Hanseatic Herms

Johanna "Hänse" Herms , b. Johanna Wagner (born May 27, 1898 in Marienwerder , West Prussia , † April 17, 1973 in Eutin ) was a German master gardener with her own business in Schleswig-Holstein and a figure in German gardening history. Two perennials are named after Hänse Herms. She was the first woman in Schleswig-Holstein to take a master's degree in horticulture in 1927 .

Life

Hänse Herms was born on May 27, 1898 in Marienwerder / West Prussia as the sixth and last child of the dye works owner Ludwig Wagner and his second wife Johanna, nee. Berendt, born. Her siblings were: Hermann (1882–1964) the successor to the family business, Friedrich (1883–1961) City Planning Officer in Chemnitz , Amelie (1885–1958), Margarete (1889–1974), Lutz (1896–1983) graphologist , university professor.

She received her horticultural training from 1915 to 1917 in the training nursery Scherpingen near Sobbowitz south of Danzig, which Ella Foerster, a cousin of the German perennial grower Karl Foerster, runs. She then worked as a gardener at Gut Jassen in Pomerania, which belonged to Count Kuno Dürckheim von Montmartin. In the summer of 1918 she was employed in the Karl Foerster perennial nursery in Potsdam-Bornim. In Berlin, Hänse married the Hamburg painter Ludwig Herms and, with him, took over Dürckheim's estate gardening on Bundhorst in Holstein in September 1920. Here they established their first own perennial nursery, the ´Bundhorster perennial cultures´. During the time at Bundhorst, their son Uwe was born, who died in infancy. Two daughters were born on Gut Bundhorst: Helge (1922–2014) and Karin (1924–2013).

Hänse Herms passed her master gardener examination in Kiel in May 1927. In the same year the couple gave up their project ´Bundhorster Staudenkulturen´. Economic reasons made the step necessary. Hänse Herms took a job for a few years. The couple lived separately. In the summer of 1932, the perennial nursery began again together in Eutin-Neudorf . Ludwig Herms had leased a plot of villas there - after Bundhorst had given up - in Plöner Strasse.

The painter Ludwig Herms made a name for himself in the early 1930s as a Schleswig-Holstein "rock garden expert". His wife, Hans, was responsible for growing, propagating and shipping the perennials. She trained the apprentices. It was mostly women who came to them from Germany. The work of the nursery after the Second World War was supported by Konrad Graf Finckenstein, one of its employees. Finckenstein was a trained gardener and, like Hansa, a real "Foersterian". He worked with Ludwig Herms to develop the company's future catalogs. In 1930 the first perennial catalog for mail order was published. The next followed three years later.

In 1937 their son (and later landscape architect) Raimund Herms was born in Eutin, five years later another daughter, Isa.

After difficult years of building up its own perennial nursery in Ostholstein, it was mainly thanks to Hänse Herms that the company flourished at the Eutin location. But the war threw the nursery back economically. After the Second World War, the Herms perennial nursery took part in the first Federal Garden Show in Hanover, which was held in 1951.

As early as the early 1930s, Karl Foerster visited the Eutin company and wrote a press article about it. In the following decades he was repeatedly a guest at the Herms perennial nursery in Eutin. The Foerster and Herms families remained friends for a lifetime.

The gardener Herms is described as a charismatic personality. Her knowledge of perennials and her skills in training apprentices were appreciated. The Herms were present at all post-war German garden shows (IGA and BUGA) until 1967 and won medals. A master gardener who did her apprenticeship at the Herms perennial garden immediately after the end of World War II was Edith Dudszus. The pipe grass Molinia caerulea ´Edith Dudszus´ is named after her.

Hänse Herms died in Eutin at the age of 75. The Herms perennial nursery was closed in the following years. The first building plots were developed in the 1980s on the former gardening plot, which was only ever leased. Today the former gardening area is completely built on.

Services

At a time when women were hardly able to learn a trade like gardening, the young Hänse Wagner wants to do an apprenticeship as a gardener. The AdF (General German Women's Association), which was founded in Leipzig in 1865, fought for opening up this professional field - also for women. Women's associations support the establishment of training nurseries and horticultural schools for "educated women", since the male-dominated professional world of gardening refuses to train or employ young girls and women. Hänse Herms goes to one of these innovative training nurseries, the Scherpingen nursery in Sobbowitz in West Prussia. She acquired a well-founded training as a gardener and can apply and deepen her knowledge in the following positions on a farm. Encouraged by the Countess von Dürckheim-Montmartin at Gut Jassen (Pomerania), who was interested in Karl Foerster's novel books and writings as well as perennial planting concepts in Potsdam-Bornim, Hänse came into professional contact with the perennial grower. A personal meeting with Karl Foerster in 1916 laid the first seeds for a relationship that Hänse Herms and the great German perennial grower would cultivate until the end of their lives. At the end of the First World War, Hänse found a job as a gardener in the Karl Foerster perennial nursery in Potsdam, responsible for propagation and dispatch. It is a formative time for the young woman who, around 1920, first dared to found her own perennial nursery in Ostholstein. Her husband is a trained painter. In terms of gardening, he is an autodidact. Other women learn their craft under the guidance of the gardener Herms. In Bundhorst initially only as employees and interns, in Eutin Neudorf as official apprentices. Because in the previous years, Hänse Herms had passed her master craftsman examination. The training archive of the Schleswig-Holstein Chamber of Agriculture at the Ellerhoop Horticultural Center in Thiensen is managed by Hänse Herms as the first horticultural master in Schleswig-Holstein. In 1927, Hänse had taken the master gardener exam and passed it with "very good".

Works

In the 1920s and early 1950s, Hänse Herms wrote articles for the trade press. Karl Foerster had personally encouraged her to do so.

Their ability to guide apprentices and provide them with well-founded training was the reason for the nationwide good reputation of the Herms perennial nursery as a training facility. The daughter of the Stuttgart garden architect Adolf Haaf, Käte Haag, learned here. After the death of Hänse Herms, she wrote an obituary for them. Edith Duszus began her career at Herms, which eventually led her to the Ahlem Horticultural School near Hanover as a master gardener. Hänse Herms had a pronounced talent for florists. She arranged her natural bouquets of perennial flowers, ferns, twigs and grasses at a time when specially grown or mostly imported cut flowers such as carnations, roses or freesias - in combination with the usual binding green - were popular. They are praised at the German garden shows for this innovative approach.

plants

The following plants were named after the gardener Hänse Herms: The switchgrass Panicum virgatum ´Hänse Herms´, the silver candle Cimicifuga simplex ´Frau Herms´.

literature

• Marion Heine: A life path for the perennials. The history of the Herms perennial nursery in Ostholstein, in: Yearbook for Heimatkunde Eutin 2010, 44th year (Part I, pp. 141–197) and Yearbook for Heimatkunde Eutin 2011, 45th year (Part II, pp. 228-274 ), (Ed.) Home association for the maintenance and promotion of local history in the Eutinian eV, Eutin. ISSN 1866-2730.

Web links

• Garden jewels from Eutin to the world Article of the Lübecker Nachrichten
• Website of Theresia Künstler with a contribution to the Herms nursery at Gut Bundhorst
• Link to the publishing house of the "Jahrbücher für Heimatkunde Eutin" with articles about the perennial nursery Herms
• Dipl.-Ing. Raimund Herms (her son) on the website ´HAMBURGER PERSONALITIES´
• Raimund Herms funeral speech given by Peter Hellmann PDF (obituary) uploaded to the Hamburg personalities portal.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Günter de Bruyn recalls a noble family from the Brandenburg region (press article in TAGESSPIEGEL)
2. ↑ Dipl.-Ing. Raimund Herms (see website HAMBURG PERSONALITIES)