Civic and Economic Zoology in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The "Living Communities" of Karl Mobius

Poetry and Precision: Johannes Thienemann, the Bird Observatory in Rossitten and Civic Ornithology, 1900–1930

“…212-218;De Bont, 2009, p. 219. On the complicated relationship between natural history and experimental biology at the turn of the century: Nyhart, 1996;Allen, 1998;Nyhart, 2009. measuring instruments, it was also possible to take the speed and direction of the wind into account. The set-up was far from spectacular, but the results were generally seen as innovative.…”

From the oyster bank to ecology

“…Maebius was also one of the most important and influential zoologists of his time, whose concurrent scientific and popular writings and mutually reinforcing research and civic activities helped his innovative concept to emerge, as Nyhart (1998) has shown in an earlier essay. Unfortunately, for long Maebius's various contributions were neither widely known nor fully acknowledged, although some attempts were made recently, on the occassion of the one hundred anniversary of his death, to remind us of his significance even today (see Glaubrecht 2008a, b).…”

“…In the course of her analysis of contributions to nineteenth century science Lynn Nyhart, professor of history of science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has already looked into Karl Maebius' "unlikely career" (Nyhart 1998). He started as elementary school teacher to become researcher, university professor and museum director, thus moving from practical natural history to economic zoology and thence to ecological theory and museum reform.…”

How to become museum director: lessons from the decisive years 1883 to 1887 and Karl August Möbius' appointment at the Zoological Museum in Berlin

“…He was not only the epitome of a German Gelehrten, or scholar, but a most influential museum director with a rare combination of many talents, abilities as a reformer as well as expertise as scientist, hardly to be ever found again in this position. The series of Maebius' outstanding achievements in biology have only recently been fully appreciated, in particular by Nyhart (1998Nyhart ( , 2009 (2008a, b; 2010). Most importantly, Maebius is today honoured for establishing ecology as a biological discipline, and foremost for having developed the concept of the Lebensgemeinschaft, the biocenosis or living community.…”

“…As Nyhart (2009) illustrated in her account of Maebius and others of his time, he was one of the "practical naturalists" who became the first and foremost popularizers of natural history and modern nature, with Maebius standing at the roots of both ecology and marine biology. Karl Maebius not only had an "unlikely career" (Nyhart 1998), starting as elementary school teacher to become university professor and museum director; in his curriculum we also see the populist beginning of what we know today as animal ecology and its foundation of an academic discipline as it becomes integrated into modern science (Nyhart 2009). In addition, Maebius was one of the few zoologists at his time to realize very early the extraordinary magnitude of what we today call biodiversity as well as the fundamental importance of sharpening our species concepts.…”