Academic Forest Garden Giessen

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Historical plan of the Academic Forest Garden Gießen in a lithograph from 1877.

The Academic Forest Garden Gießen is located in the Schiffenberg Forest below the monastery on the Schiffenberg in the south of the central Hessian city ​​of Gießen . It used to be the teaching and experimental garden of the oldest university forest institute in the world.

background

Forester Karl von Gall founded a small English-style park in the forest garden. Here he had a hill created artificially, which was crowned by a "temple".
Carl Justus Heyer took care of extensive reforestation

In 1777 an economics faculty with new subjects such as veterinary medicine and agricultural science was created at the University of Giessen . This also included forest science , which appeared in the course catalog for the first time since the summer semester of 1778. One of the first students was Georg Ludwig Hartig , who later formulated the concept of sustainability . The Faculty of Economics failed after only eight years, but forest science was retained with its own institute in the Faculty of Philosophy . This academic upgrading of forest science was unique up to then, the institute was the first forestry school in the world at a university.

In order to take account of the new subject, a forest botanical section was added to the Gießen Botanical Garden in 1800 . From 1825 it was relocated to the Schiffenberg Forest. The reason was that the Hessische Forstlehranstalt had been founded in the same year, which was initially independent as a state institution and was not incorporated into the university until 1831. Johann Christian Hundeshagen (1783–1834), who had previously headed the forestry school, was also appointed director of the institute.

Until then, the Gießen forest had been severely damaged by excessive logging and forest pasture . Pigs, sheep and goats were driven into the forest and bit the young plants that could not grow back . The fallen leaves were collected and scattered in the stables (forest litter) so that nutrients were constantly withdrawn from the soil. Although forest regulations restricted the use in many ways, they proceeded haphazardly from a forestry perspective.

District forester Carl Justus Heyer had almost 400 hectares of wasteland reforested from 1824 to 1829 against the bitter resistance of the Giessen cattle owners . In order to break their resistance, he sometimes let work at night and planted the trees from the most distant points on the city. Because of their undemanding nature, he mainly planted pines and later mixed beech and oak under it (still today, large stands of old pine in the Schiffenberg Forest can be traced back to Heyer).

The forest garden

When the forestry school was founded, a plant garden was also necessary. Since the director of the Hundeshagen forestry school, who was actually in charge, did not get along with the chief forest master and Hessian privy councilor Karl von Gall, he took little part in the design of the new forest garden. The garden is therefore the work of Galls, who laid it out in 1825 - and not in 1831, as is written on a memorial stone - on an area of ​​initially half a hectare. By 1830 he had planted "close to 400 different forest plants", including numerous foreign tree species. The press report speaks of a nursery 25 acres in size, in which forest botany could be studied and cultural experiments carried out. A “pleasure garden” must have existed here since 1822 or a little earlier. The newspaper article already quoted mentions that "the forest botanical garden often serves as a goal for the pleasure-loving residents of Gießen."

The pond also belongs to the "park" that was created by von Gall. Because of the irrigation, there was a dispute with the Giessen Rent Office.

In 1829 Heyer was promoted to inspection officer of the Giessen forest; at the same time he received a teaching position. In March 1830 the ministry's patience with Hundeshagen came to an end, and the management of the forest garden was ordered through Heyer. Heyer took care of the forest garden in 1830/31 and then for twenty years from 1835 to 1856, at times he was also responsible for the botanical garden in the city center. He advocated mixed stocks very early on. The experimental areas on which he tried out various mixtures of tree species can still be seen today. In 1845 the garden was leased by the university. At times, practically all of the Hessian-Darmstadt chief forester were trained here.

In the years 1870 and 1877 the garden was measured and an area of ​​5.7 hectares was determined, 4.1 hectares of which were covered with trees. Another hectare was added in 1883. Not all plants imported from foreign countries and other climatic zones survived: when an inventory was made in 1890, there were still 270 different tree and shrub species.

From a geological point of view, the forest garden is located on Miocene clays in the Giessen basin . The basalt ceilings of the Vogelsberg end in the immediate vicinity. In terms of soil type, it is a pseudogley .

End of forest science in Giessen

New leaves sprout from the fallen and sawn off trunk of a tulip tree with little root contact.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the forest science teaching centers in Germany were no longer busy. In 1938, the Giessen Forest Institute was therefore set up in favor of forest science training at the University of Göttingen with the forestry faculty in Hann. Münden dissolved. A 160 year old tradition came to an end.

Today exist in the forest garden, more than 200 different tree and shrub species, including such rare species as wild service tree and tulip tree . In 1985 the forest garden was reopened to the public. The Schiffenberg Forest has remained a state forest to this day.

getting there

Logo of the forest garden

The Academic Forest Garden Gießen can be reached from Gießen via Schiffenberger Weg. Behind a slight right-hand bend, outside the Gießener Ring , there is a parking lot on the left (east) of the street; from there it is only a few minutes' walk to the forest garden. There is also a bike path alongside the road. The Gießen Forstgarten bus stop is located at the forest garden . The garden is located between the road and a forest path from the parking lot up to the Schiffenberg, via which the nearest entrance can be reached. From Philosophikum II of the university, it can be reached on foot in a short hike through the lower Schiffenberg forest (first in the direction of Schiffenberg and before the path really climbs to the right) (without car traffic).

literature

Web links

Commons : Akademischer Forstgarten Gießen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ General forest and hunting newspaper . 1830, p. 558, quoted from: Schwarz, p. 13.
  2. ^ Ibid. , P. 23.

Coordinates: 50 ° 33 ′ 26.1 "  N , 8 ° 42 ′ 51.12"  E