Felix Eberty Explained

Georg Friedrich Felix Eberty (26 January 1812  - 7 July 1884) was a German lawyer, amateur astronomer, and writer.

Biography

Eberty was the son of the banker Hermann Eberty (name changed from Heimann Joseph Ephraim to Hermann Eberty in 1810) and his wife Babette, née Mosson. Felix Eberty's grandfather was the banker Joseph Veitel Ephraim; his great-grandfather was the court factor Veitel Heine Ephraim.[1] Eberty married the landowner's daughter, Marie Amalie Catharina, née Hasse (born 21 May 1822 in Barottwitz near Breslau; died in 1887 in Arnsdorf) and was the father of four daughters, including the eldest Maria Carlotta Margarethe Stobbe, and the third, the short story author Babette von Bülow (pseudonym Hans Arnold).

Eberty grew up in Berlin and studied at the Cauer Institution. He also received private lessons from mathematician Jakob Steiner.[2] From 1831 to 1834, he studied law in Berlin and Bonn. He completed his legal internship in Berlin at the municipal court and at the chamber court under the president of the chamber court Wilhelm Heinrich von Grolman.[3] In 1840, he became evaluator of the chamber court and then advisor to judges in Hirschberg, Lübben and Breslau. In 1849, after leaving the judicial service, he completed his habilitation, studied natural and criminal law and became an associate professor in 1854. After completing his studies, he became a member of the Spree Tunnel literary association in Berlin, with which he remained associated throughout his life. He died on 7 July 1884 in Arnsdorf in the Giant Mountains.[4]

Scientific work

In 1846, while Eberty was still working in the judicial service, he published the 28-page work Die Gestirne und die Weltgeschichte: Gedanken über Raum, Zeit und Ewigkeit (The Stars and World History: Thoughts on Space, Time and Eternity) in Breslau under the pseudonym F.Y.[5] The book contemplated a faraway observer seeing "the earth at this moment as it existed at the time of Abraham".[6] It was translated into English and published in London in the same year, without an author being named.[7] A year later, Eberty, still as F. Y., and under the same title with the addition of II. Heft, published a supplement.[8]

In 1855, in the first edition of his Naturwissenschaftliche Volksbücher, Aaron Bernstein presented observations on space, time and the speed of light that "an unknown sharp-eyed thinker" had made in an anonymous writing.[9] In his youth, Albert Einstein read these popular science books, which are considered to have had a formative influence on his interest and his future career.[6] [10]

In 1874, Eberty published a second German edition, this time under his full name.[11] In the meantime, the work had enjoyed great success in England and the US. In the preface to the 1874 edition, Eberty states that the sixth edition was already out of print in London in 1854.[12] W. von Voigts-Rhetz had considered this edition to be the work of an English-speaking anonymous author and translated it into German in 1859.[13] Albert Einstein wrote a foreword for a new edition of The Stars and World History in 1923 in which he called Eberty "an original and ingenious person."[14]

In his 2006 book Zwischen den Sternen: Lichtbildarchive (Between the Stars: Photographic Archives), image scholar Karl Clausberg claims that Eberty's writing influenced Camille Flammarion, Hermann von Helmholtz, Albert Einstein, Ludwig Klages and Thure von Uexküll as well as Walter Benjamin.[15] He included a facsimile of Eberty's writing in his book and commented on it extensively.[16]

The Einstein biographer Jürgen Neffe also sees an influence on the young Albert Einstein and writes about Eberty's writing: "Here we also find a decisive thought on the special theory of relativity: The moment travels with light."[17]

Publications

Notes and References

  1. Web site: 29 October 2023 . de-DE . Theodor Fontane und die protestantischen Juden – Ephraim Veitel Stiftung .
  2. Felix Eberty: Jugenderinnerungen eines alten Berliners. Nach handschriftlichen Aufzeichnungen des Verfassers von J. von Bülow ergänzte und neu herausgegebene Ausgabe. Verlag für Kulturpolitik, Berlin 1925, S. 238.
  3. Felix Eberty: Jugenderinnerungen eines alten Berliners, Berlin 1878, S. 344–424
  4. Encyclopedia: Singer . Isidore . Cohen . Max . Eberty, Georg Friedrich Felix . 2002 . .
  5. F. Y. [Felix Eberty]: Die Gestirne und die Weltgeschichte. Gedanken über Raum, Zeit und Ewigkeit, Verlag August Schulz, Breslau 1846
  6. Albert Einstein's Sci-Fi Stories. Jimena. Canales. The New Yorker . 20 November 2015. www.newyorker.com.
  7. Book: Eberty, Felix. Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie . 29 July 1910. Duncker & Humblot. 473.
  8. F. Y. [Felix Eberty]: Die Gestirne und die Weltgeschichte. Gedanken über Raum, Zeit und Ewigkeit, 2. Heft, Verlag Georg Philipp Aderholz, Breslau 1847
  9. [Karl Clausberg]
  10. [Jürgen Renn (Historiker)|Jürgen Renn]
  11. Felix Eberty: Die Gestirne und die Weltgeschichte. Gedanken über Raum, Zeit und Ewigkeit. Kern, Breslau 1874.
  12. Felix Eberty: Die Gestirne und die Weltgeschichte. Gedanken über Raum, Zeit und Ewigkeit. Kern, Breslau 1874, S. VIII
  13. Web site: retro|bib - Seite aus Meyers Konversationslexikon: Ebert - Eberwein. www.retrobibliothek.de.
  14. Felix Eberty: Die Gestirne und die Weltgeschichte. Gedanken über Raum, Zeit und Ewigkeit. Hrsg. von Gregorius Itelson. Rogoff, Berlin 1923.
  15. Clausberg 2006.
  16. Book: Clausberg . Karl . Zwischen den Sternen: Lichtbildarchive: was Einstein und Uexküll, Benjamin und das Kino der Astronomie des 19. Jahrhunderts verdanken . 2006 . Akad.-Verl . 978-3-05-004043-1 . de . [Beigef. Werke Nachdr. der Ausg.] Breslau, Schulz, 1846 und 1847 .
  17. [Jürgen Neffe]

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