Julius von den Brinken

Karl Albrecht Friedrich Julius von den Brincken , the Younger (also von den Brincken ; Polish mostly Juliusz Karol baron Holte von den Brincken or Juliusz Karol Brincken (or Brinken); born February 26, 1789 in Blankenburg ; † June 2, 1846 in Warsaw ) was a German forester and forest scientist . Above all, he earned lasting services as a Polish general forest master.

Julius von den Brinken

Life

Karl Albrecht Friedrich Julius von den Brinken was born on February 26, 1789 as the first son of the ducal wild master of Blankenburg and later Brunswick chamber councilor Friedrich Ludwig Ernst von den Brinken in Blankenburg am Harz . After attending grammar school in Wolfenbüttel , Duke Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand zu Braunschweig offered him a job as a hunting squire, which his father refused, however, because he wanted his son to have a sound education in forestry. Instead, Julius von den Brinken studied for five semesters from 1805 to 1807 at Johann Matthäus Bechstein's Forestry Academy in Dreiässigacker .

He then applied for a job in the newly founded Kingdom of Westphalia and was assigned as Brunswick's titular forester to his father, who was in charge of the Zellerfeld Forest Inspectorate. After passing the exam before the examination board in Kassel, Julius von den Brinken worked as a Westphalian chief forester in Walkenried and then in Königsthal from 1811 . After the end of the Westphalian era, rumors circulated about his allegedly French-friendly attitude due to incidents that had never been fully clarified. Although he was initially able to defend himself against the accusation of collaboration with the French in front of a Prussian commission , he had to return to Braunschweig in 1814 in the course of the dismissal of all "foreigners" from Prussian services .

There he was reassigned to his father without a title on December 22, 1814, who had meanwhile become a member of the chamber council and chairman of the “Taxations Commission”, ie the forest management department. Officially employed as an assistant, but de facto head of the taxation commission, Julius von den Brinken played a decisive role in the “forest drive and culture plan for the Upper Forests in the region of Baden-Baden”. Both the elaboration of the forest management procedure and the entire exterior and interior work were entirely in his hands. Building on the surface timbered Heinrich Cotta and the mass timbered Georg Ludwig Hartig he designed in 1815 Guidelines for Forest Management works that were then executed from 1816 to 1818 in almost all Brunswick forest districts. In the course of this work, an extensive set of maps was created for these forests for the first time and operating regulations were established. It was the basis for future regulated forest management in the Braunschweig forests.

With his strict regulations, his often harsh demeanor and his relentless criticism of the previous economic system, von den Brinken made only a few friends, but a great many enemies, in the incumbent forest administration. The Princely Chamber, with which he often had differences, prevented him from being permanently employed in the Braunschweig forestry service, especially when the government gave him the “character” (title) of a forester in 1817. Numerous hostilities were the result.

Against the background of this situation, Julius von den Brinken decided to follow the call of the royal Polish State Councilor Ludwig Graf Broel-Plater on July 25, 1818 and to go to Warsaw as chief forest master. He later became a Polish general forest master and thus had the rank of general . At the same time he renounced a position as chief forester in the Prussian forest administration, since he was offered a much larger sphere of activity in Poland, which at that time was incorporated into the Russian Empire as a "kingdom" (so-called " Congress Poland "). In Warsaw he received an annual salary of 12,700 zlotys .

As a general forest master, von den Brinken developed a lively activity and left a lasting mark on Polish forest history. In Warsaw he took over the technical management of the forest management operations and reorganized the Forest Service. In 1818 Julius von den Brinken also helped found the Marymont Forest Academy. The academy, at which he also taught himself and for which he recruited a number of other German teachers, was attached to the University of Warsaw . In this way, the findings of the still young forest science, the center of which was in Germany at the time, were quickly disseminated in Poland. The magazine Sylvan also contributed to this , which is the oldest forest magazine in Poland still to be published and Julius von den Brinken also played a key role in its founding in 1820. In addition to the German language, he also mastered Polish and French .

As early as 1823 he was enrolled in the Polish aristocratic deputation as a baron ( Baron Holte ), and in French-language publications he also called himself Baron de Brincken . In 1825 he married the ardent Polish patriot Eleonora Małgorzata Libiszowska (1804–1872), Truchsessin of Opoczno . The marriage resulted in a daughter and three sons.

Brinken, who always referred to himself as the “loyal servant of the tsar”, was well-received at the court in Saint Petersburg . In 1825 he received the Order of St. Stanislaus, 2nd class and several special rewards.

View of the hills of Bialowies (1820).

On behalf of the Tsar, he described the jungle of Bialowies (today Białowieża National Park ). Result was in French written book Mémoire descriptif sur la Forêt de impériale Białowieża en Lithouanie (1826), which he Tsar Nicholas I devoted. He thanked him with a diamond ring worth 2000 rubles . As one of the first foresters at all, von den Brinken also made suggestions for the reforestation of the steppes of southern Russia . The reforestation of the 2000 hectare imperial hunting ground can also be traced back to him.

Von den Brinken had a difficult position with the subordinate Polish foresters. In the course of time, there were allegations against him for alleged embezzlement in timber trade as well as the preference for German and forcing back Polish foresters. During the November uprising of 1830/31 he was resigned, so that he was forced to return to Braunschweig . In 1833 Julius von den Brinken returned to Warsaw, but without continuing his profession as a forester. In the following year he was also retired by an ukase from Tsar Nicholas I. A Polish general forest master no longer fit into the Russian bureaucracy. However, the tsar granted him an annual pension of 4760 złoty. Later he got a new position in the interior of Russia. But before he could start this, he died of typhus on June 2, 1846 in Warsaw .

Fonts

• Wykład Praktyczny węglarstwa stosowego . Warsaw 1825
• Mémoire descriptif sur la Forêt impériale de Białowieża en Lithuanie . Warsaw 1826 (reprint Paris 2004, ISBN 2-9521102-1-2 )
• Views on the forest cover of the steppes of European Russia, with a general relation to a rational establishment of the state forest system . Braunschweig 1833 (2nd edition, Braunschweig 1854)

literature

• Zoltán Rozsnyay, Frank Kropp: Karl Albrecht Friedrich Julius von den Brinken, the younger. In: Zoltán Rozsnyay, Frank Kropp: Lower Saxony Forest Biography. A source volume. Lower Saxony Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Forests (MELF), Hanover 1998, pp. 99-100 ( Aus dem Walde 51, ISSN  0519-4555 ).
• Walter Kremser : Lower Saxony forest history. An integrated cultural history of north-west German forestry. Heimatbund Rotenburg / Wümme, Rotenburg (Wümme) 1990 ( Rotenburger Schriften. Special volume 32, ZDB -ID 529397-2 ).
• JW Kobylanski: Juliusz Karol baron Holte von den Brincken. In: Echa Leśne 1937 (German by E. Buchholz: Julius Carl Baron Holte von den Brincken. General Forester of the Kingdom of Poland 1818–1833. In: Allgemeine Forstzeitschrift. Volume 11, Issue 49, 1956, ISSN  0002-5860 , p. 640).

Web links

• Family tree of Juliusz Karol bar. Brinken h. Brincken at www.sejmwielki.pl (Polish)