Georg Berna

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Georg Berna as a Bonn Prussian, around 1856

Georg von Berna (born June 30, 1836 in Frankfurt am Main ; † October 18, 1865 in Büdesheim ) was a Hessian reindeer and manor owner as well as financier and participant in a research trip.

family

Georg Friedrich David Anton Berna comes from a Frankfurt merchant family. His father was the silk merchant Johann Anton Berna (1813–1836), his mother Maria Aloysia Claudine Sophie geb. von Guaita (1815-1859) daughter of the mayor of Frankfurt Georg Friedrich von Guaita (1772-1851) and his wife Magdalene geb. Brentano (1788-1861). His grandfather was the Italian-born (from Pratto Valle Maggia in Ticino) Frankfurt merchant David (Anton) Berna di Pratto († 1835), who ran silk goods stores together with his brother Johann Anton († 1819) in Frankfurt, Mainz and Lyon. Georg Berna's father died less than a week after he was born. Since his grandfather had died in 1835, Georg Berna inherited the considerable family fortune. His mother married her cousin Ludwig (Louis) Brentano (1811–1895) in 1840.

Live and act

Georg Berna studied law in Bonn and became a member of Corps Borussia there in 1855 . He completed his studies with a doctorate to become a Dr. jur. from. Then he was kuk Austrian consul general for the Grand Duchy of Hesse , member and later second director of the rural district association of Vilbel , and vice-president of the Middle Rhine Horse Breeding Association .

On February 14, 1860, he acquired the family seat of the Barons von Edelsheim in Büdesheim and, using his fortune, transformed the already progressive farm economy into an exemplary farm for the Wetterau .

From May to October 1861 Berna undertook a privately financed "Nordland trip" to study geology , volcanism , flora and fauna . It led from Hamburg along the Norwegian coast to the North Cape , to Jan Mayen and Iceland and via Scotland back to Hamburg. The scientific director was the Geneva geology professor Carl Vogt , who in 1863 published the travel report “North trip, along the Norwegian coast, to the North Cape, the islands of Jan Mayen and Iceland ...” in Frankfurt am Main. Other participants were the Frankfurt painter Heinrich Hasselhorst , the geologist Dr. Armand Gressly and the doctor Alexander Herzen Jr. (1839-1906). The plants collected from this trip are in the Herbarium Senckenbergianum (FR) of the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt.

Berna married on June 14, 1864 Anna Maria geb. Christ (born April 18, 1846 in New York, died 1915, father: New York merchant Georg Christ, mother: Henrietta Cordelia née Mortimer).

Berna died of diphtheria at the age of just twenty-nine on his estate in Büdesheim. His widow Marie Berna got engaged 15 years later in Siena to Count Waldemar von Oriola (1854–1910), whom she married in the same year and with whom she then lived at Büdesheim Castle . In 1880 she was asked to inspire the second version of the soon-to-be-world-famous island of the dead with the commission for a picture to dream .

literature

  • Friend of the people for Central Germany , 1865, No. 133, Nov. 5, 134, Nov. 8, Nov. 135, Nov. 10 (obituary).
  • F. Berger: The north journey of Georg Berna 1861. In: Frankfurt and the North Pole - researchers and discoverers in the eternal ice . Fonts d. Histor. Mus. Frankfurt / M. , Volume 26, 2007, pp. 32-51.
  • R. Golonsky: Georg Berna's trip to the north, as told by Carl Vogt. [Chronicle] Büdesheim 817-1992: 229-254. 1992
  • B. Vielsmeyer: The Büdesheimer Hofgut as a model estate for the Wetterau. Wilhelm von Edelsheim and Georg Berna - two progressive farmers . [Chronicle] Büdesheim 817-1992: 209-228. 1992
  • C. Vogt: To the north cap . In: The Gazebo . Issue 1, 1863, pp. 12–24 ( full text [ Wikisource ] - excerpt from the travel report).