Life and Work
1 LIFE AND WORK . Ancestry and Early Years GUSTAV THEODOR FECHNER was born on April , in Gross-Särchen, a village situated on the Neisse river in the southeastern region of Lower Lusatia.¹ His father, Samuel Traugott Fechner (–), had been a pastor there (prob- ably Lutheran) since , as his father before him had also been. Fechner’s mother Dorothea Fechner (–), née Fischer, descended likewise from a regional pastoral family. From childhood on Fechner himself, the second of five children, was meant to join the clergy, too. His older brother Eduard Clemens (–) became an artist and moved to Paris in , where he later died. The three younger siblings were Fechner’s sisters Emilie, Clementine, and Mathilde. Fechner’s father has been described as a typical pastor of enlightened times: of a zealous nature, yet open-minded for progress. He was the first in his region to have a lightning rod mounted on the church; he upset the congregation by not wearing a wig during sermons; he had his children vaccinated, and he was a passionate fruit-grower. His young children were taught Latin—at the age of three, little Theo (Fechner’s nickname) spoke Latin as fluently as he did German. Fechner’s mother was affectionate, cheerful, friendly, and poetic, a woman who gathered a social circle around herself in all of life’s situations. Following their father’s premature death in , both sons were sent for a Copyright © Michael Heidelberger from Nature From Within History few years to their maternal uncle, also a pastor, in Wurzen and Ranis in Thuringia. In Gustav Theodor was enrolled in secondary school in Sorau (now called Zary), a town near the village where he was born; later he spent two years at the School of the Cross in Dresden, where the Fechner children were reunited with their mother.
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