Johann Georg Vothmann

Johann Georg Vothmann (born June 18 (not June 1) 1755 in Sonderburg ; † February 12, 1788 in Sottrup ) was a gardener.

Life and years of apprenticeship

Johann Georg Vothmann was a son of the gardener Hans Peter Vothmann and his wife Maria Dorothea Oest (born May 27, 1729 in Ulderup ; † May 27, 1805 in Sønderborg). He had two brothers named Nicolai (born June 26, 1759; † March 22, 1831) and Christian (born July 1, 1766; † August 31, 1815). Four other siblings died in childhood.

In contrast to his father, Vothmann did not join the Moravian Brethren . Still, he wrote an autobiographical essay, as parishioners did at the time. In addition to a teaching letter, this contained information on religious development in particular. For the period up to 1780 this is the only available source of biographical data. Vothmann wrote that his father taught him to read and write. Then he attended the city school in Sonderburg. During this time there were for the first time conflicts between the very pious parents and the temptations of the outside world, which wanted to tempt him to "sin". By the end of his life he did not learn to overcome these tensions.

In the spring of 1771 Vothmann went to the confirmation. After that he worked in his father's nursery for several months. In October he started an apprenticeship with Johann Gottfried Pothoff's palace gardening company in Glücksburg . During this time he probably got to know the ducal court preacher Philipp Ernst Lüders . His uncle Nicolaus Fürst also influenced him. Both tried to enlighten him about practical optimization of rural agriculture, for which they had no evidence.

Act

In 1774 Vothmann received his apprenticeship certificate. After that he did not go hiking, but to Sønderborg. He joined his father's nursery and became his most important employee. In this position he probably traveled the Baltic coasts. However, he wrote that he had only been to Christiansfeld three times . In the summer of 1780 he also visited other commercial gardeners in Lübeck and Hamburg . He did not write about contacts outside Sønderborg and the Herrnhutern. However, these must have been the prerequisites for later publications.

The country house keeping society ("Landhusholdningsselskabet") from Copenhagen wrote a prize in 1779. An author should provide instructions on how to maintain cottage gardens. The instruction to be formulated as a question and answer should be suitable for farmers. Vothmann thought that farmers from the “German provinces of Denmark” would be of little help with a work in Danish. Therefore, he participated with a German manual, which was received in January 1781 after the deadline for tenders. The manual was popular with the company, which paid for the costs of printing. This was equivalent to a second award. The work was published as a “Garden Catechism for Country People” in a publishing house in Leipzig. It was probably printed in autumn 1782, but was dated 1783.

In 1784 Vothmann wrote another, second part of the book. He wanted to address socially better off urban gardeners. The new book with both parts was published as the “Economic-Practical Garden Catechism”. New editions followed in 1796 and 1805, a variant in Swedish in 1796, and a revised Danish version in 1817. The country house keeping society published a Danish article by Vothmann in 1792 and 1794, in which he described how apple and pear cider should be produced and stored, for which he had already received a price in 1783. A slightly abbreviated version of this text was to be read in Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld's “Garden Calendar” for 1784 in 1783 .

Hirschfeld tried to spread the aesthetics of the English Garden . From around 1780 he was also engaged in the cultivation of fruit trees in order to provide rural farmers with additional income. The royal pension chamber offered him help with his concern. In 1783 she asked Hirschfeld to set up a "fruit tree nursery " in Düsternbrook . This should be based on a tree nursery in Frederiksberg , which made fruit trees available to interested farmers.

Hirschfeld must have met Vothmann as part of the new “fruit tree nursery”. In his first “garden calendar” for 1782 he presented the successful work of Vothmann's gardening business. Vothmann himself contributed an essay for the calendar in which he described the artificial pollination of carnations. In the years that followed, several of his articles appeared here, including the award-winning essay on apple and pear must. He also offered leaves with native plants for herbaria . These were named after the binary nomenclature Carl von Linnés . According to a writer's lexicon by Berend Kordes , Vothmann also wrote articles for the botanical compilation " Flora Danica " by Georg Christian Oeder . Since the archive of this work was lost in a fire at Christiansborg Palace in 1784, there is no evidence for this.

Vothmann also took part in the discussion about the "garden revolution" triggered in England. He translated the poem "Les jardins, ou l'art d'embellir les paysages" by Jacques Delille from 1782. In it, the poet spoke out in favor of the English garden. Vothmann's version appeared in an abbreviated form in the “garden calendar” for 1783. It shows that the translator proceeded relatively freely, but skillfully translated the text into German meter. Where and when Vothmann learned the French language and dealt with contemporary poetry is not documented.

Vothmann left behind other occasional poems which he had written on family occasions and which, like the complete translation of Delille's poem, did not go to print. The texts suggest that he was an accomplished poet who was able to formulate cleverly stylistically. His uncle and father-in-law Oest, who also wrote poetry despite his work as a pastor, played a major role in the fact that he wrote poetry despite his awareness of sin.

Death and continuation of the nursery

Vothmann's wife died in childbed a few days after the birth of their first daughter; Vothmann himself suffered from scarlet fever shortly before his planned second wedding . His brother Nicolai was a trained farmer and managed the Rundhof estate . At the time of Johann Georg Vothmann's death, he was working as a secretary at Gut Loitmark near Kappeln . Without any practical experience as a gardener, he took over the business and managed it successfully. Due to the Napoleonic Wars and their economic aftermath, the gardening business ran into problems that he was able to solve later. He also gave the public access to the garden.

Nicolai Vothmann was the last male member of this gardener family in the male line.

family

On September 3, 1784, Vothmann married Maria Johanna Margaretha Oest in Neukirchen in fishing (* December 7, 1759 in Neukirchen; † September 21, 1785 in Sønderborg). Her father Nicolaus Oest worked as a pastor. The couple had a daughter named Christiana (born September 13, 1785, † February 13, 1830). She married Bendix Jensen (1768-1820), who worked from 1803 as a pastor in Neukirchen and from 1819 as a pastor in Quern.

literature

• Dieter Lohmeier: Vothmann, Johann Georg . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, pp. 472–475.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Dieter Lohmeier: Vothmann, Johann Georg . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 472.
2. ↑ Dieter Lohmeier: Vothmann, Johann Georg . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, pp. 472–473.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Dieter Lohmeier: Vothmann, Johann Georg . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 473.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Dieter Lohmeier: Vothmann, Johann Georg . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 13. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2011, p. 474.