GANS, EDUARD (1797-1839), German jurist, was born at Berlin on the 22nd of March 1797, of prosperous Jewish parents. He studied law first at Berlin, then at Göttingen, and finally at Heidelberg, where he attended Hegel’s lectures, and became thoroughly imbued with the principles of the Hegelian philosophy. In 1820, after taking his doctor’s degree, he returned to Berlin as lecturer on law. In 1825 he turned Christian, and the following year was appointed extraordinary, and in 1828 ordinary, professor in the Berlin faculty of law. At this period the historical school of jurisprudence was coming to the front, and Gans, predisposed owing to his Hegelian tendencies to treat law historically, applied the method to one special branch—the right of succession. His great work, Erbrecht in weltgeschichtlicher Entwicklung (1824, 1825, 1829 and 1835), is of permanent value, not only for its extensive survey of facts, but for the admirable manner in which the general theory of the slow evolution of legal principles is presented. In 1830, and again in 1835, Gans visited Paris, and formed an intimate acquaintance with the leaders of literary culture and criticism there. The liberality of his views, especially on political matters, drew upon Gans the displeasure of the Prussian government, and his course of lectures on the history of the last fifty years (published as Vorlesungen über d. Geschichte d. letzten fünfzig Jahre, Leipzig, 1833-1834) was prohibited. He died at Berlin on the 5th of May 1839. In addition to the works above mentioned, there may be noted the treatise on the fundamental laws of property (Über die Grundlage des Besitzes, Berlin, 1829), a portion of a systematic work on the Roman civil law (System des römischen Civil-Rechts, 1827), and a collection of his miscellaneous writings (Vermischte Schriften, 1832). Gans edited the Philosophie der Geschichte in Hegel’s Werke, and contributed an admirable preface.
See Revue des deux mondes (Dec. 1839).
GÄNSBACHER, JOHANN BAPTIST (1778-1844), Austrian musical composer, was born in 1778 at Sterzing in Tirol. His father, a schoolmaster and teacher of music, undertook his son’s early education, which the boy continued under various masters till 1802, when he became the pupil of the celebrated Abbé G.J. Vogler. To his connexion with this artist and with his fellow-pupils, more perhaps than to his own merits, Gänsbacher’s permanent place in the history of music is due; for it was during his second stay with Vogler, then (1810) living at Darmstadt, that he became acquainted with Weber and Meyerbeer, and the close friendship which sprang up among the three young musicians, and was dissolved by death only, has become celebrated in the history of their art. But Gänsbacher was himself by no means without merit. He creditably filled the responsible and difficult post of director of the music at St Stephen’s cathedral, Vienna, from 1823 till his death (July 13, 1844); and his compositions show high gifts and accomplishment. They consist chiefly of church music, 17 masses, besides litanies, motets, offertories, &c., being amongst the number. He also wrote several sonatas, a symphony, and one or two minor compositions of a dramatic kind.
GANTÉ, a cloth made from cotton or tow warp and jute weft. It is largely used for bags for sugar and similar material, and has the appearance of a fine hessian cloth.
GANYMEDE, in Greek mythology, son of Tros, king of Dardania, and Callirrhoë. He was the most beautiful of mortals, and was carried off by the gods (in the later story by Zeus himself, or by Zeus in the form of an eagle) to Olympus to serve as cup-bearer (Apollodorus iii. 12; Virgil, Aeneid, v. 254; Ovid, Metam. x. 255). By way of compensation, Zeus presented his father with a team of immortal horses (or a golden vine). Ganymede was afterwards regarded as the genius of the fountains of the Nile, the life-giving and fertilizing river, and identified by astronomers with the Aquarius of the zodiac. Thus the divinity that distributed drink to the gods in heaven became the genius who presided over the due supply of water on earth. When pederasty became common in Greece, an attempt was made to justify it and invest it with dignity by referring to the rape of the beautiful boy by Zeus; in Crete, where the love of boys was reduced to a system, Minos, the primitive ruler and law-giver, was said to have been the ravisher of Ganymede. Thus the name which once denoted the good genius who bestowed the precious gift of water upon man was adopted to this use in vulgar Latin under the form Catamitus. Ganymede being carried off by the eagle was the subject of a bronze group by the Athenian sculptor Leochares, imitated in a marble statuette in the Vatican. E. Veckenstedt (Ganymedes, Libau, 1881) endeavours to prove that Ganymede is the genius of intoxicating drink (μέθυ, mead, for which he postulates a form μῆδος), whose original home was Phrygia.
See article by P. Weizsäcker in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie. In the article [Greek Art], fig. 53 (Pl. I.) gives an illustration of Ganymede borne aloft by an eagle.