Alfred Heilbronn – Wikipedia

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Alfred Heilbronn (born May 28, 1885 in Fürth; died March 17, 1961 in Münster) was a German-Turkish botanist.

Heilbronn was the son of a Fürther manufacturer. After graduating from high school in Nuremberg, he studied science in Munich and received his doctorate in Botany, Physics and Chemistry in 1909. During his assistant time with stays in Berlin, Monaco and Münster, he converted from Judaism to Protestantism and married the art historian and teacher Magda Detmer (1889–1944) in 1913. They had two children, Hans (1915–1973) and Agnes (1920–2008).

After the habilitation in 1913, he was a chair for botany at the University of Münster during the First World War and led the botanical garden there. To a.o. He was appointed professor in 1921.

Heilbronn was a member of the German Democratic Party since 1918 until her ban in 1933. After the handover of power to the National Socialists, he was approved in April 1933 as part of boycott campaigns by the Münster students, in September 1933 he was withdrawn from teaching due to the law on the restoration of the professional civil service. He managed to receive a call to the University of Istanbul, where he worked from 1935 to 1955 on the pharmacological-botanical institute he founded. In this emigration, he quickly found his way around the Turkish language. At the Istanbul University, among other German scientists, his friend Curt Kosswig and her well -known Alfred Kantorowicz also worked. [first] His two children studied medicine in Turkey. Heilbronn was grown from the German Reich in 1941 and his rest of his assets in Münster “aranized”. In Istanbul, he was planning, founded and directed the new botanical garden of the university, which also bore his name: Alfred Heilbronn Botanik Bahcesi . After his application for naturalization was still rejected in 1939, he received Turkish citizenship in 1946.

View from the botanical garden over that Golden horn
Former entrance gate for the botanical garden closed in 2019

Heilbronn had been married to Fatma Mehpare Başaran (1910-1993) since 1948, they had a son Kurt [2] (* 1951). At the age of 70, Heilbronn returned to Germany in 1955 and still taught in Münster as an emeritus. Botanic professor Mehpare Heilbronn was released at the military coup in Turkey in 1960. After her rehabilitation (1962) she emigrated to the Federal Republic in 1964.

In addition to the now promising genetics, Heilbronn’s specialty was the medicine science, for which the environment of Asia Minor offered great opportunities. It was this special feature that brought him the invitation to Istanbul in 1935. There he particularly liked to search the mountain flora of the mountain sticks on the east coast of the Marmarame.

The botanical garden, founded by Heilbronn, was taken away from the Turkish government in 2014 to the Botanical Institute of the Istanbul University and transferred to the neighboring religious administration. After a transition period, the garden has been closed to the public since 2019 and the sign was removed above the entrance gate. Part of the garden with a view of the golden horn should probably be built on. [3] [4]

  • Apogamy, bastardization and hereditary relationships in some ferns , Jena: Fischer, 1910. Diss. Univ. Munich, 1909.
  • Hydromeae. Observations made at the Monaco Oceanographic Museum, in the mode and growth speed of Slauridium Cladonema II. , Monaco [1911], Bulletin of the Oceanographic Institute, No. 214
  • Food and poisonous mushrooms: a determinant of beginners , Münster: Borgmeyer 1917
  • Principia genetica: basic knowledge and basic terms d. Inheritance science , Hamburg 1961

as well as various Turkish -speaking works

  • Gisela Möllenhoff; Rita Schlautmann-overmeyer: Jewish families in Münster 1918 to 1945. Biographical lexicon. Westphalian steamboat, Münster 1995 ISBN 3-929586-48-7
  • Fritz Neumark: Refuge on the Bosphorus. Wig store, outstand 1980, isss Runn 32820-0443-4-4-4.
  • Faruk Şen, Dirk Halm (HRSG.): Exile under crescent and star. Herbert Scurla’s report. Plain text, Essen 2007, ISBN 3-89861-768-8
    • darin: Herbert Scurla: The activity of German university teachers at Turkish scientific universities (first 1939) [5]
  • Oliver Raß: To commemorate Alfred Heilbronn , corridors, University of Münster, 2014.
  • Arın Namal, Peter Scholz, Orhan Küçüker: A German emigrant as the namesake of the botanical garden of the University of Istanbul: Prof. Dr. Alfred Heilbronn (1885–1961) and his position in the history of Turkish botany. 2010, in: Ingrid Kästner, Jürgen Kiefer (ed.): Botanical gardens and botanical research trips. Shaker publisher, 2011, 2011, ISBN 978-3-8322-9828-9-9, S. 17. 17-22, online , andere Version online .
  1. ↑ Ali conscientious satisfaction: Alfred Kantorowicz with special consideration of his work in İstanbul (a contribution to the history of modern dentistry). Medical dissertation, Würzburg 1985, pp. 268–270, here: p. 270.
  2. ↑ Kemal Bozay: Exile Türkiye , Münster: Lit, 2001, p. 110, ISBN 3-8258-5103-6
  3. ↑ Christine-Felice Röhrs and Linda Say: The sold paradise. The first botanical garden of Türkiye is now closed , Frankfurter Rundschau, June 8, 2019, S. 48.
  4. ↑ https://www.judeische-allgemeine.de/judische-welt/ein-stueck-dutsch-judische-geschichte/
  5. ↑ As a National Socialist, Scurla was on the road for control and spying on the exiled. He later made a steep career in the GDR