Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg is an
18th-century German scientist,
satirist and
anglophile, most famous for his notebooks published posthumously (which he himself called "waste books", using the
English bookkeeping term).
Born into a poor
pastor family, Lichtenberg became a
hunchback due to a malformation of the
spine before his adulthood. Aided by a local patron, in 1763 he entered
Göttingen University, where in 1769 he became
extraordinary professor of
physics, and six years later
ordinary professor. He held this post till his death.
One of the first scientists to introduce
experiments with apparatus in their lectures, Lichtenberg was a most popular and respected figure in the European intellectual circle of his time. He maintained good relations with most great figures of that era, including
Goethe and
Kant. In 1784
Alessandro Volta visited Göttingen especially to see the man and his experiments. In 1793 he was elected a member of the
Royal Society.
As a physicist, today he is remembered for his investigations in
electricity, for discovering branching discharge patterns on
dielectrics now called
Lichtenberg figures. This discovery was the forerunner of modern day
Xerography. He also proposed the standardized paper size system used all over the world today (except in the
US and
Canada), known as
ISO 216, which has A4 as the most commonly used size (in one of his letters dated October 25, 1786 to Johann Beckmann).
Invited by his students, he visited
England twice, from Easter to early summer 1770 and from August 1774 to Christmas 1775, where he was received cordially by
George III and
Queen Charlotte. Great Britain impressed him, and he became a well-known anglophile after the visits.
He had many romances. Most of the girls were from poor families. In 1777 he met Maria Stechard, then aged 13, who lived with the professor permanently after 1780. She died in 1782. The relation between the man and his "little daughter" was made into a novel by
Gert Hofmann (which has been translated by his son Michael Hofmann into English, with the title
Lichtenberg and the Little Flower Girl). In the following year he met the 22-year-old Margarethe Kellner. He married her in 1789, in order to give her a
pension, as he thought he was to die soon. She gave him six children, and outlived him by 49 years.
Lichtenberg was prone to
procrastination. He failed to launch the first ever
hydrogen balloon, and although he always dreamed of writing a novel à la
Fielding's
Tom Jones, he never finished more than a few pages. He died at the age of 56, after a short illness.
|
Lichtenberg's monument at the marketplace in Göttingen. |
The "waste books" (Lichtenberg rendered it roughly as
Sudelbuch in
German) are the notebooks he kept from his student days until the end of his life. Each volume was accorded a letter of the alphabet from A, which begun in 1765, to L, which broke off at Lichtenberg's death in 1799.
These notebooks first became known to the world after the man's death, when the first and second editions of
Lichtenbergs Vermischte Schriften (1800-06 and 1844-53) were published by his sons and brothers. Since the initial publications, however, notebooks G and H, and most of notebook K, were destroyed or disappeared. Those missing parts are believed to contain sensitive materials. The manuscripts of the remaining notebooks are now preserved in Göttingen University.
The notebooks contain quotations that struck Lichtenberg, titles of books to read, autobiographical sketches, and short or long reflections. It is those reflections that help Lichtenberg earn his posthumous fame. Today he is regarded as one of the best
aphorists in the Western intellectual history. Some scholars have attempted to distil a system of thought out of Lichtenberg's scattered musings. However, Lichtenberg was not a professional philosopher, and had no need to present, or to have, any consistent philosophy.
Admirers of Lichtenberg's waste books include
Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche,
Freud and
Wittgenstein. The latter three have been inspired considerably by Lichtenberg. Lichtenberg is not read by many outside Germany. A notable exception is the Chinese scholar and wit
Qian Zhongshu, who quotes the
Waste books in his works many times.
Leo Tolstoy also held Lichtenberg's writings in high esteem. A crater on the
Moon,
Crater Lichtenberg, has been named in his honour.
As a satirist, Lichtenberg takes high rank among the German writers of the 18th century. His biting wit involved him in many controversies with well-known contemporaries, such as the
Swiss physiognomist
Johann Kaspar Lavater whose science of
physiognomy he ridiculed, and
Johann Heinrich Voss, whose views on
Greek pronunciation called forth a powerful satire,
Über die Pronunciation der Schöpse des alten Griechenlandes.
Based on his visits to England, his
Briefe aus England, with admirable descriptions of
Garrick's acting, are the most attractive of his writings published during his lifetime. He contributed to the
Göttinger Taschen Calendar from 1778 onwards, and to the
Göttingisches Magazin der Wissenschaften und Litteratur, which he edited for three years (1780-1782) with
J. G. A. Forster. He also published in 1794-1799 an
Ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche in which he described the satirical details in
William Hogarth's prints.
Works published during his lifetimeBriefe aus England, 1776-78
Über Physiognomik, wider die Physiognomen, 1778
Göttingisches Magazin der Wissenschaften und Litteratur, 1780-85 (ed. by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and Georg Forster)
Über die Pronunciation der Schöpse des alten Griechenlandes, 1782
Ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche, 1794-1799
Complete works in GermanSchriften und Briefe, 1968-72 (4 vols., ed. by Wolfgang Promies)
English translationsThe Lichtenberg Reader, 1959 (trans. and ed. by Franz H. Mautner and Henry Hatfield)
The World of Hogarth. Lichtenberg's Commentaries on Hogarth's Engravings, 1966 (trans. by Innes and Gustav Herdan)
Hogarth on High Life. The Marriage à la Mode Series, from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's Commentaries, 1970 (trans. and ed. by Arthur S. Wensinger and W. B. Coley)
Aphorisms, 1990 (trans. with an introduction and notes by
R. J. Hollingdale), reprinted as
The Waste Books, 2000
*
The Lichtenberg Society*
Original texts at the German Projekt Gutenberg*
Compilations of biographies and images*
Brief biography at Kirjasto (Pegasos)*
Book review: G. C. Lichtenberg: a "spy on humanity"*
Book review: Aphorisms by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg*
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg : Experimental Physics from the Spirit of Aphorism (
PDF)
