Karl Ludwig Giesecke

Carl Ludwig Giesecke FRSE (6 April 1761 in Augsburg – 5 March 1833 in Dublin) was a German actor, librettist, polar explorer and mineralogist. In his youth he was called Johann Georg Metzler; in his later career in Ireland he was Sir Charles Lewis Giesecke.

His father was Johann Georg Metzler, a Protestant who worked as a tailor in Augsburg. His mother was named Sibylla Magdalena Götz. He attended the Gymnasium in Augsburg, and did well academically, as is known from the surviving remarks of his schoolmaster recommending him for university study. He attended the University of Göttingen from 1781 to 1784, studying law. He also developed a side interest in mineralogy, attending the lectures of the naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach.

It was in 1781 that he took the pseudonym by which he is now known. The name change was an effective cover for Giesecke's ancestry, which he always refused to discuss. Indeed, Giesecke's original name remained unknown to scholars until 1910, when the Danish geologist K. J. V. Steenstrup discovered an 1810 letter from his sister to the Danish authorities enquiring about the welfare of her brother, then in Greenland; the letter established Giesecke's relationship with the Augsburg Metzlers. Whittaker suggests that he chose "Giesecke" (also spelled "Gieseke") in admiration of the poet .

In 1784, he left the university to become an itinerant player, and worked in various theaters over a period of six years. In 1789, he became employed in the Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna, then under the direction of Johann Friedel. When Emanuel Schikaneder's troupe took over the theater as its new resident company later in the same year, Giesecke was one of the few players that Schikaneder retained.

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