Civic and economic zoology in nineteenth-century Germany - The "living communities" of Karl Mobius

In an effort to broaden our analytical approach to nineteenth-century Germa n science, this essay examines the intellectual and social worlds of the Ki el zoologist Karl Mobius from the late 1850s to the late 1870s. I first ana lyze Mobius's famous concept of the "bioconose" or biotic community, which appeared in an 1877 monograph on oyster-culture. Although this book seems t o exemplify the conjunction between state and university that has dominated the historiography of German science, in fact, as I go on to argue, the co nceptual framework it came from was largely developed earlier, when he work ed as a schoolteacher and natural history activist in Hamburg. An analysis of Mobius's writings and activities during his fifteen years in Hamburg (18 53-1868) shows that elements crucial to his community concept grew out of h is varied activities in the civic setting. This "civic zoology," I argue, i s a crucial site for investigating both the development of biogeographical and ecological thinking in the later nineteenth century and the broader cul ture of science among the Burgertum of Wilhelmine Germany.