Johannes Evangelist Elger

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Johannes Evangelist Elger OSB (born August 28, 1756 in Munich as Augustinus Joseph Elger ; † October 16, 1828 in Deggendorf ), was a German botanist and monk in the Bavarian Benedictine Abbey of Metten .

biography

After graduating from high school in 1774, Augustinus Joseph Elger entered the Metten Monastery at the (today's) Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich in 1776 and was given the religious name Johannes Evangelist when he was professed in 1777. In the house study of the monastery he studied theology and canon law . After his ordination, he held the offices of vestry and garden inspector in the monastery. He also worked temporarily as a chaplain in the parishes of Michaelsbuch and Stephansposching , which the monastery looked after .

In addition to the monastic and pastoral duties, Johannes Evangelist Elger devoted himself to his scientific interests with great zeal. In the monastery he set up a collection of native insects and plants. He compiled his botanical observations in extensive manuscripts, which he illustrated with his own drawings and watercolors. His manuscripts came as an inheritance to the royal court and central library in Munich.

Johannes Evangelist Elger was one of the pioneers of modern botany in Bavaria. As a botanist he is under the influence of the systematic classification of flora and fauna by the Swedish researcher Carl von Linné .

plant

  • Flora bavarica, see Icones plantarum Bavariae idigenarum , 6 vols. (1790).
  • Musci Bavarici ex historia muscorum Jak. Delleni excerpti, delineati, pictique , 48 plates (1798).
  • Description and illustration of foreign plants divided into 10 classes , 4 vols. (1800).
  • Plantae Medicinales cum denominationibus pharmaceuticis et Linnaeis or medicinal plants according to Pharmacopic and Linnaean names (1800).
  • Bavaria's medicinal and household plants in alphabetical order along with their names in different languages, their locations, flowering times, etc. (1807).
  • The beginnings of botany in a pictorial representation of all parts necessary for botany (1808).

literature

  • Maurus Gandershofer: In memory of Joh. Evang. Elger, senior of the former Benedictine monastery, in the Lower Danube region of Bavaria , 1929 (on Google Books ).
  • Maurus Gandershofer: The merits of the Benedictines of Metten for the care of the sciences and the arts , Landshut 1841.
  • Michael Kaufmann: Secularization, Desolation and Restoration in the Benedictine Abbey of Metten (1803-1840) (History of the Development of the Benedictine Abbey Metten 4), Metten 1993, 19-21.197f.
  • Anton Schmidt and Hansjörg Gaggermeier : The Flora Bavarica of Johannes Evangelist Elger (1756–1828), monk in the Benedictine abbey of Metten. A contribution to the history of botany in Bavaria , in: Hoppea. Memoranda of the Regensburg Botanical Society , vol. 66 (2005), pp. 59–76.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Max Leitschuh: The matriculations of the upper classes of the Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich , 4 vol., Munich 1970–1976; Vol. 3, p. 144.
personal data
SURNAME Elger, Johannes Evangelist
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Augustine Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German botanist and Benedictine
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1756
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 1828
Place of death Deggendorf