Werner Friedrich Hoffmeister

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Werner Friedrich Hoffmeister (born March 14, 1819 in Braunschweig ; † December 21, 1845 in Ferozeshah , India) was a German doctor and naturalist (zoologist, botanist). Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Hoffmeister ".

Hoffmeister lived in Braunschweig until 1827, where his father was a preacher at St. Petri, and then in Wolfenbüttel when his father became consistorial councilor there. He has been interested in natural history since his youth (with frequent visits to the Harz Mountains) and, after preparatory studies at the Collegium Carolinum in Braunschweig, attended medicine in Berlin from 1839. His uncle Martin Hinrich Lichtenstein exercised a great influence on him there after he had lost his father (1832) and mother. He continued his studies in Bonn and made trips to the Rhine Valley, the Netherlands, southern France and Switzerland. In 1841 he was back in Berlin, where he received his doctorate in medicine in 1843. Then he went to London and Paris, each with the intention of finding a job as a doctor overseas, but this was unsuccessful at first. Finally, on the recommendation of Humboldt, Lichtenstein and Johann Lukas Schönlein, he became the companion and personal physician of Prince Waldemar von Prussia (1817–1849) on his trip to India, which he began in 1844, on which he wrote a travel report and on which he collected plants. Both visited Ceylon , Calcutta , Patna , Nepal and the Himalayas , Agra , Delhi . In the Sikh War , the Prince joined the British Army and both were present at the Battle of Mudki . He died from a grape ball in the temple when he was taking part in the battle of Ferozeshah accompanied by the prince . The prince, and with him Hoffmeister, who also helped out as a military surgeon, were at the forefront when the Governor General of India Lord Hardinge went there to hold lines threatened by heavy fire from the Sikhs. He was buried in Ferozpoor with a gravestone that Waldemar von Prussia erected for him.

As a zoologist, he dealt with the taxonomy of earthworms, which was also the subject of his dissertation in Berlin in 1842 (De Vermibus quibusdam ad genus Lumbricorum pertinentibus). Johann Friedrich Klotzsch and Christian August Friedrich Garcke described the plants he collected in India and Ceylon. In India he discovered, among other things, the Lilium nanum described by Klotzsch .

Fonts

  • About the distribution of the conifers in the Himalayah , from a letter by Dr. W. Hoffmeister to Mr. v. Humboldt, in: Botanische Zeitung , 4th year, 1846, p. 177 ff.
  • The previously known species from the earthworm family . As the basis for a monograph by this family, Vieweg, Braunschweig 1848
  • Travels in Ceylon and India continental ; including Nepal and other parts of the Himalayas, to the borders of Thibet, with some notices of the overland route, WP Kennedy, Edinburgh 1848
  • Letters from India . Westermann, Braunschweig 1847 (with biographical information from A. Hoffmeister in the foreword), digitized version, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
  • with Waldemar von Prussia, JG Kutzner: The journey of His Royal Highness the Prince Waldemar of Prussia to India in the years 1844 to 1846 , Berlin 1857
  • Friedrich Klotzsch, August Garcke: The botanical results of the trip of His Royal Highness the Prince Waldemar of Prussia in the years 1845 and 1846 by Werner Hoffmeister on Ceylon, the Himalayas and on the borders of Tibet , Berlin 1862

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Date and place of birth according to the preface to his letters from India , Westermann 1847, p. IX
  2. ^ Letters from India, p. 345.
personal data
SURNAME Hoffmeister, Werner Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor and naturalist
DATE OF BIRTH March 14, 1819
PLACE OF BIRTH Braunschweig
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 1845
Place of death Ferozeshah