Julius Schäffer

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the German musician, conductor and composer see Julius Schäffer (music director) .

Julius Schäffer (born June 3, 1882 in Markgröningen , † October 21, 1944 in Weilheim in Upper Bavaria ) was a German teacher and mycologist . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is “ Jul. Schäff. ".

Life

Julius Schäffer was the oldest of four children in a family of innkeepers. In addition to the inn, his parents ran agriculture (viticulture, hops, arable land). He attended elementary school from 1888 to 1891 and, from 1891, as the best pupil in elementary school, the Latin school in Markgröningen. After a teacher urgently advised the parents to let their son study, Schäffer passed the state examination in Stuttgart as one of the six best in 1896 and was thus able to attend the Protestant seminars in Schöntal and Urach for two years each . After graduating from high school in Stuttgart in 1900, Julius Schäffer studied theology at the Protestant theological seminar in Tübingen from 1901 and graduated in 1904 with the theological examination. Since he felt too young for pastoral care and was impressed by the emerging reform pedagogy movement, he decided to pursue a career as a teacher. From 1906 to 1908 he worked as a teacher and educator at the German Landerziehungsheim in Ilsenburg am Harz, where he taught religion, German, geography and natural history. From Ilsenburg, Julius Schäffer took up a position as a private teacher in Dresden. During these years he traveled extensively with the family in which he taught, including abroad. Following this, Schäffer studied one semester in Trieste . In 1910 he passed the state examination for higher education with distinction and completed his legal clerkship at the Realgymnasium in Berlin-Grunewald by 1912 . Immediately afterwards he became a teacher in Potsdam . On December 28, 1912, Schäffer married his wife Liesl, with whom he had two daughters.

Julius Schäffer taught chemistry, biology and mathematics. As a representative of reform pedagogy, he went on extensive study trips with his students and was committed to the establishment of the then newly introduced hiking day , which was unpopular with many teachers . In addition to his school service, Schäffer worked intensively with mushrooms, which he not only studied but also painted with the help of his wife. Through his mycological work, he was in personal and letter contact with mushroom researchers such as Hans Haas , Adalbert Ricken , Bruno Hennig and Albert Pilát . Schäffer dealt intensively with the systematics of the mushrooms , in particular the deaf and Egerlinge . Among other things, Schäffer found the Schäffer reaction named after him , which can be used to determine mushrooms. He edited the pigeons for the book series Die Pilze Mitteleuropas .

The Nazis refused Schaffer; He suffered especially under the compulsion Rassenkunde having to teach. His work The Destruction of Folk Thought by Racial Mania was burned in 1933 in the book burns . In 1939 he retired for health reasons and moved with his wife to Dießen am Ammersee , where the couple had bought a house. There he deals intensively with mycology, especially with the genus Cortinarius , where he came into contact with Meinhard Moser, among others . He held mushroom courses for the female students at the teachers' seminar in Weilheim in Upper Bavaria .

On one of the excursions with the students from the teachers' seminar in Weilheim, Schäffer and his wife found large quantities of bald curls , which at the time were considered good edible mushrooms and which Schäffer and his wife had often eaten in Potsdam. Schäffer, who had actually developed an aversion to mushroom dishes, asked his wife to prepare the mushrooms and ate them with her for lunch. In the afternoon there were symptoms of mushroom poisoning. As a result of the war, the local doctor had lost all material for gastric lavage, the hospital in Weilheim could not be reached due to broken telephone lines and Schäffer could only be transferred to Weilheim two days later due to a lack of petrol. There he could no longer be helped and he died on October 21, 1944 after suffering seventeen days.

swell

• Heinrich Dörfelt , Gottfried Jetschke (Ed.): Dictionary of mycology. 2nd Edition. Spectrum Academic Publishing House, Heidelberg / Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-8274-0920-9 .
• Heinrich Dörfelt, H. Heklau: The history of mycology . Einhorn-Verlag, Schwäbisch Gmünd 1998, ISBN 3-927654-44-2
• L. Schäffer: Julius Schäffer as a person, as a friend of the youth, as a teacher, as a mushroom researcher . Journal of Mushroom Science, Issue 3/4, 1967, p. 49