Philipp von Lützelburg

Philipp von Lützelburg , also Luetzelburg, (born July 16, 1880 in Landsberg am Lech ; † July 1, 1948 in Weilheim in Upper Bavaria ) was a German botanist and explorer who was known for collecting plants in the Amazon basin and northern Brazil. Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " Luetzelb. "

Life

He had the title of baron and came from the noble family Lützelburg . Lützelburg went to school in Augsburg and Memmingen and then trained as a pharmacist with stations in Ottobeuren, Reichshofen in Alsace, Basel, Cologne and Murnau. From 1904 he studied at the University of Munich , graduating in 1906. In 1907 he became an assistant at the Institute for Plant Physiology at the University of Munich, where he received his doctorate in 1909. The dissertation was on water hoses . In 1910 he traveled to Brazil on behalf of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and collected plants in the Rio de Janeiro area . He decided to stay in Brazil and in 1912 became professor of botany at the agricultural school in São Bento in Bahia . He also worked as an inspector for the Brazilian government fighting drought and as a pharmacist. During the First World War he was dismissed from his Brazilian offices and wanted to return to Germany, but the crossing was too unsafe for him, and an attempt to hire a stoker on a Norwegian steamer failed. He made his way as a private tutor, assistant teacher at a German school and employee of a chemist who wanted to copy German aniline dyes. Brazil was the only South American country to declare war on Germany in the First World War (1917), but this did not hinder his travels in the country. For example, in 1916 he accompanied the geologist and politician Miguel Arrojado Ribeiro Lisboa in southern Brazil on an inspection for measures against the drought. After the war he was reinstated as an inspector.

In 1922 he visited Germany and brought an extensive botanical collection (around 28,000 specimens) including mosses, ferns, seaweed, tree woods and fruits. Lists of the collections evaluated by different taxonomists in Germany appeared in the memo sheet of the Royal Botanical Garden and Museum in Berlin by Robert Pilger ( Plantae Lützelburgianae brasilienses ). Theodor Herzog determined the mosses and OC Schmidt determined the algae. Lützelburg himself dealt with plant geography, especially the Caatinga, and published volumes of maps ( Mappas Botanicos do Nordeste do Brasil ). At the invitation of Therese von Bayern , he gave lectures at the Geographical Society in Munich. In 1926 he returned to Brazil. In 1928 he took part in the expedition of Cândido Rondon to northeast Brazil on the borders with Colombia, Guyana and Venezuela including the table mountains of Roraima . The expedition was mainly supposed to map the borders, Lützelburg collected over 9000 specimens of plants, including some new palm species. The angiosperms were determined by Karl Suessenguth and the sweet grasses by Robert Pilger. After the expedition ended in 1930, he organized a new expedition for the government of British Guiana. From 1933 to 1937 he explored the savannas of Ceará on behalf of the Brazilian government , which led to further botanical collections that were sent to Munich.

In 1936 he married the language teacher Maria (also Marianne) Naessl, whom he had met in Rio de Janeiro. Since he did not get the climate in Brazil in the long run (Lützelburg himself was known for his robust health, he was also apparently immune to malaria) he returned to Germany in 1938. His wife was a cousin of Heinrich Himmler , whom he contacted while visiting Germany in 1936. On his mediation he became head of the botany department at the SS-Ahnenerbe in Berlin. This activity later seriously damaged his reputation. He became SS-Sturmbannführer and in 1943 SS-Obersturmbannführer and specialist leader of the Waffen SS for press and war economics . In 1944 he received the skull ring from Himmler.

At the Ahnenerbe, in line with his apprenticeship as a pharmacist, he dealt a lot with plant toxins (including colchicine ), but also with medicinal plants used by the Indians in South America and possible remedies (growth-inhibiting chemotherapeutic agents) against cancer from plants. In this context, an expedition to Paraguay was planned in 1942 . Occasionally he had contact with the SS doctor Sigmund Rascher, who was notorious for his human experiments in concentration camps . He also dealt with the influence of the moon and the earth's magnetic field on plants and potential useful plants for future German colonies in the tropics (with this and in particular the cultivation of oil-bearing plants, he apparently also applied for the Ahnenerbe). He also prepared an extensive manuscript on the history of botanical exploration in Brazil, for which he also traveled to Paris. The manuscript of around 1000 pages was lost in the chaos of war at the end of the Second World War in Berlin. The loss hit him hard. Most recently he lived in the home of his wife Marianne von Lützelburg (who died in 1954) in Weilheim in Upper Bavaria .

His work on the plants of northeastern Brazil was considered a standard work. Duplicates of a small part of his collections are in the Botanical Garden in Rio de Janeiro, but the main part is in Munich.

The Brazilian botanist Adolpho Ducke (1876–1959) criticized his working methods and work in 1945. He accused him of insufficient preparation, care and labeling of the preparations, misdescriptions in his work and, above all, was annoyed that he had brought most of his collection to Munich where Brazilian curators had to travel to use them.

Honors

In 1930 he received the gold medal of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1931 he became secretary of the German-Brazilian cultural exchange association.

The plant genus Luetzelburgia Harms from the legume family (Fabaceae) is named after him; likewise the species Stephanocereus luetzelburgii .

Fonts

• Estudo Botanico de Nordéste, Inspectoria Federal de Obras Contra as Seccas, Series IA, No. 57, Rio de Janeiro, 3 volumes, 1924
• Travels in the northeastern states of Brazil and their cactus areas, Zeitschrift für Sukkulentenkunde, Volume 7, 1923, pp. 59-63

literature

• JP Frahm, J. Eggers: Lexicon of German-speaking bryologists, Norderstedt 1995
• O. Huber, JJ Wurdack: Historical of botanical exploration in Territorio Federal, Amazonas, Venezuela, Smithsonian Contributions to Botany, Volume 56, 1984, p. 47
• K. Suessenguth: Philipp Freiherr von Lützelburg, Reports of the German Botanical Society, Volume 68a, 1955, pp. 65–69
• Adolpho Ducke: To pseudo-botânico Nazi no Brazil. Ph. Von Luetzelburg e sua conferencia sobre a fitogeografia de Amazonia, Revista Veterinaria, Belem, Volume 8 (33), 1945, pp. 17-19
• Melquiades Pinto Paiva: Os naturalistas eo Ceará: IX - Philipp Von Luetzelburg, Revistas do Institudo do Ceará, 2003, digitized, pdf

Web links

• Gerd Simon (with the assistance of Dagny Guhr, Ulrich Schermaul, Hannah Soppa), Chronologie Luetzelburg, Philipp von (pdf)
• Entry in JSTOR Global Plants

References and comments

1. ↑ Gerd Simon, Chronologie Luetzelburg, Philip von, University of Tübingen 2008, see web links
2. ↑ Michael Kater, Das Ahnenerbe, Oldenbourg 2006, p. 216
3. ↑ Gerd Simon, Chronology Luetzelburg, Philipp von, Tübingen 2008, see eWeblinks
4. ↑ There the officer Emmerich von Moers had already found medicinal plants whose locations were to be found again.
5. ↑ Gerd Simon, Chronologie Luetzelburg, loc.cit. For example, in 1943 he gave Rascher extracts from his crayfish and used his laboratory in Dachau.
6. ↑ The idea for research on the influence of the moon came from Himmler, but the results of the research were negative. Investigating the influence of the earth's magnetic field was suggested by his Ahnenerbe colleague Josef Wimmer .
7. ↑ Simon, Chronology, loc. cit. Gernot Bergold then carried out rearing experiments with oil-bearing plants from Brazil from the Ahnenerbe in East Africa .
8. ↑ So 1941 to study the atlas of Pedro de Texeira from the 17th century in the national library
9. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names . Extended Edition. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Free University Berlin Berlin 2018. [1]