PLANTAE LINDHEIMERIANAE. 124 
LINDHEIMER, THE Boranist-EpIrTor. 
‘i Unsere Handlungen werden jedoch nicht blos von einfachen Gedanken 
und Willensbeschlussen geleitet. Der Zufall, oder vielmehr die Macht der 
fusseren 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 personality 
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. 
* Aufsitze und Abhandlungen. p. 136. 
t Life of Goethe by A. Bielschowsky, trans. by W. A. Cooper. p. 10. 
New York. 1905. 
{ This particular school of Bunsen was noted for its political activity, 
no less than six or its teachers being condemned between 1826 and 1833. 
Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. 18:697. Leipzig. 1883. 
