Johann Gottfried Erichsen

Johann Gottfried Erichsen (* around 1713 in Teutschenthal near Halle an der Saale ; † November 4, 1768 in Skien ) was a German doctor and agricultural reformer. He organized the heather and moor colonization in Jutland and Schleswig .

Live and act

All that is known about Johann Gottfried Erichsen's parents is that his father worked as a farmer in Teutschenthal. Erichsen completed a degree in education and medicine at the University of Halle . In 1744 he moved to Christianssand, Norway, and worked there as the family doctor for Count Heinrich VI. from Reuss-Köstritz . His employer sent Erichsen to France in 1745, where he was to continue his professional education. He served temporarily in the French army during the War of the Austrian Succession and began studying anatomy in Paris in 1746 .

On September 26, 1746, Erichsen received his doctorate in Halle as Dr. med. In the same year he finished his medical studies in Copenhagen with honors. From 1747 to 1756 he worked as a city ​​physician in Bergen , where he built a hospital and trained surgeons and midwives. After a major fire in the city, there was not enough lime to rebuild the city. Erichsen therefore quickly had an English-style lime kiln built and took out loans for all of these construction measures. From 1751 he was allowed to run a pharmacy in Stavanger , from which he separated again in 1754.

In the years around 1750, Danes and Norwegians tried to process fish waste and seaweed into saltpetre . In 1755, with the approval of the state, Erichsen created a company that was supposed to set up saltpeter works near Bergen and Trondheim. He was also given supervision of a plant in Frederiksborg, Denmark. All companies failed. In 1760 Erichsen received a call from King Friedrich V and his advisor Adam Gottlob von Moltke to continue working on the production of saltpeter in Denmark. He was also supposed to cultivate large areas of heathland in Jutland. In May 1760 he visited the desolate country for several days and gave advice on building wells and brickworks.

In July 1760 Erichsen was commissioned to check in Schleswig and Holstein whether the wasteland there was suitable for creating colonies there. He should also assess how many people could be resettled. From August 25th to December 21st, he traveled to heather and moorland in the area from Hadersleben to Altona . He reported on his findings in two large memoranda. He noted that the wasteland in Schleswig-Holstein offered space for 4621 colonists, which was a large number. The government of Denmark therefore decided to cultivate the heathland in the Duchy of Schleswig. In Jutland, efforts to this end had already started the year before, to a much lesser extent.

In February 1761 Erichsen got a job as the chief organizer of the project. His superior was the Schleswig bailiff Bernhard Hartwig von Plessen . Nevertheless, he was able to act largely independently. He laid down where new colonies should be built, recommended the number of living spaces that should be built here. He stipulated that a colony site should be nine hectares in size, which turned out to be a measure that was clearly too small. Since he came from Central Germany, Erichsen did not know the local size of a hoof . The colonists were recruited mainly in southern Germany. They were promised a house, basic equipment and 20 years of tax exemption.

Erichsen pursued the ultimate goal of settling the largest possible number of colonists in the smallest possible space. This should be implemented by means of modern cultivation of arable land without meadows. New crops such as potatoes , alfalfa or vetch should be cultivated. He invested a lot of time and money on his own model farm in Friedrichsholm in order to prove that the moor, which was considered sterile, could be managed successfully. He experienced ridicule and resistance for his plans. Later it turned out that his theses were correct. While Philipp Ernst Lüders had failed twenty years earlier with the plan to cultivate potatoes on a large scale, Erichsen had more success. 573 colonist farms were established within four years.

However, due to political uncertainties, the Danes suddenly ended the costly colonization. Erichsen found himself exposed to legitimate allegations that he had not kept the budget and neglected the bookkeeping. He had also quarreled with locals, colonists, his clerk and boss. The locals, who were employed as day laborers to dig the drainage ditches, envied the colonists the land and the basic equipment consisting of house, cattle, tools and seeds. In addition, they feared that the colonization of the bog would rob them of their source of income by digging and selling the peat . The colonists were dissatisfied because the houses did not meet their expectations and were often in disrepair when they were completed. Often they did not find the promised houses at all when they arrived. In addition, the land turned out to be so bad that the colonists could not live on its crops. Many gave up after a few years. In March 1765, Erichsen was therefore released from his offices without his achievements having been objectively appreciated. The accusation that he had personally enriched himself and was the main culprit for the failure of the colonization project to go ahead was false.

A quarter of a year later Erichsen was supposed to go to England to study the practical implementation of marl and its effectiveness in agriculture. His posting took place "at royal expense for economic investigations". In 1766 he traveled back to Denmark in the wake of Caroline Mathilde . The following year he inspected saltpeter works in Norway, where - contrary to earlier sources - he died in 1768 and not in England in 1765.

Erichsen was one of the many Germans who worked for the Danish state in the 18th century and achieved important positions. He wanted to help the state by making suggestions for improvement without self-interest. One of his achievements was that he correctly assessed the importance of the potato for humans and animals and helped the cultivation of the potato achieve a breakthrough. Theoretically, he worked extremely progressively and turned the heather areas in Schleswig into cultivated land, on which yields could be achieved like on old arable land.

family

Erichsen married Anna Thode on February 10, 1749 in Bergen (baptized January 28, 1729 in Bergen, † September 13, 1766 in Copenhagen). Her father Søren Thode worked as a skipper and was married to Maren Smidt.

Erichsen had an unknown number of children. One of them was their son Andreas, who worked as a pastor in Melby on Zealand. The daughter Maria Magdalena (1754-1819) married the writer Christen Pram in 1782 .

literature

• Otto Clausen: Erichsen, Johann Gottfried . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 6 - 1982. ISBN 3-529-02646-8 , pages 83-85.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Otto Clausen: Erichsen, Johann Gottfried . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 6 - 1982. ISBN 3-529-02646-8 , page 83.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Otto Clausen: Erichsen, Johann Gottfried . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 6 - 1982. ISBN 3-529-02646-8 , page 84.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Jürgen Hartwig Ibs: The heath and moor colonization 1759 to 1765. From the reform idea to disaster
4. ↑ Otto Clausen: Erichsen, Johann Gottfried . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 6 - 1982. ISBN 3-529-02646-8 , pages 84-85.