Page:EB1911 - Volume 28.djvu/517

 adopted for closing the timber passes alongside the needle weirs placed across the Main, with a single upper paddle 39 ft. long and 5 ft. 7 in. high in each case; and a still larger drum weir was erected about the same time for closing the navigable pass of a weir across the Spree at Charlottenburg, with an upper paddle 32 ft. long and 9 ft. high (fig. 10).

10.—Drum weir, Charlottenburg, River Spree.

A peculiar and cheaper form of drum weir has been constructed across ten bays each 75 ft. wide on the Osage river near its confluence with the Missouri, where a hollow, wooden, cylindrical sector, stiffened inside by iron framing and revolving on an axis laid along the crest of the solid part of the weir, fits into a drum at the back lined with planking having a radius of 9 ft The weir is raised by admitting water from the upper pool into a wedge-shaped space left below the sector when it is lowered in the drum which by its pressure lifts the sector out of the drum, forming a barrier 7 ft high, closing each bay of the weir. Provision has also been made for rendering the sector buoyant by forcing air into it, so that it can be raised when the head of water is insufficient to lift it by the pressure of the water from the upper pool. In spite of its high cost, the drum weir furnishes a valuable hydraulic contrivance for situations where it is very important to be able to close a weir of moderate height against a strong current and to regulate with ease and precision the discharge past a weir.

WEISMANN, AUGUST (1834–), German biologist, was born at Frankfort-on-Main, on the 17th of January 1834, and studied medicine in Göttingen. After spending three years in Rostock, he visited successively Vienna (1858), Italy (1859) and Paris (1860), and from 1861 to 1862 he acted as private physician to the archduke Stephen of Austria at Schaumburg Palace. In 1863 he went to Giessen to devote himself to biological study under Leuckart, and in 1866 he was appointed extraordinary professor of zoology at Freiburg, becoming ordinary professor a few years later. His earlier work was largely concerned with purely zoological investigations, one of his earliest works dealing with the development of the Diptera. Microscopical work, however, became impossible to him owing to impaired eyesight, and he turned his attention to wider problems of biological inquiry. Between 1868 and 1876 he published a series of papers in which he attacked the question of the variability of organisms; these were published in an English translation by R. Meldola in 1882, under the title Studies in the Theories of Descent, Darwin himself contributing a preface in which the importance of the nature and cause of variability in individuals was emphasized. Weismann's name, however, is best known as the author of the germ-plasm theory of heredity, with its accompanying denial of the transmission of acquired characters—a theory which on its publication met with considerable opposition, especially in England, from orthodox Darwinism. A series of essays in which this theory is expressed was collected and published in an English translation (Essays upon Heredity and Kindred Biological Problems, vol. i. 1889, vol. ii. 1892). Weismann published many other works devoted to the exposition of his biological views, among them being Die Dauer des Lebens; Vererbung; Ewigkeit des Lebens; Die Kontinuität des Keimplasmas als Grundlage einer Theorie der Vererbung; Das Keimplasma; Die Allmacht der Naturzäüchtung; Äussere Einflüsse als Entwicklungsreize; Neue Gedanken zur Vererbungsfrage; and Germinal-Selektion.

WEISS, BERNHARD (1827–), German Protestant New Testament scholar, was born at Königsberg on the 20th of June 1827. After studying theology at Königsberg, Halle and Berlin, he became professor extraordinarius at Königsberg in 1852, and afterwards professor ordinarius at Berlin. In 1880 he was made superior consistorial councillor. An opponent of the Tübingen School, he published a number of important works, which are well known to students in Great Britain and America.

WEISSE, CHRISTIAN HERMANN (1801–1866), German Protestant religious philosopher, was born at Leipzig on the 10th of August 1801. He studied at Leipzig, and at first belonged to the Hegelian school of philosophy. In course of time, however, his ideas approximating to those of Schelling in his later years, he elaborated with I. H. v. Fichte a new speculative theism, and became an opponent of Hegel's pantheistic idealism. In his addresses on the future of the Protestant Church (Reden über die Zukunft der evangelischen Kirche, 1849), he finds the essence of Christianity in Jesus's conceptions of the heavenly Father, the Son of Man and the kingdom of Heaven. In his work on philosophical dogmatics (Philosophische Dogmatik oder Philosophie des Christentums, 3 vols. 1855–1862) he seeks, by idealizing all the Christian dogmas, to reduce them to natural postulates of reason or conscience. He died on the 19th of September 1866.

WEISSENBURG, a town of Germany, in the imperial province of Alsace-Lorraine, district of Lower Alsace, on the Lauter, at the foot of the eastern slope of the Vosges Mountains, 42 m. N.E. of Strassburg by the railway Basel-Strassburg-Mannheim. Pop. (1900) 6946. The beautiful Roman Catholic abbey church of SS. Peter and Paul, dating from the 13th century, contains some fine early stained glass. The industries include the manufacture of paper, matches, stockings and beer, and hops and wine are also extensively cultivated. Weissenburg grew up round a Benedictine abbey which was founded in the 7th century by Dagobert II. and became the seat of a famous school. Here Otfrid, who was a native of the district, completed (c. 868) his Old High German Gospel book (see ). The town became a free imperial city in 1305. It has been the scene of two memorable battles. The famous &ldquo;Weissenburg lines,&rdquo; consisting of entrenched works erected by Villars in 1706 along the Lauter, and having a length of 12 m., were stormed in October 1793 by the Prussians and Saxons under the Austrian general Wurmser. The Allies were in their turn dispossessed by Pichegru in December and forced to retreat behind the Rhine. These lines, as well as the fortifications of Weissenburg, are now dismantled. On the 4th of August 1870 the Germans under the crown prince of Prussia, afterwards the emperor Frederick, gained the first victory of the war over a French corps (part of the army commanded by MacMahon) under General Douay, who was killed early in the engagement.