Fuckel, Karl Wilhelm Gottlieb Leopold

Pharmacist, Botanist

born: 03.02.1821 in Reichelsheim

died: 08.03.1876 in Vienna

His father was a pastor in the Nassau exclave of Reichelsheim in the Wetterau region and also a well-known beekeeper. After leaving school, Fuckel completed his apprenticeship as a pharmacist from 1836. After studying in Heidelberg from 1845, he worked in Frankfurt am Main, Usingen and Eltville.

In 1851 he became a member of the Association for Natural History in the Duchy of Nassau(Nassauischer Verein für Naturkunde) and succeeded Franz Rudio as head of the botanical department in 1853. In this capacity he published "Nassau's Flora" in 1856, a work that had been planned by the association since its foundation. For this, he drew on a previous publication by Rudio and the data of numerous employees in all parts of Nassau and used the extensive collection of specimens in the association's herbarium. He himself made a not insignificant contribution to this work as a result of his field research.

His specimen herbarium (approx. 1,900 dried plants) is kept in the natural history collection of the Wiesbaden Museum and is of inestimable value for the knowledge of the biodiversity of Nassau's flora in the middle of the 19th century. The exsiccate work that he published on his flora is available in many larger collections.

His most important publications concern the fungal flora of Nassau and the Rhenish fungal flora. In these works, most of which appeared in 1860-70 in the Jahrbücher des Nassauischen Vereins für Naturkunde, he described numerous new species. The importance of this work can best be judged by the fact that it was reprinted in book form in the 1970s.

He died of cholera during a study trip to Vienna.