Friedrich von Falz-Fein
Jakob Friedrich Eduardovich fold , since 1864 fold fine , since 1915 Baron von Falz-Fein (born April 4 . Jul / 16th April 1863 greg. In Askania-Nova , Ukraine , then Russian Empire ; † 2. August 1920 in Bath Kissingen , Lower Franconia ) was a German-Russian landowner and founder of the Askanija-Nowa nature reserve ( Russian Аскания-Нова , Ukraine).
Life
origin
He was the son of Eduard Falz (1839-1883) and Sophie Knauff (1835-1919). Since 1864 the family had the double name Falz-Fein ( Fein was the maiden name of the grandmother Elisabeth Anna Fein ), in 1872 the elevation to the hereditary status of "hereditary honorable citizen" ( Potomstvennyj Potschotnyj Graschdanin ) and 1915 - as a result the Tsar's visit in the previous year 1914 - the elevation to the Russian hereditary baronate .
He first attended high school in Kherson . After studying natural sciences at the German-speaking University of Dorpat ( Estonia ) and the death of his stepfather Gustav von Falz-Fein (1844–1890), Falz-Fein took over the operation of the inherited family estate Askanija-Nowa (New Askania) from him in 1890 .
Askanija-Nowa: From a family estate to a zoo
With the permission of the Czar Nicholas I. his great-grandfather had Friedrich Fein (1794-1864) with purchase agreement dated August 16, 1856 by Dessauer Duke Leopold IV. , The 52,000 hectare large Anhalt colony Askania-Nova in Kherson buy, 100 kilometers north of the peninsula of Crimea located , including 49,000 sheep, 640 horses and 549 cattle. He ran the estate as a sheep and horse farm and was a horse supplier for the Russian army. The name goes back to the Askanians in Germany. The contract, which is now in the State Archives in Dessau , bears the signature of the Dessau District President Ludwig von Basedow (1774–1835), son of the pedagogue Johann Bernhard Basedow (1724–1790), and that of the Fein'sche banker Horny .
Friedrich Falz-Fein inherited the Askanija-Nowa family estate, which had now been reduced to just half (25,000 hectares), but his stepfather Gustav von Falz-Fein also bequeathed his Elisabethfeld estate to him, and Friedrich himself bought the Naliboki estate , so that his landed property eventually even covered 65,000 hectares.
Falz-Fein was no longer satisfied with sheep and horse breeding, but instead gradually developed the nature reserve of the same name with a botanical garden and animal park, which eventually became one of the largest in the world and in 1921 state property of Ukraine, is today a UNESCO nature reserve and still many It houses exotic animals such as antelopes, bison, zebras, ostriches and Przewalski's horses . As early as 1896, Falz-Fein bought a herd of wild eland antelopes for Askanija-Nowa , the offspring of which are still looked after by mounted shepherds.
By the First World War, Falz-Fein owned half a million sheep and 58 different species of mammals. 402 species of birds from all over the world have not only been kept here, but scientific observations and crossbreeding attempts have also been made. In 1914 Tsar Nicholas II visited the "Askanija-Nowa" nature park and the Falz-Fein family.
After the October Revolution
After the Russian Revolution , Falz-Fein's private property was confiscated by the Bolsheviks , and Askanija-Nowa was completely devastated. The family moved to their apartment in Saint Petersburg , their last stop in Russia. In order to avoid the threatened shooting by the Red Army soldiers, Falz-Fein faked an incurable, contagious disease in the children when the Red Army soldiers tried to arrest the family. So they abandoned their project. On April 1, 1919, the family finally fled with the last ship, the Bulgarian steamer "König Ferdinand", to Constantinople and from there to Berlin . Only his mother was left alone and was shot by the Bolsheviks.
On August 2, 1920, Falz-Fein died during a stay at a spa in Bad Kissingen from grief over his "lost paradise" Askanija-Nowa. On the advice of his doctor, he came to Bad Kissingen from Berlin in July 1920 to recover from a fit of weakness. There his heart gave out during a cab ride to the Dapper sanatorium . His body was transferred to Berlin for burial.
His grave is in the Old Twelve Apostles Cemetery in Berlin-Schöneberg . In the narrow grave complex (field 530-022-015) there is a grave monument made of gray granite with a relief with the portrait of the dead on the front, flanked by two birds of prey on posts. The gravestone bears the inscription: "Here rests in peace the great creator of Askania-Nowa". By resolution of the Berlin Senate , the last resting place of Friedrich von Falz-Fein has been dedicated as a Berlin grave of honor since 1980 . The dedication was extended in 2001 by the usual period of twenty years.
Falz-Fein remained unmarried, but had two illegitimate sons. His nephew Eduard Aleksandrovich Baron von Falz-Fein (1912–2018), son of his brother Alexander (1864–1919) and as head of the family lived in his villa “Askania Nova” in the Principality of Liechtenstein , handed over the entire family archive a few years ago his death to the Ethnographic Museum in Saint Petersburg. The family of the Barons von Falz-Fein is related by marriage to the family of the writer Vladimir Nabokov and the composer Nicolas Nabokov .
literature
- Ганкевич В.Ю., Задерейчук А.А. Фальц-Фейн Фрідріх-Якоб Едуардович // Енциклопедія історії України. Т. 10 (Т – Я): Наукова думка, 2013. - С. 264–265 ( ISBN 978-966-00-1359-9 )
- Задерейчук А.А. Фальц-Фейны в Таврии. - Simferopol: ДОЛЯ, 2010.
- Woldemar von Falz-Fein: Askania Nova. The animal paradise. A book of remembrance and thought. J.Neumann-Neudamm, Neudamm, 1930.
- Lisa Heiss: Paradise in the steppe. The adventurous way to Askania Nova . Verlag Bitter, Recklinghausen 1981, ISBN 3-7903-0283-X
- Ludwig Heck : In the Tauride Steppe. Autumn days at Friedrich Falz-Fein in Askania Nova . Berlin 1920.
- Lutz Heck : Animals from all over the world in southern Ukraine . In: "The Green Post" from June 20, 1943.
- Anita Maaß : The Falz-Fein family and their work in Russia. in: Dresdner Geschichtsverein (Hrsg.): Dresdner Hefte - Contributions to cultural history No. 74: Russia and Saxony in history. Dresden 2003, pp. 42–47.
- Anita Maaß: You think you are in a fairy-tale land ... On the economic advancement and the socio-cultural integration of the Saxon Falz-Fein family in Russia 1807-1914. In: Bünz, Enno et al. (Ed.): Building blocks from the Institute for Saxon History and Folklore Vol. 1, Dresden: Thelem, 2004, 138 pp.
- Gerhard Wulz: The lost fairytale land. Death in Kissingen and a fabulous biography . In: "Saale-Zeitung" from January 5, 2008.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 751.
- ↑ Honorary graves of the State of Berlin (as of November 2018) . (PDF, 413 kB) Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection, p. 20; accessed on March 14, 2019. For a time limit of 20 years see: Implementing Regulations for Section 12 Paragraph 6 of the Cemetery Act (AV Ehrengrabstätten) (PDF, 24 kB) of August 15, 2007, Paragraph 10; accessed on March 14, 2019.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Falz-Fein, Friedrich von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Falz, Friedrich Jakob Eduardowitsch; Falz-Fein, Baron von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-Russian landowner and scientist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 16, 1863 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Askanija-Nowa , Russian Empire |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 2, 1920 |
| Place of death | Bad Kissingen , Lower Franconia |