﻿PLANTAE LINDHEIMERIANAIl. 



127 



LiNDHEIMER, THE BoTANIST-EdITOR. 



'• Unsere Handlungen werden jedoch nicht bios von einfachen Gedanken 

 und Willensbeschlussen geleitet. Der Zufall, oder vielmehr die Macht der 

 itusseren Ereignisse und gar mannichfaltige Nebengedanken haben eben- 

 falls einen grossen Einfluss auf unsere Handlungen."— Lindheimer* 



Though the name of Lindheimer is well known in the 

 botanical and German editorial world, his actual personaUty 

 and the events of his adventurous life are largely a matter of 

 tradition. Special pains have therefore been taken to 

 investigate his career and the influences determining its chief 

 events and to present this modest, studious, Nature-loving 

 editor and philosopher, as he appeared to those around him. 



Ferdinand Jacob Lindheimer was born in Frankfort-on-the- 

 Main, May 21, 1801, and died at New Braunfels, Texas, Dec. 

 2, 1879. His father, Johann Hartmann Lindheimer, was a 

 prosperous merchant of Frankfort, but died when his youngest 

 son, Ferdinand, was yet a child. He was also related to 

 the poet Goethe, whose maternal grandmother was the 

 daughter of Attorney Lindheimer of the Imperial Chamber,t 

 the ancestor of both, while the family itself is said to be de- 

 rived from that of von Lindheim, one of its members having 

 contracted a morganatic marriage and his descendants adopt- 

 ing the name Lindheimer. 



The youth Ferdinand was given the best education obtain- 

 able, attending a preparatory school in Berlin and finishing 

 his education at Wiesbaden and Bonn, taking his degree at 

 the latter university in 1827, after which he accepted a posi- 

 tion in the Bunsen Institute (Erziehungsanstalt) in his native 

 city and taught there till 1833, when it was closed by the 

 government and both he and George Bunsen were compelled 

 to emigrate, after the failure of the political conspiracy of 

 April 3 of that year, in which they appear to have been im- 

 plicated. $ 



* Aufsatze und Abhandlungen. p. 136. 



t Life of Goethe by A. Bielschowsky, trans, by W. A. Cooper, p. 10. 

 Mew York. 1905. 



X This particular school of Bunsen was noted for its political activity, 

 no less than six or its teachers being condemned between 1826 and IS33. 

 Allgomeme Deutsche Biographic. 18 : 697. Leipzig. 18S3. 



