Gottfried Konrad Hecht

Julius Gottfried Konrad Hecht (born June 12, 1771 in Halberstadt , † April 25, 1837 in Potsdam ) was a German civil servant and botanist .

Life

Gottfried Konrad Hecht was born the son of Georg Eberhard Hecht (* 1725 in Halberstadt; † unknown), doctor and councilor . His brother was Ernst Georg Julius Hecht (1775-1840).

He attended the cathedral high school in Halberstadt from 1780 to 1789 and enrolled at the University of Halle on May 20, 1789 and at the University of Göttingen in May 1791 . He studied law and camera studies for three years, and also dealt with the so-called auxiliary sciences . After completing his studies, he moved to Hamburg to live with his uncle, the Prussian privy councilor and resident Johann Julius von Hecht (1719–1792), whom he inherited after his death. In Hamburg he was introduced to commercial science (science of commerce in the functional sense) by Johann Georg Büsch .

After the first exam, he became a trainee lawyer at the Kurmärkische Kammer in Berlin in November 1794 , from which time he became a close friend of the War and Domain Council, Chief President Friedrich Magnus von Bassewitz .

In 1802 he accompanied the district administrator and later chief president Ludwig von Vincke on his trip to Spain to buy merino sheep for the refinement of domestic sheep; Gottfried Konrad Hecht had made himself familiar with the Spanish language beforehand. The trip gave the Prussian sheep breeding great impetus. From this trip he added a short summary of his travel impressions to the examination files, the examination of which he passed the cameralistic rigor on December 1, 1804. In the same year he became an assessor at the Kurmärkischen War and Domain Chamber (until 1809 Kurmärkische Kammer).

In 1809 he was promoted to councilor of the government that had moved to Potsdam, and in 1816 he became the first councilor of the government in Berlin, which was later dissolved. In 1825 he was appointed a secret councilor.

During his life he traveled all over Europe from Sicily to Lapland and dealt intensively with botany; As a result, he maintained numerous contacts with domestic and foreign scholars, such as Robert Brown and William Jackson Hooker . Johann Friedrich Klotzsch named a genus of plants from the natural order of the Bromeliaceen Hechtia in his honor and says at the beginning of their description, he

“ ... dedicate this plant to the Privy Councilor Hecht, a man who only devoted his museum hours to botany, supported a number of botanical expeditions, himself traveled almost all over Europe out of love for botany and thus came to an excellent herbarium from which he communicates with the greatest liberality, and so indirectly does more for botany than many can directly do. "

His herbarium consisted of 187 families , 2260 genera and approximately 14,000 species , according to a directory he had prepared himself, half of these species consisted of several, often five or more specimens.

Awards

In 1832 he received the Order of the Red Eagle, 3rd class.

Literature (selection)

• Gottfried Konrad Hecht in New Nekrolog der Deutschen , 15th year 1837, 1st part. Weimar 1839. p. 464 f.
• Gottfried Konrad Hecht in Flora or Botanische Zeitung , 20th year, 2nd volume. Regensburg 1837. pp. 524 f.
• Gottfried Konrad Hecht in Rolf Straubel : Biographical manual of the Prussian administrative and judicial officials 1740–1806 / 15 . KG Saur Verlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-23229-9 , p. 390