Old Botanical Garden (Marburg)

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On the left the white willow (still standing in 2007), on the right the tulip tree
The line of sight to the Elisabeth Church

The Old Botanical Garden of the University of Marburg is a 3.6 hectare botanical garden in the Hessian city of Marburg . It is located below the Pilgrimstein street a few hundred meters south of the Elisabeth Church in the city center of Marburg. It was laid out as a French pleasure garden by the Teutonic Order House as early as 1786 .

history

The humanist, poet, doctor and botanist Euricius Cordus , who is considered to be one of the founders of scientific botany in Germany, founded a private botanical garden between 1527 and 1533 at the so-called Glaskopf in the south-east of Marburg, where he carried out excursions with his students. Nothing further is known about this garden and its history.

After the merger of the Collegium Carolinum in Kassel with the University of Marburg in 1786, under Professor Conrad Moench , the botanical garden was laid out on the so-called vineyard west of the Elisabeth Church. After Georg Wilhelm Franz Wenderoth (1774–1861) took over the area south of the Elisabethkirche from the Deutschordenshaus in 1810, the botanical garden was expanded and, until 1814, a new plant was built at the current location. Therefore he is called the "father of the botanical garden". The Botanical Institute at Pilgrimstein 4 was built in the neo-Gothic style from 1873 to 1875 . In addition to the sandstone building, the other buildings were a half-timbered building in which the scientific and technical managers lived, the greenhouses, the supply rooms and an old pot shed.

In the 1960s, the number of students continued to rise, so it was decided to outsource some departments. In the immediate vicinity of the new building for the Biology Department, a 20-hectare New Botanical Garden was laid out on the Lahn Mountains between 1961 and 1977 . Günther Grzimek from Kassel was commissioned with the design .

Todays use

Magnolia and a view of the German Language Atlas

Although still owned by the university, the old botanical garden is mainly used by the residents as a public green area. The Institute for Pharmaceutical Biology is now located in the former Botanical Institute . The half-timbered building was converted into the university guest house. In addition to the now listed supply rooms, a music house and community center were built.

The uniqueness of this garden monument is based to this day on the successful combination of a "science garden" with "English garden art" . It still shows important traces of its history today. This concerns both the history of garden art and the history of the natural sciences from the times of the 'only' descriptive "natural historians" according to Carl von Linné , then the "plant geography" of Alexander von Humboldt to the time of the evolutionary attempts at explanation by Charles Darwin or Ernst Haeckel to Laboratory botany.

Parking areas

Plan of the old botanical garden

In the 1970s, numerous maintenance-intensive departments with mainly herbaceous plants and bushes were relocated to the new botanical garden on the Lahnberge. Almost all of the greenhouses were demolished and a music house was built in their place . The following departments remain in the old botanical garden:

Alpinum

Wild plant species protection project "Urbanity and Diversity" in the Federal Program for Biological Diversity with beetroot on the grass lawn right next to the former Alpinum (2019)

After being covered with earth in 1977, only various types of pine and rhododendrons remain in the Alpinum , but no herbaceous alpine plants. Instead, a new, larger Alpinum was built on the Lahn Mountains .

Medicinal plant garden

The medicinal plant garden in front of the Institute for Pharmaceutical Biology was laid out in the 1950s for teaching and demonstration purposes and is now maintained by the “Old Botanical Garden” group of friends. Herbal medicinal plants can mainly be seen, including the speedwell ( Veronica chamaedrys ), the monkshood ( Aconitum napelios ), the tormentilla ( Potentilla erecta ), the bulbous buttercup ( Ranunculus bulbosus ), the mullein ( Verbascun thapsus ) and the iris ( Iris germanica ).

Fragrance and touch garden

The fragrance and touch garden was donated by the “Marburger Rosenfreunde” in 1982 and dismantled in 2019. Numerous particularly strongly fragrant plants could be seen here, especially roses . This part of the garden made it possible for blind people to get to know plants up close and personal. The paths in this blind garden were secured by a railing. The plants themselves were in raised beds made of concrete , which also served as railings.

Arboretum

The 38 m high tulip tree in autumn colors;
left the old sessile oak, half right in the background the upper town with the buildings of the physics department, right a red beech
The 7 m (circumference) thick white willow (right) in the Old Botanical Garden in Marburg; in the middle a pyramid poplar and on the left a zelkove , each in autumn colors

The arboretum and the plant-geographical department form the focus of the old botanical garden; some trees are over 200 years old. The tallest tree in the park and downtown Marburg is a 38 m high tulip tree ( Liriodendron tulipifera ) planted between 1811 and 1814 - one of the tallest tulip trees in Germany. The largest tree in the park is a plane tree ( Platanus acerifolia ) planted before 1845 with a trunk circumference of 6 m, a height of 34  m and a crown diameter of 40 m. Only a white willow ( Salix alba ) planted in 1860 with a trunk circumference of around 7 m at the pond was even thicker, partly preserved as dead wood for biodiversity and environmental education since 2017 ; slightly thinner than both is today 30  m high sessile oak ( Quercus petraea ) from the Urbestand. In addition to just a few deciduous trees, various conifers in the Pinetum also reach a height of around 30 meters.

Numerous spring flowers such as Märzenbecher ( Leucojum vernum ) and crocuses ( Crocus ) grow in the meadows .

From April 2014 to 2018, the northwest part of the Old Botanical Garden with the plane tree at the former location of the women's clinic, where construction work on the new university library (ZUB) had been initiated, was temporarily cordoned off.

Support association

To support the Botanical Garden, the Association of Friends of the Old Botanical Garden came together in 1993 to support the maintenance and care of the special and older trees.

See also

literature

sorted alphabetically by author

  • Horst Becker u. a .: The old botanical garden in Marburg an der Lahn. (The Blue Books), Königstein 1997, ISBN 3-7845-0855-3
  • Joachim Bürger: Directory of the large trees in the Old Botanical Garden in Marburg, status winter 1994/95, summer 1995. Unpublished report on behalf of the Phillips University of Marburg (1995)
  • Chronicle of the Philipps University of Marburg, Marburg 1887–1963
  • Gerlinde Hlatky, Martina Umathum: Between the world garden and the city garden. New perspectives for the old botanical garden in Marburg. Unpublished thesis at the University of Kassel, Department 13 (1995)
  • Joseph Hölzl, K. Schmidt, Gerhard Zenk: Trees and bushes in the old botanical garden of the Philipps University of Marburg. Script, ed. from the Institute for Pharmaceutical Biology (1989)
  • Wilhelm Kolbe: The sights of Marburg and its surroundings. Marburg 1884
  • Barbara Lehmann: Julius Wilhelm Albert Wigand (1821–1886). Professor of botany and pharmacognosy in Marburg. Diss. Marburg 1973
  • Rudolf Schmitz: The natural sciences at the Philipps University of Marburg 1527-1977. Marburg 1978
  • Jutta Schuchard: Carl Schäfer 1844–1908. Life and work of the neo-Gothic architect. Diss. Marburg 1974 (Materials on Art of the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 21, Research Company of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, Working Group Art History), Marburg 1979
  • Ingeborg maintenance student: Georg Wilhelm Franz Wenderoth (1774–1861). Diss. Marburg (sources and research on Hessian history 75), Marburg 1989, p. 53
  • Georg Wilhelm Franz Wenderoth: The plant garden of the University of Marburg. Marburg 1850
  • Julius Wilhelm Albert Wigand: The Marburg Botanical Garden. Marburg 1867, 1880

Web links

The park below the retaining wall from the Pilgrimstein city balcony with the ZUB construction site (April 2016)
Commons : Alter Botanischer Garten (Marburg)  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Parkpflegewerk Alter Botanischer Garten Marburg (PDF), Hans-Werner Kuhli, website of the University of Marburg, October 24, 2018.
  2. ↑ Citizens' project to strengthen plant diversity starts on April 7, 2018 , University of Marburg,
  3. ↑ Fragrance and touch garden is being dismantled , message from the University of Marburg from August 16, 2019
  4. ↑ a b Cultural monuments in Marburg III: The Old Botanical Garden - the Marburg , April 2014
  5. ↑ a b c d e f The tallest trees in the Old Botanical Garden , Freundeskreis Alter Botanischer Garten Marburg e. V.
  6. ↑ The tallest tulip trees in Germany on monumentaltrees.com ( the Marburg tulip tree on Marburg-Impressionen.de)
  7. ↑ The Marburger Silberweide on monumentaltrees.com
  8. ↑ The landmark of the Botanical Garden will be preserved - Overturned white willow in the Old Botanical Garden should serve environmental education , press release of the University of Marburg, 10 August 2017.

Coordinates: 50 ° 48 ′ 45 ″  N , 8 ° 46 ′ 20 ″  E