Jørgen Brunchorst

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Jørgen Brunchorst
The Norwegian government in October 1907: Prime Minister Jørgen Løvland sitting in the middle, Jørgen Brunchorst on the far right.

Jørgen Brunchorst (born August 10, 1862 in Bergen , † May 19, 1917 in Rome ) was a Norwegian botanist , politician and diplomat . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " Brunch ". In the years around 1900, Brunchorst reformed the Bergen Museum , which was the nucleus of the University of Bergen half a century later . From September 1907 to March 1908 he headed the Norwegian Ministry of Labor. He worked in the diplomatic service in Havana , Stockholm and Rome.

Life

Jørgen Brunchorst was born in 1862 as the son of shipbuilder Christian Ege Brunchorst (1835–1864) and his wife Emma Wesenberg (1837–1919). After the early death of his father, Brunchorst's mother married the businessman Gerhard Stoltz (1833–1907). In 1880 Brunchorst finished school and took the examen artium , which gave him access to the university . He studied the natural sciences, particularly botany, in various German cities, including with Julius Sachs in Würzburg , Albert Bernhard Frank in Berlin and Wilhelm Pfeffer in Tübingen. In 1886 he was at the University of Tübingen with the plant physiological work over the root Elan swelling of Alnus and Elaeagnaceen to Dr. phil. PhD. While still a student, he had published an obituary for Charles Darwin in the popular science journal Naturen in 1882 , which was the most careful presentation of Darwin's teachings in Norway since Peter Christen Asbjørnsen introduced the Norwegian public to the theory of evolution in 1861 .

Daniel Cornelius Danielssen created the position of third curator for Brunchorst at the Bergen Museum. The other two curators were Johan Koren from 1862 and Fridtjof Nansen from 1882 . Although Brunchorst had agreed with Danielssen that he could continue his research work in the botanical field in addition to his work at the museum, from then on he mainly devoted himself to the popularization of knowledge. In 1887 he brought the journal Naturen from Christiania to Bergen and remained its publisher until 1906. He set up a phytopathological advisory service for farmers and foresters . In this context, he wrote several publications on plant diseases.

Brunchorst's main interest was modernizing the permanent exhibition of the Bergen Museum. On several trips he visited the natural history collections of the British Museum in South Kensington and the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris. Following the ideas of Thomas Huxley and William Henry Flowers, he developed ideas for a reorganization of the natural history department, which he implemented with Danielssen's support from the beginning of the 1890s. The main point of the plan was to separate the publicly accessible exhibition from the collections that were only available to specialist scientists for their research. This was accompanied by a new way of presenting the exhibits in glass showcases . During his time at the Bergen Museum, which raised him from the curator of the botanical collection to director in 1901, Brunchorst expanded the museum with two wings and the botanical garden . In one of the wings he had a lecture hall set up in which scientific lectures were regularly held for an interested public, which attracted up to 10,000 visitors in six months. On Brunchorst's initiative, Bergen received Norway's first marine biological station in 1892.

Like his mentor Danielssen, Brunchorst had himself set up for the Norwegian Parliament , also in order to be able to influence the allocation of public funds to his museum. From 1895 to 1897 he represented the Venstre in Storting and from 1903 to 1906 the Samlingspartiet. In 1906 Brunchorst resigned as director of the Bergen Museum in the course of a dispute over science policy and went to Havana as the Norwegian Consul General for the West Indies . In September 1907 Christian Michelsen brought him into his cabinet and entrusted him with the Ministry of Labor. After his resignation in October 1907, Brunchorst remained in the short-lived government under the new Prime Minister Jørgen Løvland until March 1908. Then he returned to Havana. In 1910 he went to Stockholm as a diplomat and to Rome in 1916. Jørgen Brunchorst died here on May 19, 1917.

family

Jørgen Brunchorst was married twice. The marriage with Ellen (Ella) Bull (* 1861), librarian at the Bergen Museum, divorced in 1911 after 25 years. In the same year he married Andrea (Lill) Langaard (* 1883).

Awards

Brunchorst had been a member of the Royal Norwegian Scientific Society since 1902 . In 1908 he was awarded the Commander's Cross with a Star of the Order of Saint Olav .

Works

literature

Web links

Commons : Jørgen Brunchorst  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Halvor Aarnes: Botanikkens og biologiens historie (PDF; 982kB) Institute for Biosciences, University of Oslo, accessed on January 9, 2016 (Norwegian).
  2. ^ Thore Lie: 'A matter of money ...': The First Darwin Commemoration in Norway in 1882 . In: Thomas F. Glick, Elinor Shaffer (Ed.): The Literary and Cultural Reception of Charles Darwin in Europe . Bloomsbury, [London a. a.] 2014, ISBN 978-1-78093-712-0 , pp. 181–189 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ^ Brita Brenna: Nature and texts in glass cases. The showcase as a tool for textualizing nature . (PDF; 75 kB). In: Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies . tape 2 , no. 1 , 2014, p. 46-51 .
  4. ↑ Astrid Forland: The history of the Bergen Museum (PDF; 6.24 MB). Conference Awarness and Action - University Museums Today , September 25 to October 1, 2005, Uppsala, Sweden.
  5. ↑ Bergen Musæums Biologiske Station og dens etterkommere i Bergen on the website of the Institute of Biology at the University of Bergen, accessed on January 7, 2016 (Norwegian)
personal data
SURNAME Brunchorst, Jørgen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Norwegian botanist, politician and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH August 10, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Mountains
DATE OF DEATH May 19, 1917
Place of death Rome