Ferdinand Fintelmann

Joachim Anton Ferdinand Fintelmann (born January 30, 1774 in Charlottenburg , † December 24, 1863 ibid) was a royal court gardener on the Pfaueninsel and in the Charlottenburg palace gardens .

Live and act

Ferdinand Fintelmann was the son of the court gardener in Charlottenburg Carl Friedrich Fintelmann and Anna Dorothea, the youngest daughter of the court gardener Joachim Arndt Saltzmann . He learned the gardening profession from 1790 to 1793 in the New Garden in Potsdam from Johann August Eyserbeck , who designed the area on behalf of Friedrich Wilhelm II based on the model of the Wörlitz Park . After training, Fintelmann worked as a gardener's assistant in the royal garden , presumably in Charlottenburg, until 1795, from 1795 to 1799 with Prince Anton Radziwiłł in Tschernowitz , where he married Christine Kitze in 1798, and from 1799 to 1800 with the prince-bishop in the Oliva monastery near Danzig. He then went back to Charlottenburg as an adjunct to support his over 60-year-old father, who was responsible for the kitchen garden in the palace complex .

Plan of the Pfaueninsel, 1810, Ferdinand Fintelmann

In 1804 Friedrich Wilhelm III appointed him . as court gardener on the Pfaueninsel. There he designed the area with Peter Joseph Lenné between 1816 and 1834 into a landscape park with decorative garden areas, such as the rose garden with 2,100 standard rose trees and 9,000 shrub roses from the private collection of the Berlin doctor Dr. Böhm, whose labyrinthine design had no comparable shape in the history of the rose gardens. In the collaboration, which resulted in a lifelong friendship, Lenné developed the design concepts on site together with the friend, which Fintelmann then implemented and recorded in a plan drawing . In addition, new greenhouses had been built under Fintelmann since around 1818, such as the palm house completed in 1831 for 42 particularly large palm trees from the collection of the banker Fulchiron in Passy and other plants that the landscape painter Carl Blechen depicted in the interior of the greenhouse that burned down in 1880 from 1832 to 1834 . In addition to the landscaping transformation of the island Fintelmann also made a name with attempts to Kirschtreiberei and in the cultivation and use of leaf plants that not only outdoors, but also in rooms, [...] particularly in and around Berlin, and later in northern Germany applause found. The Pfaueninsel thus became the cradle of leaf plant fashion of the 19th century . In addition, he began to bring peculiar ideas to life, including the hitherto uncommon group-wise planting and use of tropical leafy plants outdoors, which developed from Berlin and Potsdam […] , dominated the blue coloration of the Hydrangea flowers by preparing an acidic soil and cultivated dahlias , called georgines at the time. The by Alexander von Humboldt in 1804 became known in Prussia dahlias undertook Fintelmann already around 1812 breeding attempts and had, according to its own review in 1824 published by the Berlin Gartenbauverein journal "Proceedings of the Association for promotion of horticulture in the Royal Prussian States" more than 200 varieties in his property and this two years later doubled.

On May 1, 1834, other sources date to April 1, 1834, the 60-year-old Fintelmann was appointed to succeed the late Georg Steiner in Charlottenburg. The office of court gardener on Pfaueninsel, and since 1810 also the duties of castellan , was taken over by the nephew Gustav I Adolph Fintelmann . In 1845 Ferdinand Fintelmann entered into a second marriage and married Caroline Mayer, the daughter of a Berlin doctor and sister of the court gardener in Monbijou Ludwig Mayer , known as Louis. Ferdinand Fintelmann stayed in Charlottenburg until his death in 1863, where he was still employed in the office of court gardener at the age of 89, as retirement was only approved in exceptional cases. Like many of his elderly colleagues, he tried to get along without help in order not to have to share his salary with an adjunct or successor, which had a negative effect on the state of care in the Charlottenburg Palace Gardens. The gardening director Alexander Graf von Keller wrote that the complex had recently come down completely and would no longer meet the legitimate requirements of the present in any way . On January 28, 1864, his nephew Carl Julius Fintelmann succeeded him in office.

Honors and memberships

The multi-talented Ferdinand Fintelmann was valued in his time for his success in cultivating plants, as a landscape gardener and for the artistic plan drawings. He also showed his artistic talent as a flower painter. The artful castle warden and gardener, […], skillful with the crooked knife and drawing pencil , as Johann Gottfried Schadow described him after a visit to the Pfaueninsel, was accepted into the Berlin artists' association in 1825, and in 1837 the botanist Karl Sigismund Kunth named one of Friedrich's Sello discovered Cyperaceae species Fintelmannia restitoides . Fintelmann received a special honor when Friedrich Wilhelm IV was the first court gardener to award him the Order of the Red Eagle III in 1853 . Class decorated with a ribbon and awarded the title Oberhofgärtner in 1854.

Like numerous court gardeners, Ferdinand Fintelmann was a Freemason . As early as 1801 he joined the Charlottenburg Johannisloge "Luise zur crowned beauty" and in 1816 affiliated to "Minerva". In the specialist association of the "Märkische Ökonomische Gesellschaft" founded in Potsdam in 1791, it was entered in the list of members in 1824. As a founding member of the "Association for the Promotion of Horticulture in the Royal Prussian States", or "Berlin Horticultural Association" for short, where he had been head of the Floriculture Committee from 1823, Ferdinand Fintelmann published his experiences in the association's own publications "Negotiations of the Association for the promotion of horticulture in the Royal Prussian States ”, which until 1848 was the pioneering organ of German horticulture .

Publications

• Comments on cherry forcing , in: Negotiations of the Association for the Promotion of Horticulture, Issue 1, 1824
• Comments on the double flowering georgines , in: Negotiations of the Association for the Promotion of Horticulture, Issue 1, 1824
• Observations and experiences about artificial fertilization of flowers and trees , in: Negotiations of the Association for the Promotion of Horticulture, Issue 2, 1826
• Chionanthus refined on oak (Chionanthus on ash) , in: Negotiations of the Association for the Promotion of Horticulture, Volume 2, 1826
• About the culture of the blue hydrangeas , in: Negotiations of the Association for the Promotion of Horticulture, Issue 5, 1829
• About asparagus beds and strawberry plants , in: Negotiations of the Association for the Promotion of Horticulture, No. 6, 1830

See also

Family tree of the Fintelmann family of gardeners (excerpt)

Web links

Commons : Ferdinand Fintelmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

• Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg (Ed.): Prussian Green. Court gardener in Brandenburg-Prussia . Henschel Verlag, Potsdam 2004, ISBN 3-89487-489-9

Individual evidence

1. ↑ SPSG: Preußisch Grün , p. 310
2. ↑ SPSG: The Peacock Island . Potsdam 2000, p. 52
3. ↑ SPSG: Die Pfaueninsel , p. 20
4. ↑ SPSG: Die Pfaueninsel , p. 25
5. ^ Karl Heinrich Koch in: Weekly of the Association for the Promotion of Horticulture in the Royal Prussian States for Horticulture and Botanical Science, 14, 1871, pp. 185–191
6. ↑ SPSG: Die Pfaueninsel , p. 56
7. ↑ Deutscher Garten, 1, 1881, p. 428
8. ^ Frank Singhof: Georgina variabilis, 1824 . In: SPSG: Preußisch Grün , p. 276
9. ↑ SPSG: Die Pfaueninsel , p. 29
10. ↑ Michael Seiler, Clemens Alexander Wimmer in: SPSG: Preußisch Grün , p. 170
11. ↑ SPSG: Preußisch Grün , p. 94
12. ^ Wimmer: Hermann and Emil Sello . In: SPSG: Nothing thrives without care , p. 242
13. ^ Frank Singhof: Artist reception on the Pfaueninsel, 1825 . In: SPSG: Preußisch Grün , p. 276
14. ^ Wimmer: The activities of the court gardeners . In: SPSG: Preußisch Grün , p. 176
15. ^ Wimmer: Ascent to the educated middle class . In: SPSG: Preußisch Grün , p. 125
16. ^ Wimmer: literary activity of the court gardeners . In: SPSG: Preußisch Grün , p. 184