Heinrich Gätke
Heinrich Gätke (born May 19 or March 19, 1814 in Pritzwalk , † January 1, 1897 on Heligoland ) was a German ornithologist and painter .
Life
The son of a baker and brewer was sent to Berlin for commercial training . Here he met the landscape painter Karl Blechen in 1834 , whose pupil he became and who spurred him on to his own artistic activity. But there changed his career plans and became a painter. In 1837 he traveled to Heligoland for the first time; the island remained his permanent residence from 1841.
In the spring of 1838, Gätke got into a legal dispute with the revolutionary Harro Harring , who had scolded him as a "lazy brush boy". Since Harring refused to appear in court, the English governor had him forcibly removed from the island. Gätke's activity as a painter of seascapes gradually shifted into the graphic reproduction of the migratory birds resting on Heligoland. From 1843 he was primarily interested in ornithology. About ten years later the autodidact , who by then had amassed an extensive collection of birds' hide and maintained contacts with numerous German and English ornithologists, began to publish scientific papers.
The English governor Sir Henry Maxse, whom Gätke served as secretary for many years, nevertheless suspected him of undermining the British rule of the island and of creating a mood for a German occupation of the island.
In 1891 his work Die Vogelwarte Helgoland was published . In the same year the Prussian government acquired his collection for the North Sea Museum of the Biological Institute Helgoland. The largest part of this collection fell victim to the bombs of World War II in 1944 , the preserved pieces can be viewed in the Wadden Sea House of the Institute for Bird Research in Wilhelmshaven . An English translation of his book was published in 1895, and a second German edition was published posthumously in 1900.
Theodor Fontane , who last saw his relative Heinrich Gätke in his youth, described Gätke as the island king in a letter in 1891, which promised a reunion after more than sixty years. A street in Pritzwalk and the Heinrich-Gätke-Halle in the Institute for Bird Research in Wilhelmshaven are named after Heinrich Gätke. The Museum Foundation Post and Telecommunication keeps postage stamp drafts Gätke produced around 1874/75 for the Reichsdruckerei in Berlin and provided with information about the printing.
Works
- The Helgoland Ornithological Institute , ed. by Rudolf Blasius , 1891
literature
- Christine Knupp, Heinrich Gätke, a marine painter on Heligoland. In: Yearbook of the Altonaer Museum, Vol. 11, 1973, pp. 69–80.
- F. Bairlein, O. Hüppop: Heinrich Gätke - his ornithological work today. In: Vogelwarte 39 (1997), pp. 3-13.
- Ludwig Gebhardt: Gätke, Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 27 f. ( Digitized version ).
- B. Haubitz: Heinrich Gätke (1814–1897) in literature and the fine arts of the nineteenth century. In: Vogelwarte . 39: 14-33 (1997).
- Wilhelm Hess : Gätke, Heinrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 49, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1904, p. 678.
Web links
- biography
- Heinrich Gätke in the Helgoland family database
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ulrich Schulte-Wülwer, Die Insel des Verrats - Harro Harring auf Helgoland, in: Mitteilungen der Harro-Harring-Gesellschaft, Issue 2, 1983, pp. 4–25.
- ↑ Jan Rüger, Helgoland - Germany, England and a rock in the North Sea, Berlin 2017, p. 124.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Gätke, Heinrich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Gaetke, Heinrich; Gäthke, Heinrich; Gaethke, Heinrich |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German ornithologist and painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 19, 1814 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Pritzwalk |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 1, 1897 |
| Place of death | Heligoland |