Carl Ferdinand Heinrich von Ludwig

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Baron von Ludwig

Carl Ferdinand Heinrich von Ludwig , also Karl Ferdinand Heinrich von Ludwig , known as Baron von Ludwig , (born October 6, 1784 in Sulz am Neckar , † December 27, 1847 in Cape Town ) was a German pharmacist, entrepreneur and botanist who lived in Cape Town worked. He founded a botanical garden in Cape Town.

Life

Ludwig completed his apprenticeship as a pharmacist in Kirchheim unter Teck and was then a pharmacist and chemical laboratory technician in Amsterdam . In 1805 he went to Cape Town at the invitation of the doctor Friedrich Ludwig Liesching. In 1816 he married Alida Maria Burgers, the widow of the brewer and tobacco trader Carl Ferdinand Heinrich Altenstaedt, and expanded their business. In 1824 he was a co-founder of the South African Literary Society and collected plants and insects, some of which he sent to the Royal Museum in Stuttgart, for which he was ennobled (baron title) and then held the title of baron in South Africa. He was awarded an honorary doctorate there for another collection of zoological and botanical preparations, which he presented during a visit to the University of Tübingen in 1828. He then founded a private botanical garden, the Ludwigsburg Garden, with South African and imported plants (including the jacaranda tree ). Scientists such as Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Pappe , Charles Bunbury , William Henry Harvey and Joseph Dalton Hooker visited the garden and studied the plants in it. Among the botanists he entrusted with the supervision of the garden, from 1838 to 1842 James Bowie (around 1789-1869), who had been sent to South Africa from the Royal Botanical Garden in Kew , and from 1843 to 1847 Thomas Draper. He continued to send plants and animals to European (Stuttgart, Frankfurt) and American collections, for example on a trip to Europe in 1836/37, where he was in Stuttgart Christian Ferdinand Friedrich von Krauss , who accompanied him to South Africa in 1838 and selected specimens from his zoological collection and in Glasgow visited William Jackson Hooker . After his death, his botanical garden fell into disrepair. Although it was offered to the country for sale, it only took over a few plants for the establishment of a state botanical garden.

Ludwig was on the committee of the Cape of Good Hope Agricultural Society and the South African Public Library , was involved in founding the Natal Cotton Company and the Cape of Good Hope Gaslight Company . In 1846 he was one of the founders and chairman of the South African Mining Company , the first South African mining company that wanted to exploit long-known copper deposits in Namaqualand , but this failed. In the literature, Ludwig is also referred to as a banker.

Various plants and animals were named after him, such as the plants Restio ludwigii , Tulbaghia ludwigiana , Hibiscus ludwigii and Hypoxis ludwigii , the bustard Neotis ludwigii and the straight- tailed drongo Dicrurus ludwigii from the Drongos family . In 1837 he became an honorary citizen of Stuttgart. In 1845 he became an honorary member of the Association for Patriotic Natural History in Württemberg .

John Herschel, illustration from Ludwig's Botanical Garden in Cape Town 1834

The herbarium of Ludwig in Stuttgart (Herbarium florae capensis) was in the Royal Private Library in Stuttgart and contained 3000 sheets. Most of it was destroyed at the end of World War II .

literature

  • FR Bradlow: Baron v. Ludwig and The Ludwigsburg Garden, A chronicle of the Cape from 1806 to 1848 with an appendix showing some of the horticultural introductions of Baron v. Ludwig , Balkema 1965
  • E. Schüz: Baron von Ludwig in Cape Town and his letters to Ferdinand Krauss in Port Natal 1838 , annual books of the Society for Natural History in Württemberg, 122, 1967, pp. 47-62
  • W. Heyd: Bibliography of Württemberg history , Volume 2, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1896, p. 494, archive
  • Obituary in the annual books of the patriotic association for natural history in Württemberg, 4th year 1848, pp. 272–277

Web links

Commons : Baron von Ludwig  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. ^ Andreas Schlueter, Jakob Hallermann, The Type Specimens in the Herpetological Collection of the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde in Stuttgart, Stuttgarter Contributions to Natural History, 554, 1997, pp. 1–15 (PDF; 165 kB; English)
  2. ↑ For example in his entry in W. Heyd, Bibliographie der Württembergischen Geschichte, Volume 2
  3. ^ Honorary members of the Association for Patriotic Natural History in Württemberg
  4. ↑ Engelhardt, Seybold, The collectors of fern and flowering plants in the herbarium of the State Museum for Natural History in Stuttgart, Annual Books of the Society for Natural History in Württemberg, Volume 165, 2009, pp. 3–162, text without images (PDF; 1.7 MB; German)
personal data
SURNAME Ludwig, Carl Ferdinand Heinrich von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ludwig, Karl Ferdinand Heinrich von; Ludwig, Carl Ferdinand Heinrich Baron von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pharmacist, entrepreneur and botanist
DATE OF BIRTH October 6, 1784
PLACE OF BIRTH Sulz am Neckar
DATE OF DEATH December 27, 1847
Place of death Cape Town