Messerschmidt, Daniel Gottlieb

He studied medicine at the universities of Jena and Halle (graduated in 1707 ^[2] ). In 1716 he defended his dissertation on the topic “On Mind as the Dominant Principle of All Medical Science,” and received the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Then medical practice in the city of Danzig , scientific studies in the field of medicine, zoology , botany, further study of Ancient Greek , Latin , Hebrew . Messerschmidt was a young physician in Danzig when he was recommended to Peter I by Johann Philipp Breyne ( German Johann Philipp Breyne ), whose collections were examined by the tsar as a person who can go to Siberia for natural history research.

In early April 1718, Messerschmidt arrived at the invitation of Peter I in St. Petersburg to collect collections and explore the natural wealth of Russia . At that time Messerschmidt “was a young man, passionately devoted to science, far from seeking, from practical life, a scientist. <...> Messerschmidt really had an encyclopedic education of that time - it was a doctor and naturalist, a talented draftsman, a Latin poet, a philologist who knew Oriental languages ​​and quickly learned Russian ” ^[1] . In July of that year, he, along with the Russian fleet, visited Cape Gangut and visited Finland .

After an hour-long conversation between Peter I and Messerschmidt, on November 5, 1718, a decree of Peter I appeared on sending Dr. Messerschmidt to Siberia “to find all kinds of rarities and pharmaceutical items: herbs, flowers, roots and seeds and other articles in medicinal formulations.” This decree put Messerschmidt in direct subordination to the Medical Chancellery and its archivist and President of the Faculty of Medicine L. Blumentrost , where he had to send all the collected materials and from where the salary and running money were to be paid to him in Siberia.

According to the contract concluded with him, Messerschmidt was obliged to go to Siberia to study its geography , "natural history", medicine, medicinal plants , infectious diseases, monuments, antiquities, a description of peoples, and "all the sights in general." Later, the Medical Office of Messerschmidt was instructed to describe the animal and mineral worlds, collect manuscripts, and study archaeological sites and languages ​​of Siberia . For this he received 500 rubles a year; although the ruble was then actually more expensive than the modern one, but still this amount was negligible compared to what other foreigners received. But Messerschmidt went to Siberia for the love of science. The many-sided responsibilities undertaken by him were not the result of a frivolous attitude to his forces. Messerschmidt was a man of tremendous capacity for work - this is evident from what he managed to do. He made stuffed animals, painted birds and plants, conducted meteorological observations, determined the height of the pole . He drove alone, without permanent assistants ^[1] . In Tobolsk, Messerschmidt received a manuscript of the History of the Turks of the Khiva Khan Abulgazi from Swedish captive officers, thanks to which this important source for the history of Central Asia became known for the first time to the scientific world ^[3] .

On April 28, 1721, a note about the angle “between Komarova and the village of Krasnaya” appears in the diary of D. G. Messerschmidt, and on August 9 or 10, 1721 he opened the “Fire-Breathing Mountain” [Tolmachev, 1909, p. 5; Kovtun, 2010, p. 46], and only on September 11, 1721, “the informer [b] Mikhailo Volkov about [b] revealed against his denunciation up the Tom River, from Verkhotomsk ostrog seven versts, a red burnt mountain ...” [Perevalov, 2003, p. 316- 335]. The ensuing examination, perhaps in February-April 1722, an examination of the selected samples revealed the presence of coal: “No. 1: Coal from Tomsk, the informer Mikhail Volkov” [RGADA, f. 271, op. 1, book 620, l. 198], and the denunciation itself “Filed June 4 on the day of 1722” [RGADA, f. 271, op. 1, book 620, l. 193]. Consequently, D.G. Messerschmidt, Lieutenant Eenberg and, probably, F.I. Stralenberg, appear to be the co-authors of the first written reference to the first, documented Kuzbass coal deposit "between Komarova and the village of Krasnaya", that is, on Krasnaya Gora, samples of which were later received and presented by M. Volkov. Messerschmidt himself, who personally discovered the Ognedyshushaya Gora coal deposit near Kuznetsk, is also the direct pioneer of the Kuzbass coal. ^[four]

He had no other instructions, no period of his stay in Siberia was established, nor did he have any clear travel route. According to V.I. Vernadsky, with the travels of Messerschmidt “the natural science study of Russia begins, they are the founders of that great collective scientific work that has been continuously and continuously continuing from 1717 to the present day, more and more expanding both in strength and in width seized interests ” ^[1] . Having left Petersburg in 1719 , he returned from his trip back to Petersburg only after 8 years ^[5] .

Messerschmidt bothered with the Siberian authorities to bring him all sorts of “antiquities belonging to them, supposedly pagan sheytans (idols), great mammoth bones, ancient Kalmyk and Tatar letters and their forefathers, as well as stone and circle grave images”; in addition, he was looking for Mongolian manuscripts, the first was engaged in comparing the languages ​​of Siberian foreigners ^[6] and the first understood the historical importance of their comparison ^[7] .

Messerschmidt's journey was completely exceptional in the breadth of his tasks and in the mass of material he brought. But Messerschmidt could not and did not have time to process the collected. When he returned to Petersburg in 1727, he was unable to get along with his superiors, with the Medical College, to which he was subordinate. He returned from the expedition, nervous and sick, as he writes, “having undergone great works and trips, lost his health from intolerant multiple swamps and streams, removed ancient mammoth bones, all kinds of stones and piercings in Siberia” ^[8] . The material of Messerschmidt was to be delivered to the Kunstkamera , examined and studied by the academicians of the newly established Academy of Sciences in agreement with the researcher. Apparently, on this basis, Messerschmidt had constant clashes - he didn’t deliver the inventories on time, he was detained by incoming boxes, seized and reviewed things, and those that could be useful for the Kunstkamera were kept from his own things, and so on. And most importantly, they did not give salaries and rewards for the trip ^[1] . Messerschmidt was arrested and charged with “embezzlement of the state treasury,” but he was soon acquitted, worked on field diaries, and prepared a manuscript of the 10-volume “Surveys of Siberia, or Three Tables of Simple Kingdoms of Nature” containing information on historical ethnography, geography, economics, and flora and fauna ^[9] .

Most of the materials and collections of Messerschmidt died in a fire in the Kunstkamera building [1] in 1747 ^[9] .

Messerschmidt fought in St. Petersburg for two years, marrying here a local German woman, whom he believed he had seen in one of his visions while traveling. Finally, he was released abroad and in 1731 he went to Danzig. But fate pursued him. The ship was wrecked and Messerschmidt returned to his homeland, having lost his property and his records. Messerschmidt could not stand it for a long time in Danzig, in a gloomy melancholy he returned again to Petersburg, where, however, with his independent character, he failed to achieve a well-deserved attitude. According to L. I. Bakmeister , who apparently transmitted the stories of his contemporaries, Messerschmidt was “a gentle man ( fr. Du meilleur charactére ), but gloomy ( humeur sombre ) and uncommunicative, who considered humiliation to achieve a well-deserved reward” ^[10] . He died in need in St. Petersburg, supported by few friends (including F. Prokopovich ). A part of his library — very diverse scientific books of the 16th – 18th centuries — was bought by the Academy of Sciences ^[11] , and a part turned out to be at Moscow University . His daughter remained to live in Russia and lived in abundance ^[1] .

Undoubtedly, the work of Messerschmidt was not without a trace. Although very little appeared on his journey in a timely manner ^[12] , his diaries remaining in the manuscript and the scientific collections brought by him from Siberia were used.

So, his plants were described and used - after his death - in Petersburg, Buksbaum and Amman , Gmelin used them. Only a few were described by himself in the Memoirs of the Paris Academy of Sciences, where Peter the Great brought them in 1720.

His cartographic discoveries and numerous Siberian observations were used by Stralenberg . Later, Georgi and Pallas made extracts from his discoveries and printed them 60–70 years after his journey ^[13] . Here, by the way, definitions of latitudes are given (32 points along the Lower Tunguska ), which were new not only in the Pallas era (1782), but also in the times of Middendorf (1860), which were the basis of the map. Errors in his definitions reach 1–5 degrees - for his time and means, an allowable error ^[14] . Messerschmidt was the first to explore the Central Siberian Plateau ^[15] . Taking pictures of the area where it was possible, Messerschmidt found that the images of the Ob, Angara, Lower Tunguska rivers on the previous maps were far from accurate ^[9] .

Messerschmidt studied and described the salt mines of Solikamsk , the Uktus mining and Lyalynsky smelters , coal deposits on the Lower Tunguska, ore deposits of the Nerchinsk region; compiled a map of Siberia (from the Urals to Yeniseysk ) with an indication of mineral deposits, mining enterprises and metallurgical plants; collected collections of minerals and ores of the Urals and Transbaikalia (149 samples; some of these samples were included by MB Lomonosov in his “ Mineral Catalog ”) ^[16] .

In Siberia, Messerschmidt was the first to discover and describe permafrost . ^[9]

Messerschmidt’s diaries, kept in manuscripts at the Academy of Sciences ^[17] , were used by all expeditions to Siberia that traveled there in the 18th and 19th centuries. For example, in a letter to Gmelin in 1739, Steller writes that he therefore does not give a description of the anatomy of maral in his work, as he knows that it is described in detail in Messerschmidt's diaries ^[18] . And now these diaries are not only of historical interest: Messerschmidt visited places where there was no scientist’s leg after him. Georges and Pallas printed small excerpts from them, but the significance of this first learned traveler in Russia is still not sufficiently appreciated ^{[1] [19]} .

In the upper reaches of the Yenisei, Messerschmidt and F. Stralenberg discovered the "Yenisei inscriptions", the oldest written monuments of the Turkic - speaking peoples ^[20] .

In addition, dictionaries with the languages ​​of the population of Siberia remained from Messerschmidt, “Siberia perlustrata” - the main collection of the expedition's results.

There is evidence that in 1736 some Siberian plants were grown in the Academic Botanical Garden on the 2nd line of Vasilievsky Island in St. Petersburg from seeds that were sent at the time by Messerschmidt from the expedition ^[1] .

• Forschungsreise durch Sibirien 1720-1727. Tagebuchaufzeichnungen / Hrsg. von E. Winter, G. Uschmann, G. Jarosch. - Berlin, 1962-1968. - T. 1-4. - (Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte Osteuropas).

In 1834, V. G. Besser named one of the species of wormwood in honor of Messerschmidt - Artemisia messerschmidtiana Besser .

Messerschmidt's name appears on the pediment of the building of the Department of History of the Irkutsk Regional Museum of Local Lore (the former building of the East Siberian Department of the Russian Geographical Society ) among the people who made a significant contribution to the knowledge of Siberian land.

In 2014, in honor of Daniil Gottlieb Messerschmidt, scientists from the Biology Research Institute of Irkutsk State University named the new endemic species of the Baikal amphipod crustacean Eulimnogammarus messerschmidtii (Eulimnogammmarus Messerschmidt) ^[21] .

• Bodnarsky M. S. Essays on the history of Russian geography. - M .: Nauka, 1947.
• Materials for the history of the imperial Academy of Sciences. t.1. - St. Petersburg: 1885.
• Materials for the history of the expeditions of the Academy of Sciences in the XVIII and XIX centuries. Comp. V.F. Gnucheva. Ed. V.L. Komarov. // Proceedings of the Archive LO AN. Vol. 4. - M. - L .: 1940.
• Mirzoev V.G. Historiography of Siberia (XVIII century). - Kemerovo: 1963.
• Novlyanskaya M.G. Philip Johann Stralenberg. His work on the study of Siberia / M. G. Novlyanskaya; Repl. ed. M.I. Belov . - M.-L .: Nauka, 1966 .-- 96 p.
• Napolsky VV Udmurt materials D. G. Messerschmidt. Diary entries, December 1726 Izhevsk: Udmurtia, 2001.
• Novlyanskaya M. G. Daniil Gottlieb Messerschmidt and his work on the study of Siberia / M. G. Novlyanskaya; Repl. ed. M.I. Belov ; Ed. Coll .: A. L. Yanshin (previous) and others; USSR Academy of Sciences. - L .: Science. Leningra. Department, 1970 .-- 184 p. - (Scientific and biographical series).
• Yarosh G.F. I. Tabbert-Stralenberg - satellite of Siberian researcher D. G. Messerschmidt // Bulletin of the Siberian Branch of Sciences. No. 1 (136), no. 1. - Novosibirsk: 1968.
• Strahlenberg Ph.J. Das Nord- und Östliche Theil von Europa und Asia. Stockholm, 1730.
• Pallas PS Messerschmidts siebenjahrige Reise in Sibirien // Neue nordische Beitrage. - Spb., 1782. - T. III.

• Messerschmidt, D.G. (Neopr.) . Eastern literature. Date of treatment March 29, 2011.
• Napolskikh V.V. Twice Forgotten (D. G. Messerschmidt - the first researcher of the Udmurt language and culture)
• Sytin A.K. Features of Russian botanical illustration of the first half of the 18th century