[Haeckel: a German Darwinian?]

German biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) is often considered the most renowned Darwinian in his country since, as early as 1862, he declared that he accepted the conclusions Darwin had reached three years before in On the Origin of Species, and afterwards, he continuously proclaimed himself a supporter of the English naturalist and championed the evolutionary theory. Nevertheless, if we examine carefully his books, in particular his General Morphology (1866), we can see that he carries on a tradition very far from Darwin's thoughts. In spite of his acceptance of the idea of natural selection, that he establishes as an argument for materialism, he adopts, indeed, a conception of evolution that is, in some respects, rather close to Lamarck's views. He is, thus, a good example of the ambiguities of the reception of Darwinism in Germany in the second part of the 19th century.