Johannes Hess

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Johannes Hess (born September 6, 1786 in Holzhausen (Fronhausen) , † June 23, 1837 in Darmstadt ) was a German botanist and librarian .

Life

Johannes Hess was the eldest child of Johannes Hess (1752–1817) and his wife Barbara Elisabetha geb. Whistle was born. John later had a sister and two brothers. The father was a bricklayer or, according to other sources, a farmer. Just one year after the birth, the family moved to Nieder-Florstadt .

Hess attracted attention early on because he had a very good memory and could recite large parts of the Bible by heart. He then received lessons from the local pastor in Latin and French, as well as spelling and geography. He was then instructed by Pastor Wilhelm Butté , who later became Professor of Statistics and Political Science in Landshut. On November 7, 1801, Hess was accepted as a commoner in the Darmstadt artillery corps. He was able to earn a living by taking mathematics lessons.

During the stay of the artillery corps in Gießen from November 1805 to spring 1806 he attended lectures on higher mathematics and physics with Georg Gottlieb Schmidt . Due to his special qualifications and his skills, he was appointed construction manager at the Darmstadt building authority on November 7, 1807 and discharged from military service.

In 1809 he married Amalie (Anna) Borkhausen, the widow of the zoologist, court chamber councilor and forest botanist Moritz Balthasar Borkhausen , who died in November 1806 in Darmstadt. The rich herbarium of Borkhausen stimulated him to intensive botanical studies.

On April 6, 1811 he was appointed master builder. Since there was no opportunity for more extensive botanical studies in Darmstadt at that time, he suggested the creation of a botanical garden. When the moat was drained in 1814, he suggested using it as a botanical garden. This proposal was approved by Grand Duke Ludwig I (Hessen-Darmstadt) on June 17, 1814. The first botanical garden in Darmstadt was created . In July, Hess received the order, in coordination with the court gardener Gottfried Schnittspahn, to tackle the work on planting herbs and bushes in the castle moat.

On September 14, 1815, Hess was promoted to assessor at the Oberbaukolleg. In addition to looking after the botanical garden, he participated in the reorganization of the court library, which was converted into a public library in 1817. With the express permission of the Grand Duke, he took a trip to Paris in 1820, where he improved his knowledge of botany in particular. A trip to Switzerland followed in 1823. On both trips he was able to increase his collections and establish contacts with scholars.

In 1824, Hess published an extensive list of the plants in the Darmstadt Botanical Garden. This Elenchus contained over 2,000 species of plants. Hess gave lectures on botanical subjects and in April 1835 was co-founder and deputy president of the Darmstadt Horticultural Association. He was a member of various societies, e.g. B. since 1813 of the Wetterau Natural Research Society and the Royal Bavarian Botanical Society of Regensburg .

In 1832 he was appointed senior building officer. Hess died surprisingly in June 1837 of a nerve fever.

The Elenchus from 1824 was reissued on June 15, 2014 for the reopening of the newly created palace gardens in the Schlossgraben by TU Darmstadt .

Honors

  • 1821: Appointment to the real council at the upper finance chamber

Works

  • 1824: Elenchus Planatarum Horti Botanici Darmstadtii. Darmstadt.
  • 1832: Overview of the phanerogamic natural plant families with a brief description of the same. Darmstadt and Leipzig.

literature

  • Karl Esselborn: Hessian résumés. Darmstadt 1979, pp. 196-199.
  • Hermann Haupt: Hessian biographies. 3 volumes, 3rd volume, Darmstadt 1934, pp. 120–123.
  • Obituary by G. Schnittspahn, in: Flora 20. Jg., 1837, pp. 493–496

Web links