Kaspar Georg Karl Reinwardt

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Kaspar Georg Karl Reinwardt

Kaspar Georg Karl Reinwardt (also Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt ; born June 5, 1773 in Lüttringhausen , † March 6, 1854 in Leiden ) was a German naturalist and botanist in the Netherlands . His botanical author abbreviation is " Reinw. "

Life

The son of Johann George Reinwardt and his wife Katharina Goldenberg moved with his family to Lennep soon after his birth . He received his first lessons from his father; However, when he died early, he found further trainers in his mother and uncle Melchior Goldenberg. He also attended high school in Lennep. After the death of his father, his older brother Johann Christoph Matthias Reinwardt went to live with relatives in Amsterdam and took over a pharmacy there in 1787. At the time, Reinwardt was his apprentice pharmacist. In Amsterdam Reinwardt came into contact with some scientists, among them Gerardus Vrolik (1775-1859), who gave Illustrious lessons in anatomy and botany at the Athenaeum and who Reinwardt attended.

Above all, his developed skills in chemistry, medicine and botany ensured that he was offered the professorship of natural history at the University of Harderwijk in 1800 as the successor to Christian Paulus Schacht (1767–1782) . He gave his inaugural address about de geestdrift waarmede de beoefenaars der Naturlijke Historie, en inzonderheid der Kruidkunde voor hunne studiën zijn . For his professorship, the academic senate of the university awarded him an honorary doctorate in philosophy and medicine, after which he gave the speech De ardore quo Historiae Naturalis imprimis Botanicae cultores, ad sua studia feruntur (Harderwijk 1801) on June 10, 1801 . After he had also become rector of the Alma Mater in 1803 , he followed an appointment by the Dutch King Louis Bonaparte in 1808 as director of the future botanical, zoological garden and its museums.

For this he served the king in Soest , Haarlem and Amsterdam. Shortly before the king returned to France, Reinwardt became professor of chemistry, pharmacology and natural history at the Athenaeum Illustre in Amsterdam, on which he gave the speech on November 5, 1810 Oratio de Chemiae et Hist. Nat. studiis rite instituendis (German: "About the right way to study chemistry and natural history". Amsterdam 1810). After the liberation from the French, the Netherlands wanted to strengthen their power in their colonies again. Reinwardt was asked to take over the royal commission for the colonies as director of agricultural affairs, science and the arts, which marked the beginning of the golden age of his life.

Memorial stone for Kaspar Georg Karl Reinwardt in front of the Istana Bogor

To this end, the commission he belonged to Java , where it arrived on April 16, 1816 in Batavia, today's Jakarta . For six years he devoted himself to a wide variety of tasks. He reformed the local school and medical system and tried to improve the local agriculture, committed himself to the research of the local flora and carried out attempts to cross foreign plants with native plants. For this purpose, he designed the plan in Buitenzorg, today's Bogor , to set up a botanical garden . All plants of the archipelago should be united there. This plan was approved by the Dutch government on May 18, 1817, which has since been the founding date of the Kebun Raya Bogor Park. Reinwardt became the first director of the botanical garden. He went on several expeditions to collect the plants he sent to the head of the Hortus Botanicus Leiden . He also investigated the production of saltpetre, but the Dutch government did not follow his advice.

As his main task, however, he saw the exploration of the east Indian archipelago in natural history. In 1817 he traveled to East Java and in October sent the first large collection of natural objects to Holland, which was lost due to shipwreck. In October 1818 he climbed Gunung Guntur, which was in a violent eruption, and reported on his observations. The second and third large natural history and ethnographic collections, which he sent to Europe in 1818 and 1819, had the same lot as the first, the two ships went down and with them the collections. In 1819 his travels continued to Java and neighboring areas. The later Reinwardt collections did not pursue the same misfortune as the first three; they all ended up in Europe in the newly established Hortus Botaniker. After the death of Sebald Justinus Brugmans , the University of Leiden appointed him as a professor of botany, natural history and chemistry. However, he was allowed to stay in the Dutch East Indies until the end of 1821, during which time Johann Clarisse worked temporarily in his position in Leiden . He went on another expedition to Timor , the Moluccas and Sulawesi .

At the end of 1822 he returned to the Netherlands, where on May 3, 1823 he gave his inaugural lecture Oratio de augmentis quae historiae naturali ex Indiae investigatione accesserunt (German: About the enrichments that natural history has learned through the exploration of India ), Leiden 1823 , and became director of the Hortus Botaniker in Leiden. For 22 years he was able to devote himself to teaching chemistry, botany and mineralogy in Leiden. In 1831 Reinwardt published a catalog of the plants that botanists grew in the Leiden Hortus. With 5600 species and varieties, he had achieved an increase of almost 600 varieties since 1822. Specifically, the numbers of Australian, Chinese and Japanese crops were grown. The increase in the number of plants from the Far East was increased by the efforts of Philipp Franz von Siebold , who made them available to the Botanical Garden in Leiden. In 1832 he was rector of the Alma Mater in Leiden and resigned from this office with a speech De Geologiae ortu et progressu (German: "On the origin and progress of geology". Leiden 1837).

Nepenthes reinwardtiana

In addition, Reinwardt published many articles in the specialist journals of his time. Reinwardt retired in 1845 and died nine years later. He was a knight of the Dutch Order of Lions and since November 28, 1828 a member of the Academy of Naturalists. He also belonged to other learned societies in Amsterdam, Ghent, Brussels, Leiden, Jena and Paris. His successor as director and professor of botany was Willem Hendrik de Vriese , who had completed and published an unpublished manuscript by Reinwardt as Plantae Reinwardtianae . In 1821 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . The Reinwardt Academy, which is a faculty dedicated to cultural heritage and museology in the Amsterdam School of the Arts, was named after Reinwardt.

Some of the genera and species that are named in his honor:

Fonts

  • Tijdschrift voor Natuurk. Wetensch. en arts. Amsterdam 1810-1812
  • Redevoering from CGC Reinwardt. Amsterdam 1823 ( online )
  • As to the natural fertility of the East Indian islands, especially of Java, and as to the probable cause of it. 1827
  • About the character of the vegetation on the islands of the Indian archipelago. Berlin 1828 ( online )
  • On the origin of lime and the growth of mussels and coral beds in tropical seas. 1831
  • About the nature and origin of the edible bird nests on Java. 1838
  • Plantae Indiae Batavae Orientalis. Leiden 1856 ( online )

literature

Web links

Commons : Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Online
  2. ↑ Bonplandia magazine for the whole botany. Verlag Carl Rümpler, Hannover 1854, p. 267 Sp. B. ( Online )
  3. ↑ General German real encyclopedia for the educated classes. (Conversations-Lexikon.) , FA Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1827, 7th edition, Volume 9, p. 155, ( Online )
  4. ↑ Member entry of Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on February 23, 2016.
  5. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Reinwardt, Kaspar Georg Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reinwardt, Caspar George Carl; Reinw. (botanical author abbreviation)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naturalist and botanist in the service of the Netherlands
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1773
PLACE OF BIRTH Luettringhausen
DATE OF DEATH March 6, 1854
Place of death Suffer