Ferdinand Lindheimer

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Ferdinand Lindheimer

Ferdinand Jakob Lindheimer (born May 21, 1801 in Frankfurt am Main , † December 2, 1879 in New Braunfels , Texas ) was a German-American botanist , journalist and newspaper publisher . Its official botanical author abbreviation is “ Lindh. “His nickname in the USA is“ The Father of Texas Botany ”.

family

Lindheimer was the youngest son of the businessman Johann Hartmann Lindheimer in Frankfurt and Jeanette Magdeline Reisser. He married Eleanor Reinartz in New Braunfels in 1846. The couple had two sons and two daughters.

Life

Lindheimer grew up in Frankfurt in a wealthy merchant family and attended the Frankfurt grammar school . His school friends included the future botanist George Engelmann , with whom he went on botanical excursions as a child . He then studied law and philology at the universities of Wiesbaden , Jena and Bonn , where he most recently received a scholarship in philology. After completing his studies, he returned to Frankfurt and at the end of 1827 became professor of literature and linguistics at the school of Georg Bunsen (1794–1872). There he became politically active in the early 1830s and took part in the social rethinking process that ultimately led to the Frankfurt student riots of 1833 ( Frankfurt Wachensturm ). As a result of this unrest, the school was closed and six professors were convicted of revolutionary activities . Lindheimer and Bunsen emigrated to America in 1834 , like many other German intellectuals of the time, who were called the “ Thirties ” in the USA .

In Belleville in St. Clair County he met many German refugees, including colleagues and students from the Frankfurt Bunsen School. At the end of 1834 he traveled with friends by ship down the Mississippi River and continued on foot to the state of Veracruz in Mexico , where he met other Germans at a hacienda , Carl Sartorius' "German colony" near El Mirador near Xalapa , where he was found a job as manager of a pineapple and banana plantation nearby . During his 16-month stay his interest in collecting plants and insects was aroused .

In 1836, however, the adventurer in Lindheimer awoke again when he heard the reports about the Texan struggle for independence. He immediately traveled to New Orleans ( Louisiana ) and met the Kentucky -Freiwilligen under General Jerome Bonaparte Robertson (1815-1890). But this troop arrived too late at the theater of war, namely exactly one day after the Battle of San Jacinto . Nevertheless, Lindheimer enlisted in the army and served a year on the Texas border under the command of Texas Ranger Captain John Coffee Hays (1817-1883). During his short military service he got to know the wilderness of Texas, the country and the people, immigrants and Indians .

Lindheimer then worked on a vegetable farm near Houston (Texas). In the winters of 1839/1840 and 1842/1843 he accepted the invitation of his Frankfurt friend, the physician George Engelmann, to St. Louis , himself a recognized botanist and later (1859) co-founder and president of the new Missouri Botanical Garden . In March 1843 he signed a contract with Engelmann and began to work professionally for a fee with the intensive research of the Texan flora, additionally supported by Asa Gray , professor at Harvard University . Most of the time Lindheimer spent months alone in the pristine wilderness with a horse cart and two hunting dogs without meeting a white man. The Indians left him scot-free because they revered him as a "medicine man" because of his medical knowledge. Lindheimer was the first resident plant collector in Texas. During these years he also came into contact with other plant collectors such as Pastor Louis C. Ervendberg, Rosalia Kleberg née von Roeder, wife of Robert Justus Kleberg , or Otfried Hans von Meusebach .

Lindheimer had met Meusebach, the general commissioner of the Mainz aristocratic association , in 1844. Lindheimer joined him and his Darmstadt colony in 1847 as a local immigrant; they wanted to settle the land between the rivers Llano and San Saba. As a free thinker, Lindheimer also founded the communist settlement " Bettina " in Llano County , a settlement known as " Latin Settlement ". But after a few months the pioneers gave up their plan and Lindheimer went to New Braunfels, which had been founded in Comal County only twenty years earlier (1821) by Carl zu Solms-Braunfels , the first general commissioner of the Mainz noble association and Meusebach's predecessor . Here he asked for a worthless but beautifully located piece of land outside the settlement directly on the banks of the Comal River and built a hut there. Here he continued his research and built a botanical garden .

As a result of nine years of dedicated research and collection had Lindheimer finally discovered several hundred unknown Texan plant species, of which only 48 species still bear his name; Examples are the cactus species Opuntia lindheimeri and the "Texas Yellow Star", also known as "Lindheimer Daisy" ( Lindheimera texana ). His partners Engelmann and Gray made Lindheimer's research results and discoveries known and have received them for posterity to this day. Parts of his collection of around 100,000 plants can still be found today not only in the USA, but also in over twenty institutes worldwide, e.g. B. in Germany , Russia , England , France and Spain . Large parts of this collection were shown at the Paris World's Fair of 1867 . In addition, there is the so-called rat snake, the type of snake also known as the Texan chick snake, a living being that he discovered and named after him. The zoological name is "elaphne obsoleta lindheimeri".

After nine years, Lindheimer reduced his research activities as a botanist, moved directly to the city and founded the weekly Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung in 1852 , of which he remained publisher and editor for the next twenty years. This German-language newspaper lasted until the First World War .

In his newspaper articles during the civil war - in contrast to the widespread attitude of the other Germans - he sided with the Confederates as a “staunch southerner ” and “advocate of state law” . But some contemporaries remained convinced that Lindheimer's sympathies were in truth with the northern states .

In 1872 Lindheimer finally ended his work as a publisher and from now on only worked as a natural scientist . He exchanged ideas with many other botanists, e. B. with the geologist Ferdinand von Roemer and Pastor Adolf Scheele (1808–1864), who from 1848 to 1852 published some articles on Lindheimer's research results in the European journal Linnaea . His former student, the later Frankfurt surgeon Gustav Passavant (1815-1893), published his memoirs under the title Essays and Treatises in 1879 in Frankfurt am Main.

During his retirement, Lindheimer founded a private school for particularly talented children and served as a justice of the peace in Comal County.

Lindheimer died on December 2, 1879 at his home in New Braunfels and was buried in the local cemetery.

Others

Lindheimer's home in New Braunfels

Lindheimer's home at 491 Comal Street in New Braunfels is now open to the general public as a museum.

On May 21, 2001, "Lindheimer Day" was officially celebrated on the occasion of his 200th birthday in the state of Texas.

Fonts

  • Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung , New Braunfels from 1852.
  • Gustav Passavant (ed.): Articles and treatises by Ferdinand Lindheimer in Texas . Frankfurt am Main 1879, (online) . American translation udT: John E. Williams: The Writings of Ferdinand Lindheimer. Texas Botanist, Texas Philosopher , Texas A&M University Press, College Station 2020, ISBN 978-1-62349-876-4 .

literature

  • Douglas Hale: Wanderers Between Two Worlds. German Rebels in the American West 1830-1860 . Xlibris Corporation Publisher, 2005, ISBN 1-4134-4592-6 .
  • Minetta Altgelt Goyne: A Life Among the Texas Flora. Ferdinand Lindheimer's Letters to George Engelmann . Texas A&M University Press, College Station 1991, ISBN 0-89096-457-2 .
  • Cornelia Marshal Smith: Meusebach-Engelmann-Lindheimer . In: Texas Journal of Science . Volume 34, 1982, pp. 105-123 (online) .
  • Theodore Gish: Ferdinand J. Lindheimer's Neu Braunfelser newspaper. Portrait of a German-Texan Weekly 1852–1872 . In: Yearbook of German-American Studies . Volume 17, 1982, pp. 71-78.
  • Gilbert Giddings Benjamin: The Germans in Texas. A Study of Immigration . Philadelphia 1909, p. 22 f., Digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Dcu31924028802498~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3Dn35~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D .
  • JW Blankinship: Plantae Lindheimerianae. Part III . In: Missouri Botanical Garden Annual Report . 1907, pp. 123-223, JSTOR 2400027 .
  • Wilhelm Stricker:  Lindheimer, Ferdinand . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1883, p. 697 f.
  • Ferdinand Jakob Lindheimer in Chapter 18: The Southern States. In: Gustav Körner : The German Element in the United States of North America 1818-1845 , 2nd edition, E. Steiger & Co., New York 1884, pp. 363-364 (online) .
  • Asa Gray: Plantae Lindheimerianae, Part II. An Account of a Collection of Plants made by F. Lindheimer in the Western part of Texas, in the Years 1845–6, and 1847–8, with Critical remarks, Descriptions of new Species, & c. In: Boston Journal of Natural History . Volume 6, 1850, pp. 141-240 (online) .
  • Asa Gray, George Engelmann: Plantae Lindheimerianae: An Enumeration of the Plants collected in Texas, and distributed to Subscribers, by F. Lindheimer, with Remarks, and Descriptions of new Species, & c. In: Boston Journal of Natural History . Volume 5, 1845, pp. 210-264 (on-line) .

Web links

Commons : Ferdinand Lindheimer  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Lindheimer, Ferdinand
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lindheimer, Ferdinand Jakob (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American botanist and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH May 21, 1801
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH December 2, 1879
Place of death New Braunfels , Texas