Else Hoffa

Else Emily Wilhelmine Hoffa (born March 21, 1885 in Würzburg , † January 8, 1964 in London ) was a German gardener .

Live and act

Else Hoffa was shaped by her father's passion for the art of horticulture . After her father's death, she began training as a gardener in 1908, against his father's will, which was expressed during his lifetime. From October 1912 to March 1913 she interned at the Royal Gardening College in Dahlem . Here she learned the basics of horticulture as well as the ideas later pursued by Karl Foerster for using hardy perennials in the design of gardens.

In 1911 Max Warburg took over the Kösterberg property in Blankenese . He had a stately country house built on the property inherited from his late father Paul Moritz Warburg and in April 1913 hired Else Hoffa as head gardener. Hoffa, who was friends with Warburg's wife Alice, was in charge of up to twelve gardeners and five elevins . Hoffa was the first woman to work as a head gardener in Germany. The employment contract signed with Warburg provided for a clause that guaranteed Hoffa a bonus of ten percent in addition to her basic salary, as long as the gardener kept the banker out of trouble.

For 25 years Else Hoffa lived in a gatehouse at Kösterbergstrasse 42 that had been built shortly before. Since 1913, the gardener has dedicated herself to the Roman Garden . Here she had the old shed removed and extended the terrace with double, staggered dry stone walls. She structured the area with the help of a thuja hedge and emphasized the central axis by creating a water lily basin. In 1923 Fanny du Bois-Reymond , a great-granddaughter of the composer Fanny Hensel (Mendelssohn), came to the Kösterberg as a gardener. In 1924 the construction work was finished.

During the time of National Socialism , Hoffa was considered "half-mosaic" . She therefore emigrated to England in 1938 . Here she worked as a gardener at the Shipton Court manor in Oxfordshire . Later, Lt. Col. Acton-Brooke gave her a job in Sibton Park, Kent. Hoffa also worked in the Royal Botanic Gardens in London and briefly as a florist in the Dorchester Hotel located there. In 1946 she was employed as head gardener in the center of Coventry , where she managed the "Lady Herbert's Garden" laid out for his late wife on behalf of the entrepreneur Alfred Herbert. In 1956 Else Hoffa, who was considered modest and creative, retired.

In 1957 the gardener returned to Hamburg once. Here she visited Eric M. Warburg on the family estate on the Kösterberg and entered the guest book there under the title “Remembering a beautiful time”.

literature

• Karin von Behr: Hoffa, Else . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 4 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0229-7 , pp. 157-158 .
• Oliver Breitfeld: Germany's first head gardener: Else Hoffa and Warburg's Roman Garden over the Elbe . In: Die Gartenkunst  20 (1/2008), pp. 213–218.