Raoul Heinrich Francé

Raoul Heinrich Francé (May 20, 1874, in Vienna, Austria – October 3, 1943, in Budapest, Hungary) was an Austro-Hungarian botanist, microbiologist as well as a natural and cultural philosopher and popularizer of science. His botanical author abbreviation is "Francé".
Biography
Francé (birth name: Rudolf Heinrich Franze) was born on 20 May 1874 in Altlerchenfeld (Vienna) and studied as a self-taught very early in analytical chemistry and "Mikrotechnik" (microscopy).
At 16 he was the youngest member of the Royal Hungarian scientific society, as its deputy magazine editor, he worked from 1893 to 1898.
From 1897 Francé studied biology for eight semesters and became a student under the Hungarian protozoa scientist (Protozoenforscher) Geza Entz.
During this time he undertook fourteen botanical expeditions.
In 1898 he was appointed Deputy Head of the Institute of Plant Protection of Agricultural Academy in Hungarian-Altenburg.
Here he published his first natural philosophical work.
Thereupon Francé received in 1902 the invitation to come to Munich.
In 1906 he founded the "Deutsche Mikrologische Gesellschaft" (German micrological Company) and its institution over which he presided as director.
He was editor of this company and co-founder of the journal Mikrokosmos (1907).
He was editor of other periodicals, such as Jahrbuch für Mikroskopiker and Mikrologische Bibliothek.
In 1906 Francé initiated the eight-volume monumental work Das Leben der Pflanze ("The Life of Plants"), whose first four volumes (1906–1910) are from his own pen.
The publishing company advertised this book as "Pflanzen-Brehm" ("Plant-Brehm", after the famous book "Brehms Tierleben").
In 1922, he published a popular version of the scientific evidence on the soil biota in a booklet "Das Leben im Ackerboden" (Life in the soil).
Throughout his busy life he wrote 60 books and a variety of popular science articles and writings.
Francé's Germs of Mind in Plants was his only book translated into English by A. M Simons. The book revolted against mechanistic botany and argued that plants are like humans because they have a sense life and purpose. Francé was not satisfied with the position held by neuropsychology but he did not claim that plants can feel pain or have a soul. It was negatively reviewed as a philosophical, not a scientific work.
In the "Walter Seifert Verlag" he was the editor of the journal Telos – Halbmonatsschrift für Arbeit und Erfolg) ("Telos – Fortnightly Magazine for Work and Success"). As a renowned graphic artist Francé developed the technique of "feather stitch" (Federstich), which is rooted in the copper engraving (Kupferstich).
Stages of his life are Dinkelsbühl, Wroclaw, Salzburg, Munich and Dubrovnik-Ragusa. In his life he wrote many books in which he anticipated many modern ecological ideas. Francé died of leukemia in 1943 in Budapest. He is buried together with his wife in Oberalm, Austria.
Legacy
In 1898, botanist Ernst Lemmermann published Franceia, which is a genus of green algae belonging to the family Oocystaceae and named in Francé's honour.
Organic farming is based in part on the findings by Francé, which were published in his books "Das Edaphon" (:wikt:edaphon, any animal or plant found in soil), 1913, and "Das Leben im Ackerboden", 1922, (Life in the soil) and a series of articles in the journal Mikrokosmos made available for a broad public. But this scientific source is usually concealed.
His wife Annie Francé-Harrar, a well-known biologist and author, worked many years with him and continued after his death in 1943 parts of his scientific work.
Today Francé is rediscovered as the founder of "Biotechnik" (Now called "Bionics"). His books Das Edaphon and Das Leben im Ackerboden were again published as reprints since 1959.
Many of his then and now progressive ideas only gained their assessment at the end of the 20th century.
In Munich and Dinkelsbühl a street bears his name.
Works
Germs of Mind in Plants. 1905.
Das Sinnesleben der Pflanzen. 1905.
Les sens de la plante. 2013. .
Die Natur in den Alpen. Leipzig 1910
Die Alpen gemeinverständlich dargestellt. Leipzig 1912
Die silbernen Berge. Stuttgart 1912
Die Welt der Pflanze. Berlin 1912
Das Edaphon. Untersuchungen zur Oekologie der bodenbewohnenden Mikroorganismen. München 1913.
Die Gewalten der Erde. Berlin 1913
Spaziergänge im Hausgarten. Leipzig 1914
Die technischen Leistungen der Pflanzen. (Grundlagen einer objektiven Philosophie II). Leipzig 1919
Einführung in die wissenschaftliche Photographie. Gemeinsam mit Gambera. Stuttgart 1920
Das Gesetz des Lebens. Leipzig 1920
Der Weg der Kultur. Leipzig 1920
Die Pflanze als Erfinder. Stuttgart 1920
München. Die Lebensgesetze einer Stadt. (Grundlagen einer objektiven Philosophie III. Teil). München 1920
Zoesis. Eine Einführung in die Gesetze der Welt. München 1920
Bios. Die Gesetze der Welt. (Grundlagen einer objektiven Philosophie IV-V. Teil). Stuttgart und Heidelberg 1921
Das Leben der Pflanze. Stuttgart 1921
Das Leben im Ackerboden. Stuttgart 1922.
Die Kultur von morgen. Ein Buch der Erkenntnis und der Gesundung. Dresden 1922
Ewiger Wald. Ein Buch für Wanderer. Leipzig 1922
Süd-Bayern. Berlin 1922
Das wirkliche Naturbild. Dresden 1923
Der unbekannte Mensch. Stuttgart und Heilbronn 1923
Die Entdeckung der Heimat. Stuttgart 1923
Die Welt als Erleben. Grundriß einer objektiven Philosophie. (Grundlagen einer objektiven Philosophie VI). Dresden 1923
Plasmatik. Die Wissenschaft der Zukunft. Stuttgart und Heilbronn 1923
Das Buch des Lebens. Ein Weltbild der Gegenwart. Berlin 1924
Die Seele der Pflanze. Berlin 1924
Grundriß einer vergleichenden Biologie. (Grundlagen einer objektiven Philosophie I). Leipzig 1924
Richtiges Leben. Ein Buch für jedermann. Leipzig 1924
Telos, die Gesetze des Schaffens. Dresden 1924
Das Land der Sehnsucht. Berlin 1925
Der Dauerwald. 1925
Der Ursprung des Menschen. Stuttgart und Heilbronn 1926
Bios - Die Gesetze der Welt. Taschenbuchausgabe Leipzig: Kröner 1926
Der Weg zu mir. Der Lebenserinnerungen erster Teil. Leipzig 1927
Phoebus. München 1927
Vom deutschen Walde. Berlin 1927
Der Organismus. München 1928
Naturgesetze der Heimat. Wien und Leipzig 1928
Urwald. Stuttgart 1928
Welt, Erde und Menschheit. Berlin 1928
Die Waage des Lebens. Eine Bilanz der Kultur. Leipzig 1929
So musst du leben! Eine Anleitung zum richtigen Leben. Dresden 1929
Das Leben vor der Sintflut. Berlin 1930
Korallenwelt. Der siebente Erdteil. Stuttgart 1930
Lebender Braunkohlenwald. Eine Reise durch die heutige Urwelt. Stuttgart 1932
Naturbilder. Wien 1932
Braunkohle - Sonnenkraft. Berlin 1934
Von der Arbeit zum Erfolg. Ein Schlüssel zum besseren Leben. Dresden 1934
Sehnsucht nach dem Süden. Gemeinsam mit Annie Francé-Harrar. Leipzig 1938
Luft als Rohstoff. 1939
Lebenswunder der Tierwelt. Eine Tierkunde für Jedermann. Berlin 1940
Leben und Wunder des deutschen Waldes. Berlin 1943
New editions
Die Entdeckung der Heimat. Reprint (1923). Mit einer Einführung von Gerhard Tenschert. Asendorf 1982
Das Leben im Boden. Das Edaphon. Reprint (Das Edaphon 1913 and Das Leben im Ackerboden 1922). Einführung von René Roth, Ontario/Kanada, Edition Siebeneicher, Deukalion Verlag 1995
Literature
Andreas Daum, Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert: Bürgerliche Kultur, naturwissenschaftliche Bildung und die deutsche Öffentlichkeit, 1848–1914. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998 end. edition 2002, including a short biography.
René Romain Roth: Raoul Heinrich Francé And The Doctrine Of Life. 2000. Biography.
Stephen Sokoloff: Raoul Francé's Heritage - A Nightmare for Specialists. 1993.
Oliver Botar: Raoul Heinrich France and Early 20th Century Central European Biocentrism. 2010
Klaus Henkel: "Die Renaissance des Raoul Heinrich Francé." Mikrokosmos, 86 (1): 3-16, 1997
Werner Nachtigall: "Der Bildungswert der Kleinwelt. Was bedeuten R. H. Francés „Gedanken über mikroskopische Studien“ für unsere Zeit?" Mikrokosmos, 86 (6): 321–328, 1997
See also
D'Arcy Thompson (On Growth and Form, 1917)
References
External links
In memoriam: Raoul Heinrich Francé (1874–1943)
Stiftung Raoul Heinrich Francé and Annie Francé-Harrar
Mikrokosmos. Journal founded by Raoul Heinrich Francé.
1874 births
1943 deaths
20th-century Austrian philosophers
20th-century Austrian botanists
Organic farmers
Scientists from Vienna
Scientists from Austria-Hungary