Gregor Mendel Austrian botanist, teacher, and Augustinian prelate,
the first to lay the mathematical foundation of the science of genetics, in what came to be called Mendelism
Gregor Mendel (July 20, 1822 - January 6, 1884) his childhood name was Johann, which he changed to Gregor when he became a Priest.
Johann was born as one of the three children to his peasant parents Anton and Rosine Mendel on July 20 1822 (baptized on July 22) on his family’s farm, in what was then Heinzendorf, a province of the Austrian Empire, now the Czech Republic. The place of birth village called Heinzendorf, is now called Hyncice. The area borders where Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic come together.
Mendel's childhood home, the one with the grey top
CHILDHOOD is the most impressionable of all the stations in one's life. It molds a person's character, spins dreams, and leaves everlasting memories. Mendel's father owned a 45-acre farm; however, the family lived a frugal life with little money for "extras." Johann worked with his father a lot in the family orchard, which stimulated his interest in the things of nature. He learned to love growing plants and gardening, a love that he brought to his scientific research when he grew up.
Another thing that influenced his later life was his puzzlement about why he had a mixture of his parents' traits, but his sisters did not. Johann had the short stocky build of his father and the cheerfulness and language skills of his mother. His elder sister Veronica was more like the father, both in appearance and disposition, while a younger sister Theresia was more like the mother.
Johann spent his early youth in that rural setting, until age 11. The garden, the fields, and the brook were Johann's playfields. The brook winding along the road, in particular, must have been his favorite retreat. Here there were fish and crayfish to catch, small mammals to observe, bird nests to spy out in the bushes, and a great variety of plants to enjoy and to wonder what their names might be. Only years later would he learn that the yellow, star-shaped flowers are the Gagea lutea or that the pink racemes of spurred flowers are Corydalis cava. Johann's playfields were, however, also places of hard work; at that time, every pair of hands counted on a farm, even those of a child. The list of his duties and responsibilities around the house that undoubtedly had always been long, grew, and became diversified with age: sweep the yard; take the ducks down to the brook and keep an eye on them; feed the rabbits and the hens; chop the wood; fetch water from the well for the kitchen and the stables; clean the stables and the barn; take the goat to the pasture, rake over the hay on the meadow; take care of Theresia, the younger sister; hoe the vegetable garden; in the field … the list was inexhaustible. Every time he thought he had five minutes to pursue his own interests, he would hear either his mother or his father calling him, which invariably meant that the next task awaited him. Only on Sunday afternoons did he find himself relatively free. Sunday mornings were reserved for church attendance.
Small Chapel in Hyncice
Johann, Veronika, and their father always dressed up to attend High Mass at Vrážné, a half-hour walk from their house. Although Hynčice had a small chapel, regular services were held only in the spacious baroque church at Vrážné. There Johann would listen to sermons delivered by the vicar, his future teacher and the man who would soon determine his fate, Father Johann Schreiber. The vicarage at Vrážné also housed the registers in which Johann Mendel's birth was recorded, perhaps erroneously, and the cemetery around the church was the site where his ancestors lay and where one day his parents, and later also his kin, would find their final rest.
When Johann reached school age, his leisure time was reduced even further. The day's workload did not become any lighter—it was simply compressed into a shorter time interval. Often his path after school led him directly to the field where he would toil until nightfall when he finally arrived home and had finished his daily chores and done his homework, it was already bedtime.
In 1831 Johann’s parents sent him to Elementary school in Hynice, but hoped, as their only son, that he would one day take over the farm. Farmers were compelled to labor a few days every week for local landowners, getting only four days a week to farm their own land.
Johann learned the "3 R’s - reading, writing and arithmetic," plus the essentials of fruit growing and bee keeping. To reach the Hynčice public school, he had to cross the brook and walk a hundred meters or so up the hill. It was a single-class school, which meant that pupils of different ages and at different stages in their education, often numbering up to 80 heads, were all taught in one room. The teacher of such a large, heterogeneous group had to have the skills of an orchestra conductor to keep the various other groups busy while he worked with one of them. The village teacher, Thomas Makitta, and the vicar, Johann Schreiber, apparently possessed this skill. Schreiber taught religion and natural history, Makitta the rest. To include natural history in the school's curriculum was highly unusual, and the disapproving authorities put an end to this Unfug (nonsense), as one of the officials called it.
Both Makitta and Schreiber were quick to realize that Johann had special ability, being what we would call today as "gifted and talented." Johann had heard about a more exciting school at Leipnik, a town about 13 miles away. It was much like today's Middle Schools. Two boys in Heinzendorf were going to this school and on their vacations they impressed Johann and the other local children with all the new things they were learning.
Both Mendel's teachers argued with his parents that his talent would be wasted if they did not allow him to study, regardless of the sacrifice it involved. Anton Mendel resisted the idea initially, for he was expecting Johann to take over the farm one day, but eventually he gave in. In the autumn of 1833 Mendel moved to the Piarist School in Lipnik.
Both Mendel's teachers argued with his parents that his talent would be wasted if they did not allow him to study, regardless of the sacrifice it involved. Anton Mendel resisted the idea initially, for he was expecting Johann to take over the farm one day, but eventually he gave in. In the autumn of 1833 Mendel moved to the Piarist School in Lipnik.
Ponds near Pohoř
And so, after a one-year trial period at the Piarist school in Lipník in the late summer of 1834, the 12-year-old Johann loaded his meager belongings, consisting of a few articles of clothing and large food provisions, onto a horse-drawn cart and set out on the day-long journey to Opava. The route took him past the ponds near Pohoř, which he probably knew from his wanderings, past the picturesque castle in Fulnek, through the dense, dark forests of Vítkovská vrchovina, the scene of many robber and highwayman stories, past the Hradec castle, where a few years earlier Ludwig van Beethoven had refused to play the piano for the officers of the occupying French army, and on to the Silesian capital. The sight of the imposing building, the Gymnasium (grammar school) in Opava (in German called Troppau), that now bears his name, must have both impressed and terrified him. Childhood in his field of dreams was over. Six long years of hardship and deprivation lay before him …
