Johann Wilhelm Meigen
Johann Wilhelm Meigen was a German entomologist famous for his pioneering work on Diptera.
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 due to the Seven Years' War when 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 natural history. A lodger in the household, a state surveyor named Stamm, gave Meigen instruction in mathematics. Another family friend, a Reformed Church organist and teacher called Berger, gave him lessons from his 10th year on piano, orthography, and calligraphy. Later on, in 1776, he also taught him French.
Meigen became Berger's assistant, going to Mülheim with him. There he saw for the first time a systematic collection of butterflies, and here he also learned how to collect and prepare insects.
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. The only entomological work in his possession at this time was Moder'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, 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 Diptera, were made using a two-volume work by Philipp Ludwig Statius Muller, a German translation of Linnaeus's Natursystem published in the Netherlands by Houttyn. He soon made his first discovery; the Linnean genera were too inclusive and a better classification could be arrived at using wing venation. This conclusion had already occurred to both Moses Harris in England and Louis Jurine in Geneva, but at the time Meigen was unaware of this. Sensing an important step forward, he secured the works of Fabricius and from that time concentrated on Diptera.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. Using this, a lens of about 6-power, and his own very sharp eyesight and visual memory, Meigen arrived at his next important conclusion; that the Diptera could only be classified using character combinations. This 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 species from around the world. 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, two 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 Count Lacépède who had come to Stolberg to visit the brass works. They talked about natural history and Meigen showed Count Lacépède his drawings of Diptera. The following day Meigen was asked to visit Count Lacépède, who asked him to join Capt. Baudin's voyage around the world as a botanist. Meigen declined.
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 dipteran 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, 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 coal fossils. At this time his work day began usually at about 4 in the morning and lasted until late in the evening for 314 days of each year. All free time was spent with the study of entomology; mostly Diptera, but also other orders. He also studied history and mathematics. At this time Meigen drew and colored many more species for Die Fliegen.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 Christian Rudolph Wilhelm Wiedemann asking if there was any prospect that his work begun in 1804 could be continued. He offered access to the Fabricius collection in the University of Kiel. Then, in the summer of 1816, Wiedemann came to Stolberg and stayed eight days to outline an ambitious project. He had material sent to Meigen from the Vienna Museum, from the Hoffmannsegg collection in Berlin, and from the Peter Simon Pallas collection. Meigen worked constantly and in 1818 the first volume of the new and enlarged edition of Die Fliegen came out, followed by the others until the 7th volume appeared in 1838. For this last volume Meigen had to make the lithographic plates himself to cut expenses. He also prepared 19 lithographic plates for Wiedemann's Aussereuropaische Zweiflugler. The first volumes of Die Fliegen were published by Meigen himself, but the costs were high, in spite of a considerable list of subscriptions. The Schulz bookdealers in Hamm took over the job with a sizeable honorarium.In 1818, Meigen's longtime friend and tireless collector, Baumhauer, died in Paris. His widow brought his collection to Aachen and got Meigen to identify it. He took on the identification 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.
These years were very certainly hard. Because of poor harvests in 1816 and 1817, food prices rose enormously. There were seven children in his family at this time and his income was extremely low, there being now no demand for a French teacher, with 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 Hamburg botanist for Professor Johann Georg Christian Lehmann.
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.