Johann Heuffel

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Johann Heuffel

Johann Heuffel , also Ioan Heuffel , János A. Heuffel or János Heuffel (born December 29, 1800 in Modra ( German  Modern ) in what was then Pressburg County ; † September 22, 1857 in Lugosch , Austrian Empire ), was a county doctor and Nestor the Banat botanist . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is “ Heuff. "

Life

After graduating from high school and studying philosophy in Pressburg , Heuffel enrolled as a medical student in Vienna in 1823 and switched to the University of Pest (now Budapest ) in 1824 , where he graduated in 1826 and in 1827 with the dissertation De distributione plantarum geographica per comitatum Hungariae Pesthiensem for Dr. med. PhD.

In the first half of the 19th century, the Banat and Transylvania were discovered as a fertile field of promising botanical collecting. In 1827, Heuffel accepted a job as a general practitioner for the noble Atzel family in Borosjenő in Arad County in the Banat for two years . During this time he edited a herbarium together with the surgeon and botanist Peter Wierzbicki (1794–1847) who lived in Orawitza , which caused a great deal of floristic sensation; later, in collaboration with Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach, an iconography well known in specialist circles followed .

In May 1829 Heuffel moved to Lugoj, where he was known not only as a physicus , but also as a connoisseur of medicinal plants and as a homeopath. He married the noble Josephine de Némethy ; The later ennobled Lieutenant Field Marshal August Heuffel-Némethy de Némethfalva (1834–1895) emerged from the marriage.

In his "leading and almost completely independent position", Heuffel devoted himself to the natural sciences and mainly to botanical research in Southeast Europe in addition to his duties as a high official . His numerous botanical excursions in the Banat, in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania, in the Balkan Mountains and elsewhere made him known among Europe's leading botanists at the time.

Heuffel published a. a. 1831, 1835, 1844 in the journal of the Regensburg Botanical Society , of which he had been a member since 1832. As a result, correspondence and exchange with other botanists such as David Heinrich Hoppe , Karl Heinrich Koch or Alphonse Pyrame de Candolle developed . "Since his first work (1831) ... he has been bombarded with letters, so to speak, and only now does real scientific communication begin." Heuffel was a member of numerous other scientific societies and a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences .

At the time of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848/1849 Heuffel was elected to the Revolutionary Council of the county in March 1848 and then temporarily imprisoned in the Temesvár prison. He was suspended as a county doctor and transferred to Großbetschkerek as a punishment. Since he did not want to accept this position, he opened a private practice in Lugoj, which gave him little time for his scientific studies. Nevertheless he published u. a. 1850, 1857 and 1858 works by on the flora of Southeast Europe. He did not live to see the publication of his main work on the flora of the Banates in 1858, as he died at the age of 57 after a serious and long-lasting illness. In Lugoj his tombstone and a memorial plaque in the museum remind of Heuffel. After the Romanian Revolution in 1989 , a street in the new E. Murgu district was named after it.

plant

Through his research activities, Heuffel particularly enriched his knowledge of the flora of Austria, Hungary, Transylvania and mainly the Banat. According to von Wurzbach, Heuffel was regarded as "Hungary's most important botanist". In the course of his 30 years of activity in the Banat he had discovered over 70 new plant species and described them for the first time for science.

He named the new discoveries after the areas or sites explored, e.g. B .:

He also named new discoveries in honor of fellow botanists, such as:

The genus Heuffelia Opiz from the sour grass family (Cyperaceae) is also named after Heuffel . Several plant species were named after Heuffel:

Heuffel was also a connoisseur of the insects of Southeast Europe. On behalf of the government, he observed the “sky-darkening swarms” of the notorious and predominantly local Colombian mosquito ( Melusina columbaczensis ) and wrote an extensive work about it that was no longer published after his death. The pest caused great economic losses in cattle breeding (around 10,000 cattle in the Banat in 1813, around 15,000 in 1923 in Little Wallachia ); Heuffel's research could have provided valuable insights into this.

Publications

  • List of the plants around Pressburg not mentioned in Endlicher's Flora posoniensis. In: Regensburg Flora. 1, 1831, p. 404 ff.
  • Plantarum Hungariae novarum aut non rite cognitarum. In: Regensburg Flora. 1, 1831, p. 363 ff. And 2, 1835, 241 ff.
  • Caricineae in regnis Hungariae, Croatiae, Slavoniae, magnoque Transilvaniae principatu sponte nascentes, enumeratae et digestae. In: Regensburg Flora. 2, 1844, p. 527 ff.
  • About some confused species in the flora of Hungary. In: Regensburg Flora. 1854, p. 289 ff.
  • About Hungarian oaks. In: Journal of Natural and Medicinal Science in Hungary. 13, 1850.
  • Diagnosis of new or confused plants of the Banates. In: Journal of Natural and Medicinal Science in Hungary. 22, 1857 and 25, 1858.
  • Enumeratio plantarum in Banatu Temesiensi sponte crescentium et frequentius cultarum. In: Negotiations of the Zoological-Botanical Association Vienna. 8, 1858, pp. 39-240.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Constantin von Wurzbach : Biographical Lexicon of the Kaiserthums Oesterreich. Volume 11, Vienna, 1864, pp. 430-431.
  2. ^ A b Anton Peter Petri : Biographical Lexicon of the Banater Deutschtums. Breit, Marquartstein 1992, ISBN 3-922046-76-2 , p. 2198.
  3. ^ I. Stratan: Ioan Heuffel - cercetator al florei Banatului şi Transilvaniei. ( German  Johann Heuffel - explorer of the flora of the Banates and Transylvania. ) In: Natura. 2, 1973, Bucharest, pp. 73-74, in Romanian
  4. ^ A b August Kanitz : History of botany in Hungary. Hannover 1863, pp. 89-178.
  5. ^ Wolfgang Ilg: The Regensburg Botanical Society. Hoppea 1984, p. 391.
  6. ^ Ingemar: A city celebrates a birthday. In: General German newspaper for Romania . July 11, 2009.
  7. Traian Săvulescu (ed.): Flora Reipublicae Popularis Romanicae. Vol. 1–13, Bucharest, 1952–1976.
  8. Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names . Extended Edition. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Free University Berlin Berlin 2018. [1]
  9. M. Rîpeanu, I. Gavrilă: Toxicologie veterinara ( German  Tiermedizinische Giftkunde ), Bucharest 1964, pp. 427–477.