Arfst Arfsten

Arfst Jens Arfsten (born March 28, 1812 in Nieblum on the North Frisian island of Föhr , † March 1899 in Husum ) was a German writer .

Live and act

Arfst Arfsten was a son of Nieblumer councilor and farmer Jens Arfsten (1779-1847) and his wife Ingke, née Andresen († 1839). He learned the dyeing trade in his place of birth on Föhr and then wanted to become a teacher or pastor, which he was unable to do for financial reasons. In 1859 he bought an inn in Husum and developed a well-known and popular garden restaurant from it. After 1870 the post office bought the restaurant. After that, Arfsten ran a gardening business in which he cultivated exotic plants such as ginkgo trees .

The intellectual personalities from Husum, including Theodor Storm , often met at Arfsten . In 1852 he wrote a calendar for Föhr and Amrum , which contained the tides he had calculated himself . The reason for this was that the Schleswig-Holstein calendar did not appear that year and Arfsten did not accept the Danish calendar. In the newspaper Westseeinseln published in Wyk auf Föhr you can read many Döntjes from Arfst Arfsten. In his humorous texts he reported realistically about the people on the island. He wrote his texts in the now defunct North Frisian dialect of Nieblumer Fering and in Low German .

Arfsten had a herbarium with Flora Föhrs, which no longer exists today.

Arfsten was married twice. His first marriage was Anna Kathrine Jans from Tetenbüll , who died in 1840. His second marriage was Inge Helenge Breckling from Nieblum. He had three sons and two daughters.

literature

• Reinhard Arfsten: Arfsten, Arfst . in: Schleswig-Holstein Biographical Lexicon . Volume 1. Karl Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1970, pp. 49-50