Karl Nikolaus Fraas

Karl Nikolaus Fraas (8 September 1810 – 9 November 1875), German botanist and agriculturist, was born at Rattelsdorf, near Bamberg.

After receiving his preliminary education at the gymnasium of Bamberg, he in 1830 entered the University of Munich, where he took his doctor's degree in 1834.

[1] In 1842-1843 he returned to Germany because of The Greek Revolution of September 3, 1843 all the foreign professors were expelled from the National University of Athens.

His thesis was entitled: De Smilaceis brasiliensibus and he was given a certificate of teaching proficiency for German schools.

During this period he wrote the Synopsis plantarum florae classicae where he corresponded Greek with the Latin names of plants.

[1] Karl Marx took an interest in Fraas's work, writing to Engels on 25 March 1868 that he found Fraas's 1847 work Climate and the Vegetable World throughout the Ages, a History of Both "very interesting, especially as proving that climate and flora have changed in historic times".

Marx calls Fraas "a Darwinist before Darwin" and goes on to say: This man is both a thoroughly learned philologist (he has written books in Greek) and a chemist, agricultural expert, etc.

The whole conclusion is that cultivation when it progresses in a primitive way and is not consciously controlled (as a bourgeois of course he does not arrive at this), leaves deserts behind it, Persia, Mesopotamia, etc., Greece.