Beneath this stone rests Karl Moritz Gottsche. He wasn’t a king or a general. Yet, his impact resonates through the world of botany.
Karl Moritz Gottsche was born in Altona in 1808. Altona is now part of Hamburg. He became a physician and botanist.
Gottsche’s early life involved private lessons in Hamburg. Later, he attended a gymnasium in Hirschberg. His family originated from there. His uncle owned a sugar factory.
He studied medicine in Berlin from 1828. He earned his doctorate in 1831. He continued his studies in Copenhagen for two semesters. Altona was part of Denmark back then. He became an assistant in the maternity clinic until 1834. He passed his state examination there. After that, he worked as a resident doctor in Altona.
Medicine was his profession. Botany was his passion. Even during his medical studies, he studied zoology and botany. In Altona, he focused on mosses. His medical practice sustained him. His inheritance dwindled after his father’s death. He later served as a municipal poor doctor.
Gottsche became a leading expert in liverworts. He co-authored a monograph with Johann Bernhard Wilhelm Lindenberg and Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck. Lindenberg and Nees van Esenbeck conceived the project. Gottsche wrote most of the work. He also created the detailed drawings.
A planned supplement never appeared. The publisher declined it. Only two volumes of Species Hepaticarum with Lindenberg were published. Gottsche published supplements in a literature review. It covered liverworts in the Botanische Zeitschrift in 1858. In 1867, he published a book on Mexican liverworts in Copenhagen. This was based on Frederik Michael Liebmann’s collection from the 1840s. He knew Liebmann from his student days in Copenhagen. He contributed to Gottlob Ludwig Rabenhorst’s collection of dried cryptogams. He published a book on the liverworts of South Georgia in 1890.
During a stay in Paris, he created a manuscript on French liverworts with Husnot. It was never published. He sometimes criticized colleagues in his publications. This led to a falling out with Johann Georg Christian Lehmann. Lehmann was the director of the Hamburg Botanical Garden and once Gottsche’s patron.
The liverwort genus Gottschea is named after him. It belongs to the Schistochilaceae family. Many liverwort species also bear his name. He also studied leafy mosses. He published zoological works.
The University of Kiel awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1881. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences in Copenhagen. He was also a member of the Leopoldina. This was based on his work on Haplomitrium hookeri from 1843.
His drawings and collections went to the Berlin Botanical Museum. They burned in a bombing raid in 1943. Only a small part of his collection survived. It came from a Tierra del Fuego expedition. It reached the Botanical Institute of the University of Hamburg through his daughter-in-law. Many duplicate specimens from his collection reached Munich. They arrived via Sendtner’s liverwort collection. He married in 1838. He had five children. One of them was the geologist Carl Christian Gottsche.
Karl Moritz Gottsche died in Altona in 1892. He was 84 years old. His legacy lives on in the world of botany.
Remember Karl Moritz Gottsche. He was a doctor. He was a botanist. He was a scholar. His work continues to inspire.