4 o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SKETCH OF FRANCIS LIEBER. 



By Dr. LEWIS E. HAELEY. 



FRANCIS LIEBER fled to our shores a political exile, but he 

 afterward became one of the greatest publicists of the world, 

 and shed glory on American scholarship by expounding the princi- 

 ples of liberty. He accomplished in two of our colleges the work on 

 which his fame will rest. Although he attained his scientific matu- 

 rity in America, he was born in Berlin, and received his scientific 

 training in the schools of his native land and in his intercourse with 

 some of her most noted scholars. Lieber was born March 10, 1800, 

 and his youth was passed during a time of intense political strife. 

 He was the tenth child of Frederick William Lieber; an ironmonger, 

 whose family consisted of nine sons and three daughters. From his 

 earliest years his mind was impressed with the memories of war- 

 fare, and his father delighted to explain to him the engravings on 

 the walls of the sitting room representing some honorable actions 

 of his great king. His mother was one of those noble, patriotic 

 German women who threw their gold wedding rings into the public 

 treasury, and received rings of iron in their places, bearing the im- 

 perial signet and the words " We gave gold for iron." Lieber was 

 but six years of age when the Prussian army was annihilated at Jena, 

 and the country lay prostrate at the feet of Napoleon. 



Lieber's first desire was to become a botanist. To this end he 

 entered the Botanic Garden near Berlin, but he remained there only 

 a short time on account of the ill treatment that he received from the 

 director of the garden. The guiding principle of his school life 

 came from Dr. Jahn, who settled in Berlin in 1809 to establish a 

 place for physical exercise. Lieber became one of his pupils as 

 early as 1811. Dr. Jahn realized the fact that Germany needed to be 

 brought into a proper state of enthusiasm before it would be able to 

 resist the French, and while he trained the young men for the battle- 

 field he took every opportunity to appeal to their national spirit. He 

 urged the necessity of German unity, and his hatred of France was so 

 intense that he expurgated from the language of his school all words 

 of French origin. Hence, he chose the word " turnen " as the Ger- 

 man name for his gymnastic exercises. This system of education 

 was the flowering of the seed that had been dropped by the French 

 philosopher in " Bmile," a book which brought forward a new problem 

 in the education of the young in the eighteenth century. " Emile " 

 was everywhere read, and aroused the greatest enthusiasm. The 

 teachers sought to aid the movement in various ways, but Dr. Jahn 

 made the best statement of the advantages of physical training, and 



