Carl Heyer (forest scientist)

Carl Justus Heyer

The Bessunger Forsthaus in Darmstadt (2009)

Carl Justus Heyer (born April 9, 1797 in the Bessunger Forsthaus, Darmstadt ; † August 24, 1856 in Gießen ) was a German forestry practitioner, teacher and forest scientist .

Life

Like his contemporaries Georg Ludwig Hartig and Johann Heinrich Cotta, Carl Justus Heyer came from a forest ranger family . After attending grammar school and the master's school run by his father, he went on to study in Giessen. For a short time he was also a student of Cotta in Tharandt , rather from 1817 he was active in various positions in the Hessian forest administration.

Due to his immense workload, he was noticed by Johann Christian Hundeshagen , who in 1824 gave him the position of second teacher (management of a teaching area) in the newly founded "Hessian Forestry School" in Gießen. The employment relationship broke up when Hundeshagen, already marked by his illness, became increasingly ill-tempered. Heyer quit his service at the school and in 1831 became forester in the service of Count zu Erbach-Fürstenau to take over the management of his heavily devastated forests in the Odenwald . After Hundeshagen's death, he returned to the University of Gießen in 1835 and now took his position, but kept his position as a forester until 1843.

Heyer combined great practical competence with well-founded theoretical knowledge. He is said to have been an excellent teacher and wrote much-noticed works on the topics of forest management , silviculture and income theory . It is thanks to Heyer that his contributions to statics - a forerunner of later forest management - made mathematics more firmly anchored in forest science. In the course of his work with forest management , Heyer also developed a formula for calculating the rate of cut of forest stands. Heyer also pioneered the promotion of forest research. Above all, Heyer's extensive standard work Der Waldbau oder die Forstproductenzucht (1854) continued to have an impact for a long time and experienced several new editions in updated form until the first decade of the 20th century. In it he coined the famous “golden rule” of thinning : “Early, often, moderately.” His silviculture book was to be the beginning of a broad encyclopedia of forest science , which Heyer was no longer able to continue due to his rapidly deteriorating health.

Along with his contemporaries Georg Ludwig Hartig , Johann Heinrich Cotta , Friedrich Wilhelm Leopold Pfeil , Johann Christian Hundeshagen and Gottlob König, Heyer is one of the so-called "forest classics" ( encyclopedists ). These had a tremendous impact on forestry - not just in Germany, but all over the world.

Fonts (selection)

The advantages and method of clearing trees , 1826
The forest yield scheme , Giessen 1841
Instructions for forest statics studies, written on behalf of the Assembly of South German Forestry Managers (zu Darmstadt 1845) , Gießen 1846
The main methods for controlling forest yields have been fundamentally examined and compared , Giessen 1848
Silviculture or forest product cultivation , Volume 4 of the Encyclopedia of Forest Science , Leipzig 1854
Forest soil science and climatology , Erlangen 1856

Monuments

Carl Heyer memorial in Giessen ( → detail of the memorial plaque )

In Giessen there is a Carl Heyer memorial at the Ricarda Huch School , and in Darmstadt the Carl Heyer oak reminds of the work of the important Hessian forest scientist.

literature

Zoltán Rozsnyay: Carl Justus Heyer in: Biographies of important Hessian forest people . Georg Ludwig Hartig Foundation & JD Sauerländer, Wiesbaden and Frankfurt am Main 1990. ISBN 3-7939-0780-5
Richard Hess: Heyer, Carl . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1880, pp. 364-368. [Information partly incorrect or outdated]
Kurt Mantel: Heyer, Carl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 79 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Wikisource: Carl Heyer - Sources and full texts

Commons : Carl Justus Heyer - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Pictures of the Carl-Heyer-Oak

Individual evidence

↑ In contemporary sources (Scriba, Poggendorff) the middle name is given as Gustav . Richard Heß also gives Gustav as his middle name in his ADB article 1880 , but changes this to Justus in his life pictures of outstanding foresters (1885) . Julius Theodor Christian Ratzeburg ( Forest Science Writer's Lexicon , 1874) and Richard B. Hilf Der Wald (1938; Reprint 2003) also use Justus . Newer literature also tends towards Justus , according to Kurt Mantel in Carl Justus Heyer on the 100th anniversary of his death (1797–1856) (in Der Forst- und Holzwirt , 1956); This is followed by Hans-Joachim Weimann ( On the 125th anniversary of the death of Carl Justus Heyer , annual report of the Hessian Forest Association 1981), Zoltán Rozsnyay in his article in the biographies of important Hessian foresters (1990), Walter Kremser ( Lower Saxony Forest History. An Integrated Cultural History of Northwest German Forestry , 1990) and Karl Hasel and Ekkehard Schwartz ( Forest history. A plan for study and practice , 2002). Kurt Mantel himself dispenses with a middle name in his later NDB article on Heyer. In this inventory of the Giessen University Archives (PDF; 5.5 MB), Heyer's first name is falsified again in one place . Gustav stated.

personal data
SURNAME	Heyer, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Heyer, Carl Justus (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German forestry practitioner, teacher and forest scientist
DATE OF BIRTH	April 9, 1797
PLACE OF BIRTH	Bessunger Forsthaus, Darmstadt
DATE OF DEATH	August 24, 1856
Place of death	to water

[eroerterung_zum_zweiten_vornamen-1] In contemporary sources (Scriba, Poggendorff) the middle name is given as Gustav . Richard Heß also gives Gustav as his middle name in his ADB article 1880 , but changes this to Justus in his life pictures of outstanding foresters (1885) . Julius Theodor Christian Ratzeburg ( Forest Science Writer's Lexicon , 1874) and Richard B. Hilf Der Wald (1938; Reprint 2003) also use Justus . Newer literature also tends towards Justus , according to Kurt Mantel in Carl Justus Heyer on the 100th anniversary of his death (1797–1856) (in Der Forst- und Holzwirt , 1956); This is followed by Hans-Joachim Weimann ( On the 125th anniversary of the death of Carl Justus Heyer , annual report of the Hessian Forest Association 1981), Zoltán Rozsnyay in his article in the biographies of important Hessian foresters (1990), Walter Kremser ( Lower Saxony Forest History. An Integrated Cultural History of Northwest German Forestry , 1990) and Karl Hasel and Ekkehard Schwartz ( Forest history. A plan for study and practice , 2002). Kurt Mantel himself dispenses with a middle name in his later NDB article on Heyer. In this inventory of the Giessen University Archives (PDF; 5.5 MB), Heyer's first name is falsified again in one place . Gustav stated.