Friedrich Gustav von Bülow

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Friedrich Gustav von Bülow (born September 29, 1817 in Bothkamp ; † October 30, 1893 in Kiel ) was the Mecklenburg chamberlain and landowner of Bothkamp and Bossee in Schleswig-Holstein . He is the builder of the Bothkamp observatory .

Life

He was born as the eldest son of the landowner Detlev Heinrich von Bülow (1782–1855) from the old Mecklenburg noble family Bülow and his wife Friederike, née von Varendorff (1785–1861), on his parents' estate Bothkamp and attended the Christian- Albrechts University in Kiel .

There he came into contact with the ideas of the Schleswig-Holstein movement, which culminated in the March Revolution in 1848 and in the Schleswig-Holstein uprising from 1848 to 1851 .

After Bülow had become provost of the aristocratic monastery of Schleswig in 1847 , he joined the Schleswig-Holstein army in 1848 with his brother and fought against Danish domination. In 1850, however, Prussia and the German Confederation left the war, leaving the Schleswig-Holsteiners on their own. After the lost battle near Idstedt , Bülow left the country for fear of reprisals , first to Hamburg and later to Mecklenburg-Schwerin , from where his ancestors once emigrated to Schleswig-Holstein.

In 1851 he became chamberlain at the court of Grand Duke Friedrich Franz II of Mecklenburg . But as early as 1853, after the death of his father, he was able to return to Bothkamp with his family to take up his inheritance as a landlord . However, he held henceforth in the country's politics out, even though he initially the integration of the Duchy of Holstein after the war German-Danish 1864 Austria and then to the German war as Prussian 1866 Province of Schleswig-Holstein strictly refused, and always for the house Augustenburg as legal rulers entered.

Construction of the Bothkamp observatory

His interest in astronomy seemed to have sprung less from a love of the natural sciences than from a deep religiosity. It is believed that he rather sought confirmation of the creation story and his Protestant faith in the depths of the universe .

Encouraged by his acquaintance with the physicist and astronomer Professor Karl Friedrich Zöllner from Leipzig , he bought an award-winning raw glass cast by Christian Feil at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1867 , from which the Hugo Schröders company from Hamburg bought the largest refractor at the time for 150,000 marks German confederation cut. The construction of the observatory took a total of three years and cost 856,000 marks. At Zöllner's suggestion, Bülow was able to win over his second assistant Hermann Carl Vogel and later his friend Wilhelm Oswald Lohse to look after the observatory. But both left Bothkamp in 1874, so that no scientific research took place until 1881. From 1881 to 1883 Leo Anton Carl de Ball worked at the observatory. He was followed by Johannes Lamp (1883–1886), Otto Tetens (1888–1891) and, in 1892, the scientific assistant at the Kiel observatory, Johannes Möller. During all this time, Bülow himself was often in his observatory and had night-long conversations with the respective director.

On October 30, 1893, he died at the age of 73 in his house in Kiel.

family

Bülow had married Countess Thekla Wilhelmine of Holstein-Holsteinborg (1819–1903) in Kiel on May 16, 1848 , with whom he had five sons and two daughters. His eldest son Cai Friedrich Gustav (1851-1910) later became district administrator of Eckernförde and his second son Detlev Wilhelm Theodor (1854-1926) became district administrator in Wandsbek and in 1907 President of the Province of Schleswig-Holstein.

literature

  • Peter Janle / Gerhard Kortum: The noble estate Bothkamp and its observatory in writings of the Natural Science Association Schleswig-Holstein, Vol. 57, Kiel, January 1988, pp. 47-70
  • Felix Lühning: Observatory according to the manor in Gudrun Wolfschmidt (ed.): Astronomisches Mäzenatentum , Nuncius Hamburgensis, contributions to the history of natural sciences, Vol. 11, Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2008, pp. 63–82
  • Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of aristocratic houses: at the same time the nobility register of the German aristocratic association. Part A, 1917, pp.220f

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Janle / Kortum, The noble estate Bothkamp and its observatory in Schr. Naturwiss. Ver. Schleswig-Holst. Vol. 57, p. 47 (60)
personal data
SURNAME Bülow, Friedrich Gustav von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German landowner and builder of the Bothkamp observatory
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1817
PLACE OF BIRTH Bothkamp
DATE OF DEATH October 30, 1893
Place of death Kiel