Catharina Helena Dörrien

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Catharina Helena Dörrien; Portrait of Friedrich Ludwig Hauck (1761)

Catharina Helena Dörrien (born March 1, 1717 in Hildesheim , † June 8, 1795 in Dillenburg ) was a German botanist , painter and teacher .

life and work

Acker-Gauchheil (Anagallis arvensis); Watercolor by Catharina Helena Dörrien

Catharina Helena Dörrien came from a Hildesheim merchant and mayor family. She was the second of four children of pastor Johann Jonas Dörrien (1684–1737) and his wife Lucia Catharina, née Schrader († 1733); her siblings were Maria Agnesa (* 1715; † before 1733), Martin Sylvester (* 1719) and Melchior Karl (1721-1746). As a child she was tutored by her father in history, geography and religion and also learned “something of the Latin language; but only from listening when my brothers have been taught ”. From her mother she learned housekeeping, cooking, sewing and other handicrafts, as well as playing the piano. In the rectory garden she developed a lively botanical interest early on.

After the death of her mother in 1733, the sixteen-year-old Catharina Helena took over the management of the household as the oldest living daughter. After her father died in 1737, she was probably taken in by relatives. During this time she became friends with Sophia Anna Blandina von Alers, who married the lawyer , archivist and historian Anton Ulrich von Erath . At the turn of the year 1748/49, Dörrien moved to Dillenburg, where she lived the rest of her life, as a teacher for the Erath children. Anton von Erath supported her striving for further training; she used his extensive library, learned French and practiced drawing and painting, mainly of plant pictures. In connection with her work as an educator, she wrote a number of instructive educational writings from 1754, which were aimed at children and young girls. After the death of Anton von Erath in 1773 and her friend Sophia von Erath in 1789, Catharina Helena Dörrien lived in the family of the youngest son Justus Hieronymus von Erath, a councilor in Dillenburg, until her death.

In 1755 she began to make drawings of the seal collection in the Dillenburg archive. They served as a template for the copper engravings in Anton Ulrich von Erath's Codex Diplomaticus Quedlinburgensis , published in 1764 . She also made numerous drawings of the Dillenburg Castle from before, during and after its destruction.

However, she became best known as a botanist. In 1762, encouraged and encouraged by Erath, she began to collect and describe the plants of the then Principality of Orange-Nassau (today the area between Siegen , Dillenburg, Wetzlar , Limburg and Bad Ems ). For this purpose, she deepened her knowledge of Latin and studied the botanical literature, including Carl von Linné's works Genera plantarum and Species plantarum . Initially for her own use, she wrote an introductory presentation of the Linnaeus system in German. On this basis she trained in plant identification. In 1770, the first botanical publications were two of her essays in the Hanoverian magazine . After Dörrien had first worked on the plants in the vicinity of her place of residence Dillenburg, she systematically traveled all over the Nassau region, where she visited each location twice at different times of the year in order to record all the plant species growing there. The result of her research is the work Catalog and Description of all wild plants growing in the Fürstlich Oranien-Nassauischen Lands, first published in 1777 , which was reprinted twice during her lifetime. The work consists of two parts: the first part, about 350 pages long, describes in German the plant species sorted alphabetically according to the botanical genus names , their German names, their appearance and occurrence, divided into five chapters: 1. grasses, 2. herbs, 3 Trees and bushes, 4. Mosses and 5. Sponges (mushrooms). The second part, with about 90 pages, contains a catalog in Latin according to Linnaeus' systematics . This made her one of the first botanists in Germany to use Linné's new system and nomenclature. It therefore also describes a number of species, especially fungi and lichens, for which it has not yet been able to give any scientific names - either because they could not be found in the literature available to it or because there was none at all. As a rule Dörrien refrained from giving such species their own names, but only used the generic name and the German name; where there was no German name, it just put a line behind the genus. In Lichen centrifugus L. , however, she distinguished between a var. Major and a var. Minor and thus became the first woman to identify and name a new mycological taxon. Your botanical author abbreviation is “ Doerr. ".

While she was working on this work, Dörrien made around 1,400 plant watercolors. These watercolors were originally kept in the Erath library and remained in the family's possession; In the early 1920s, they were auctioned off privately in Leipzig, acquired by an unknown collector and have since been considered lost. Only about 40 sheets have survived in the collection of the Wiesbaden Museum. It is possible that these sheets, acquired in 1937, were a selection that was loaned to the Society for Nassau Antiquity and Historical Research in 1875 for exhibition purposes. Dörrien's watercolors were praised primarily for the delicacy of the brushwork and compared with the works of Maria Sibylla Merian. In 1890, the Wiesbaden museum acquired a collection of around 2500 watercolors with plants by the painter Johann Philipp Sandberger , who was a friend of Anton von Erath ; many of them are probably copies of Dörrien's watercolors.

Dörrien was considered a “famous woman ” during her lifetime and found scientific recognition: in 1766 she was made an honorary member of the Botanical Society in Florence together with Anton Ulrich von Erath, in 1776 she became an honorary member of the Society of Natural Scientists in Berlin and thus their first female Member, 1790 honorary member of the newly founded Regensburg Botanical Society. In 1793 Moritz Balthasar Borkhausen named a genus of carnation family Doerriena in her honor . After her death, however, she was quickly forgotten.

Current reception

Since 2000, Catharina Helena Dörrien has been attracting increased attention again. This year the Campus Verlag published a biography with the title Yes, they are female hands , written by the cultural educator Regina Viereck from Hildesheim.

In Dillenburg, a musical written by Ingrid Kretz was premiered on October 9, 2018 , on the subject of the life of the pedagogue and botanist. The city of Dillenburg named a street after her at the end of 2019.

Fonts (selection)

  • Directory and description of all wild plants in the Princely Orange-Nassau Lands. Academic book printing, Herborn 1777 ( digitized at the Bavarian State Library); Donatius, Lübeck 1779; Böttger, Leipzig 1794 ( digitized version at the Bavarian State Library)
  • Attempt to contribute to the formation of a noble heart in the first youth. Academic book printing, Herborn 1756; 3rd edition Frankfurt 1761
  • From the Fragaria sterilis. In: Hannoverisches Magazin 8 (1770), No. 35, pp. 557-560.
  • From the roots of the Cuscuta. In: Hannoverisches Magazin 8 (1770), No. 56, pp. 891-896.

literature

  • Regina Viereck: They are female hands. The botanist and educator Catharina Helena Dörrien. Campus, Frankfurt 2000, ISBN 3-593-36580-4 .
  • KL ( Karl Löber ): Plant watercolors by Catharina Helena Dörrien. In: Heimatjahrbuch for the Dillkreis 1967. Dillenburg. Pp. 1-2, 33-37.
  • KL (Karl Löber): Thanks to Catharina Helena Dörrien. In: Heimatjahrbuch for the Dillkreis 1960th Dillenburg. Pp. 1-2, 33-36.
  • Otto Renkhoff : Catharina Helena Dörrien. In: Nassau pictures of life. Volume 4. Wiesbaden 1950. pp. 66-74.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dörrien Melchior Carl on rainer-doerry.de, accessed on September 20, 2013.
  2. ^ A b c Messages from Katharina Helena Dörrien, told by herself, in a letter to Professor Seybold. In: Magazine for women on 1785. Fourth volume. October, November, December. Academic Bookstore, Strasbourg 1785, pp. 125–135; Digitized at the Bavarian State Library
  3. ^ A b c Sara Maroske, Tom W. May: Naming names: the first women taxonomists in mycology. In: Studies in mycology , vol. 89 (2018), p. 63-84. doi : 10.1016 / j.simyco.2017.12.001
  4. ↑ Sylvain Hodvina, Felix Grimm: The plant watercolors of Emil Pfeiffer. On the natural history of Wiesbaden. Museum Wiesbaden, 2011
  5. ^ Friedrich von Heinbeck: The plant pictures of Catharina Helena Dörrien and Johann Philipp Sandbergers. In: Yearbooks of the Nassau Association for Natural History, 87 (1941), pp. 4–73.
  6. ↑ Documents on appointments in the Hessian Main State Archives, Wiesbaden
  7. ↑ Entry in Tropicos
  8. ^ Bowing to Catharina Dörrien. Musical is a monument to the naturalist. Siegener newspaper. August 9, 2018.
  9. ↑ Dillenburg names the street after Dörrien on Mittelhessen.de (Paywall)
personal data
SURNAME Dörrien, Catharina Helena
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German botanist
DATE OF BIRTH March 1, 1717
PLACE OF BIRTH Hildesheim
DATE OF DEATH June 8, 1795
Place of death Dillenburg