Heinrich Kayser, 1853-1940

Abstract

A few years before his death, Heinrich Kayser was persuaded by some of his friends to write down his memoirs. He prepared a manuscript of 342 pages which was never published. The present history of his life is based largely on this autobiography. Heinrich Kayser was born at Bingen on the Rhine on 16 March 1853. His great-grandfather, Johann Jacob Kayser, coming from peasant stock in East Prussia, was the first to change to an academic profession. He was parson, land surveyor, and philosopher who applied unsuccessfully for the professorship at the University of Königsberg which was later occupied by Immanuel Kant. Kayser’s grandfather, August Immanuel Kayser, was a prominent lawyer in Königsberg who acquired a large feudal estate (Friedrichsberg). His father, Johann Jacob Heinrich Kayser, was prevented from completing his studies of law by a serious disease of his eyes and took over the estate of his father, spending much of his time travelling all over Europe. Kayser’s mother, Dorothea Amélia von Metz, was the daughter of a Russian army officer, a refugee from the French revolution. The parents were married in Moscow (1843) and after a few years at Königsberg moved to Bingen where Heinrich Kayser was born as the youngest of a family of five. Since the family moved several times, Kayser’s education in his younger years was somewhat irregular. During several years his father gave him instruction in Latin, Greek, mathematics and history. He finished his schooling at the Sophiengymnasium in Berlin in 1872.