for more about the basis of
this, see the Guido von List Library number 6, The primal language of the Aryan
Germanic people and their mystery language)".
Hexagonal
Crystal and the Armanen Runes
List's system was allegedly based on the
structure of a Hexagonal Crystal. You can shine light through a crystal at
different angles and project all 18 of the Armanen runes.
List's rune row was rather rigid; while
the runes of the past had had sharp angles for easy carving, his were to be
carefully and perfectly made so that their shape would be a reflection of the 'frozen
light', a pattern that he had found in his runes. All of his runes could be
projected by shining the light through a hexagonal crystal under certain
angles. Rune Hagal is so-called 'mother-rune' because its shape
represents that hexagonal crystal.
Karl Hans Welz states that the
"crystalline structure of quartz is the "hexagonal
system" which is also one of the bases of the Runic symbolism (the hexagon
with the three inscribed diameters)." and that "The hexagonal cross
section of quartz and the fact that all of the 18 Sacred Futhork Runes are
derived from the geometry of the hexagon is the basis of an enormous increase
in crystal power when it is associated with Rune images."
Influence
Guido
von List Society
A look at the signatoriesof the first
announcement concerning support for
a Guido-von-List-Gesellschaft (Guido von List Society), circa 1905,
reveals that List had a following of some very prestigious people and shows
that List, his ideology and his influence had widespread and significant
support, including that amongst public figures in Austria and Germany.
Among some 50 signatories which endorsed the foundation of the List Society
(which had an official founding ceremony on March 2, 1908) were the industrialist Friedrich
Wannieck and his son Friedrich Oskar Wannieck and Karl Lueger (the
mayor of Vienna). These supporters also included occultists such as Hugo
Göring (editor of theosophical literature at Weimar), Harald Arjuna
Grävell van Jostenoode(theosophical author at Heidelberg), Max Seiling (an
esoteric pamphleteer and popular philosopher in Munich), and Paul Zillmann (editor
of the Metaphysische Rundschau and master of an occult lodge in Berlin)
List's influence continued to grow and
attract distinctive members after the official founding of the society in 1908.
From 1908 through to 1912, new members included the deputy Beranek (co-founder
of the "Bund der Germanen" in 1894), Philipp Stauff (a
Berlin journalist and later a founding member of the Germanenorden), Franz
Hartmann (a leading German theosophist), Karl Heise (a leading
figure in the vegetarian and mystical Mazdaznan cult
at Zürich), and the collective membership of the Vienna Theosophical
Society.
