Die Zelle, das Leben und der Organismus: Giuseppe Meneghini und die Frühphase der Zelltheorie im habsburgischen Venetien.

The cell theory of 1838–1839 was the first synthetic theory in the history of the life sciences. However, a look at the cell studies carried out in Northern Italy shows that, at least in the first half of the nineteenth century, the atomistic-reductionist narratives of the history of cell theory are too shortsighted. In Veneto, the establishment of a lasting Habsburg rule brought along, among other things, a switch from purely mechanist to organicist philosophies. The Paduan researcher of cryptogamic flora, Giuseppe Meneghini, began to be interested in cells in the late 1830s. His principle scholars of reference were not Schleiden and Schwann but Hugo von Mohl and Viennese Stephan Endlicher. Cells became the basis of his holistic and developmental-evolutionary conception of life.