Gregor Johann Mendel: From peasant to priest, pedagogue, and prelate

Abstract

Gregor Mendel was an Augustinian priest in the Monastery of St. Thomas in Brünn (Brno, Czech Republic) as well as a civilian employee who taught natural history and physics in the Brünn Modern School. The monastery’s secular function was to provide teachers for the public schools across Moravia. It was a cultural, educational, and artistic center with an elite core of friar-teachers with a well-stocked library and other amenities including a gourmet kitchen. It was wealthy, with far-flung holdings yielding income from agricultural productions. Mendel had failed his tryout as a parish priest and did not complete his examination for teaching certification despite 2 y of study at the University of Vienna. In addition to his teaching and religious obligations, Mendel carried out daily meteorological and astronomical observations, cared for the monastery's fruit orchard and beehives, and tended plants in the greenhouse and small outdoor gardens. In the years 1856 to 1863, he carried out experiments on heredity of traits in garden peas regarded as revolutionary today but not widely recognized during his lifetime and until 16 y after his death. In 1868 he was elected abbot of the monastery, a significantly elevated position in the ecclesiastical and civil hierarchy. While he had hoped to be elected, and was honored to accept, he severely underestimated its administrative responsibilities and gradually had to abandon his scientific interests. The last decade of his life was marred by an ugly dispute with civil authorities over monastery taxation.