Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert


Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert was a German physician and naturalist.
He began his studies with theology, but turned to medicine and established himself as a doctor in Altenburg, Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. He soon gave up his practice however and devoted himself to research in Dresden. In 1809, by way of mediation from Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, he received the post of rector at a secondary school in Nuremberg.
He gave renowned lectures on fringe science, and in 1819 he occupied the chair in natural history in Erlangen where he studied botany, forestry, mineralogy and geognosy. In 1827 he moved for the last time, to Munich, where he was appointed professor; it was here that the highly popular and friendly Schubert found an embittered opponent in Lorenz Oken.
Schubert aimed to create a religiously-grounded interpretation of the cosmos. Contemporaries that included Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Jean Paul, Justinus Kerner and Heinrich von Kleist were favorable to his work. His masterpiece, Symbolism of Dreams was one of the most famous books of its time, exercising influence over E. T. A. Hoffmann, and later on, Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung. Schubert advocated an ecumenical "awakened Christianity" which found evidence for God both in Nature and in the human soul. Synthesising the Bible with the philosophy of Schelling, he was a major figure in the "later Enlightenment". In his History of the Soul, Schubert again attempted to fuse the philosophy of Herder and Schelling with the Christian tradition.
In 1824 Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius named the plant genus Schubertia in his honor.

Selected works