Metaphius Theodor August Langenbuch

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Monument to Langenbuch in Lübeck's city park

Metaphius Theodor August Langenbuch (born September 4, 1842 in Eutin , † May 2, 1907 in Lübeck ) was a German garden architect and city gardener.

Life

origin

Langenbuch was born as the son of a town musician in Eutin, the capital of the Principality of Lübeck , an exclave of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg .

career

After Langenbuch the Eutiner school had attended, he learned from 1860 to 1863 in the Grand Ducal Hofgartnerei Roese the nursery and was then as an assistant in by James Booth founded nursery James Booth & Sons in Altona ( Flottbek ), where he worked until 1864 for Consul Gustav Wilhelm von Schiller (1803-1870) worked in Oevelgönne . In 1864 and 1865 he was an intern at the gardening school at the Wildlife Park in Potsdam under Peter Joseph Lenné . He then worked briefly for the Prussian court gardener Hermann Mächtig and from May 1866 under Eduard Petzold in the famous landscape park of Prince Pückler in Muskau . There he received some suggestions that he was later able to implement in Lübeck. In 1867 he came to Schönhof near Varel . From 1868 he worked again in Altona, for example in Nienstedten in the nursery of Friedrich Jürgens and as a manorial head gardener for consul August Joseph Schön in Klein Flottbek.

With a concession from his future employer to be able to carry out smaller commissioned work as a garden architect on his own account, Langenbuch was hired by the Hanseatic City of Lübeck as a city gardener on January 11, 1879. As early as the first summer he gained precise knowledge of the city's somewhat neglected facilities at the time . As early as December, he went public with suggestions on how the old trees of the ramparts could be given a longer lifespan. These proposals, which on a cap and limbing targeted the trees already under dryness of the treetops suffered initially earned him much opposition. The illustrated Sunday papers of that time portrayed him as the devastator of the facilities, with the pipe in his mouth that was typical for him and a large saw under his arm. But his measures were successful.

Over the course of several years, Langenbuch carried out the refreshment and partial thinning of the facilities, thus saving them from the threat of wilderness. This maintenance of the facilities remained on the agenda. So he reported again and again in the meetings of the horticultural association , in which he developed a lively activity from the beginning, about what he was planning for their beautification. On the one hand, his energetic intervention even in existing beauties emerged, if in his opinion it was necessary for the further development and future maintenance of the plantings, on the other hand his love for the entire area of ​​the grounds and for individual particularly beautiful points of the complex.

Langenbuch sent the building deputation to the International Horticultural Exhibition in Berlin in 1885 to expand his knowledge and collect ideas. The Volkspark Friedrichshain gave him the suggestion of how to beautify the part of the old city moat near the observatory by partially filling in the moat and creating an area of ​​water up to the edges of the planted lake-like valley. Almost twenty years later he carried out this idea, albeit in a different way, when building the Elbe-Trave canal . On April 1, 1897, he gave a lecture on the gardens on the Elbe-Trave Canal .

His activity also extended to the creation of new plants. In 1889, Langenbuch created the redesign of the Lindenplatz with its central flower field, he created the facility at the mill pond and museum in the form of 1907 in the years 1888 to 1892, for the German-Nordic trade and industry exhibition that took place in the Hanseatic city in 1895 the horticultural facilities. As one of four judges from Lübeck, he was at the General Horticultural Exhibition in Hamburg from July 2 to 6, 1897 . His greatest works, however, were the creation of new facilities for the construction of the Elbe-Trave Canal in the years from 1897 to 1900 and the creation of the city ​​park (12 hectares) from 1898 to 1902 in St. Gertrud .

On January 12, 1901, the Senate elected Langenbuch and others as experts for the assessment of forest damage occurring during military exercises.

City park pond
Grave in the Burgtorfriedhof

Langenbuch said: "I would really like to see what the city park will look like after fifty years, but I will never be able to do that". Until his death, the facilities at the Mühlentor , where he could tie in with what was already there and thus, in a certain way, quickly create something ready, were more valued by most than the city park. When in 1902 participants of the 9th International Shipping Congress in Düsseldorf came to Lübeck to tour the Elbe-Trave Canal, one of the foreign visitors said: “I have every respect for the technical achievements that have been achieved here, but what I do most liked, that was how you adapted to the whole area with your canal and how it is then further developed in the landscape. "

It was thanks to Langenbuch that Lübeck now had a great treasure in its facilities. These wrapped themselves around part of the old city like a belt and created a connection between the inner city and the suburbs. When Langenbuch died after two years of severe heart disease, the city honored him with a memorial in his park by a council and citizens' decision . The inauguration took place in April 1909.

family

His son August Langenbuch also completed a career as a horticultural engineer , with him the second generation of the Langenbuch family was in the service of Lübeck, he created the Vorwerker cemetery , among other things .

Works

literature

Web links

Commons : Metaphius Theodor August Langenbuch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Lübeckische Blätter  - Sources and full texts
Wikisource: Weekly of the Association for the Promotion of Horticulture in the Royal Prussian States for Horticulture and Herbology  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Schiller orchid collection in Övelgönne near Altona. In: Weekly of the Association for the Promotion of Horticulture in the Royal Prussian States for Horticulture and Botanical Science , 4th year 1861, p. 295 ff.
  2. ↑ Local and mixed notes. In: Lübeckische Blätter , Volume 27, No. 74 (from September 16, 1885), p. 424.
  3. ^ Meeting of the trade association. In: Lübeckische Blätter , Volume 39, No. 19 (from May 9, 1897), pp. 231–232.
  4. ^ Lübeck at the general horticultural exhibition. In: Lübeckische Blätter , Volume 39, No. 28 (from July 11, 1897), pp. 349-350.
  5. ↑ Local Notes. In: Lübeckische Blätter , Volume 43, No. 3 (from January 20, 1901), p. 34.
  6. ↑ Local Notes. In: Lübeckische Blätter , Volume 51, No. 15 (from April 11, 1909), p. 214.
personal data
SURNAME Langenbuch, Metaphius Theodor August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German garden architect and city gardener
DATE OF BIRTH September 4, 1842
PLACE OF BIRTH Eutin
DATE OF DEATH May 2, 1907
Place of death Lübeck