Ingobert Heieck

Ingobert Heieck OSB (* February 7, 1936 in Landau in the Palatinate as Hans Heieck ; † July 15, 1993 in Kassel ) was a German Roman Catholic friar , gardener and, as a specialist and collector of ivy, author of several specialist books.

Life

Heieck grew up in Maikammer as the son of a farming family . There he attended elementary school from 1943 to 1951. In contrast to his sisters, he did not attend secondary schools with subsequent studies, but learned the trade of gardener in the Neuburg Abbey until 1953 after attending school . In 1955 he worked for a few months in a nursery in Bad Bergzabern . During this time the contact with the monastery continued and from September 1955 he followed his inner calling to monastery life and returned to the abbey as a novice to live and work there. He took the religious name Ingobert and took vows in 1957 , followed by Eternal Profession in 1960 . He was still employed in the monastery gardening. From 1962 he attended the State Horticultural Training and Research Institute in Heidelberg- Pfaffengrund , which he completed with a successful master craftsman examination. From 1963 he was given the management of the monastery gardening. The greenhouse area grew under his direction from 125 m² to 1100 m². The focus of the nursery shifted from the initial securing of the abbey's self-sufficiency with vegetables, cut flowers and potted flowers to the production of ivy plants for marketing. In the 1970s, for economic reasons and because fewer and fewer monks lived in the monastery, the monastery nursery completely stopped self-sufficiency with horticultural products. Brother Ingobert then expanded the greenhouse area to 2300 m² and converted the company into a special company for ivy cultivation.

Ingobert Heieck's interest in ivy was aroused by a request from a renowned nursery in Stuttgart for help with the identification and production of these plants. In the following years he began to collect all available literature and all known varieties. A total of 522 were in his collection in 1983. These include some of the ivy selections he named such as the Knight's Cross , Neuburg Abbey , Altheidelberg , Goldstern , Schimmer and Perkeo . Through his intensive occupation with the plant he came into contact with both the British and American ivy societies and traveled to England and the USA to view collections and take part in the annual meetings there. In 1961, Heieck began to create an extensive library on the subject of horticulture. He subscribed to all the magazines on the subject and archived them. In addition, he usually bought entire collections of specialist books in second-hand bookshops. There are only a few monographs on the subject of ivy, mostly in English. The best known is The Ivy by Shirley Hibberd from 1872; it could not be found on the market, nor would it have been affordable. Heieck collected all available parts as copies and archived them. From 1976 Heieck also worked as an author of specialist articles and specialist books. His first book Hedera varieties: their origins and history depicted in the assortment of the nursery Abbey Neuburg was published in 1980 and 1987 in two editions by the order itself. In 1982 he revised the standard work on ivy by Peter Q. Toole, which was first offered in German by Eugen Ulmer Verlag . His work Schöne Efeus was published in 1992 in German and two years later in a Dutch translation. He could no longer complete the large ivy monograph he had planned.

From 1983 Heieck suffered from a bladder problem. Cancer was diagnosed as the cause in 1991 . Thereupon he handed over the management of the nursery to one of his pupils and worked in the monastery administration as far as it was possible for health reasons. One month before his death in 1993 in a Kassel anthroposophical clinic in the presence of his abbot, Heieck was able to witness the founding meeting of the German Ivy Society in the rooms of his Neuburg Abbey, which also took place at his instigation. This elected him deputy chairman. He was buried in a crypt in the abbey.

In addition to working in the gardening business, Heieck devoted himself to icon painting . The abbey nursery now only operates a show greenhouse for the Heieck collection. This is looked after by the plant collections network . In 2013, the essential parts of his library, which had been stored in the monastery for years rather unnoticed, were viewed and taken over into the holdings of the German Horticultural Library .

Honors

The variety Hedera helix 'Bruder Ingobert' was named after him at the 1977 Federal Garden Show (Stuttgart).

literature

• Helga Panten: Plant collectors and their passion , ISBN 978-3-88579-145-4

Web links

• Report on Heieck at the German Horticultural Library (accessed June 7, 2014)
• Curriculum vitae with pictures from the German Ivy Society (accessed June 7, 2014)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Report on the founding meeting with picture of Heieck (accessed on June 7, 2014)
2. ↑ www.efeugarten.de ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed June 7, 2014)  
3. ↑ www.dghk.net (accessed on August 29, 2017)