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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
This book presents a biography of the Danish botanist Eugen Warming. As the author of a treatise on ecology that brought him international recognition, he was able to inspire the first generation of 20th-century European and American ecologists. His innovative approach to nature and his Arctic and tropical missions heralded the birth of a new science and an ecological awareness. As a professor at several Scandinavian universities during a period of intense debate and controversy over evolutionary theories, Eugen Warming vigorously asserted his convictions. Birth of Scientific Ecology presents the image of a man of knowledge and power, recognized by his contemporaries as a founder of ecology and a player in the ecological project of the Kingdom of Denmark at a time when the empires were clashing.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART 1: From Mandø to Lagoa Santa
1 Eugenius’ Birthplace
1.1. A deprived small island
1.2. A Lutheran pastor’s son
2 Jutland: At the Roots of a Passion
2.1. Decisive choices
2.2. Bewitching moorland
2.3. A demanding school
2.4. The political context
3 An Interrupted University Course
3.1. Academic training
3.2. Debating evolutionary theories
3.3. A harrowing crossing
4 From Rio to Lagoa Santa: A New World
4.1. Free at last!
4.2. A long journey
4.3. Eugenius’ employer
4.4. The economy of collecting and collections
4.5. Flora of Central Brazil
4.6. An ecological study model
Conclusion to Part 1
PART 2: Good Times and Bad
5 Outstanding Doctoral Studies
5.1. Exceptional conditions
5.2. Small objects, big discussions
6 Intense Activity, a Detour via Stockholm
6.1. Intense activity
6.2. An initial positioning with regard to evolutionary theories
6.3. An unbearable situation
6.4. A pleasant opportunity
7 Back to Copenhagen
7.1. The teacher-researcher
7.2. The successful author
Conclusion to Part 2
PART 3: New Latitudes
8 Arctic and Tropical Missions
8.1. Exploring the land of the Greenlanders
8.2. Norwegian Lapland
8.3. Equinoctial America
8.4. Teams of specialists
9 Eugenius’ Arctic Botanical Geography
9.1. A comparative and historical approach
9.2. The origin of northern flora
9.3. Ice Age debates and controversies
9.4. Arctic flowering plants
9.5. Boundaries and transitions
9.6. European or Arctic flora?
10 The Long-Term Tropics
10.1. Back to the tropics
10.2. His favorite family
Conclusion to Part 3
PART 4: Professor Warming’s Ecology
11 1895–1896: Ecological Botanical Geography
11.1. The story of a new word
11.2. Synthesis and innovation
11.3. Let us eat!
11.4. Plant communities
11.5. Hierarchical units
11.6. Warming’s classification system
12 Authorized Editions, or Not…
12.1. The problem of the 1902 edition
12.2. New references
12.3. A new theory
13 1909:
Oecology of Plants
in the Storm
13.1. Warming’s point of view
13.2. Reasoned opinions
13.3. Leaving the road
13.4. Extension
14 Limits and Potentials
14.1. The glass ceiling of Warming’s ecology
14.2. Two diverging lines
14.3. A school of tropical ecology
14.4. A dynamic ecology
15 Warming’s Ecology and Evolutionary Theories
15.1. Struggles between species and communities
15.2. The origin of species
15.3. Epharmony and life forms
15.4. Plant plasticity
15.5. Famous and controversial experiments
15.6. The “Lamarckian cradle of ecology” (Acot 1997)
15.7. Didactize: translate or betray!
15.8. Political and religious dimensions
Conclusion to Part 4
PART 5: The Ubiquitous Professor Warming
16 The Institutionalization of Ecology
16.1. “Babelic confusion”
16.2. Lengthy preparations
16.3. Brussels Congress
16.4. A “calm” balance sheet
17 The Man of Knowledge and Power
17.1. A pillar of the Carlsberg Foundation
17.2. A Lutheran conservative and a patriot
17.3. Scandinavianism
18 The Protagonist of the Danish Ecological Project
18.1. Denmark’s scientific prestige
18.2. Fundamental and applied ecology
18.3. “The white man dressed all in black”
Conclusion to Part 5
General Conclusion
References
Index of Names
Index of Terms
Other titles from ISTE in Energy
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Figure I.1. Dr. Lund’s house and garden, on the right inthe image (public doma...
Figure I.2. Portrait of Warming at age 21 (Klein 2002, p. 19)
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1. The island of Mandø (Manø) around 1870 (copy of the bulletin of ge...
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1. View of the Ribe cathedral tower looking west over the meadows. Ph...
Figure 2.2. Eugenius with other Ribe high school students (Fogh 1915, p. 7)
Figure 2.3. Photo taken after the performance of Soldaterløjer (Soldiers’ Joke...
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1. Warming’s (1863–1866) and Lund and Riedel’s (1833–1835)routes from...
Figure 4.2. The campo cerrado, photograph (1864) and drawing by Warming (1864;...
Figure 4.3. View of Lagoa Santa. Foreground: Sagittaria lagoensis (synonym: S....
Figure 4.4. Herbarium box (Verlot 1865, p. 38)
Figure 4.5. Landscape around Lagoa Santa towards the Rio das Vehlas (its river...
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1. Portrait of Eugenius Warming in 1879 (public domain via Wikimedia ...
Figure 5.2. Floral diagram of a euphorbia (Pedilanthus)according to Baillon (W...
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1. Botanical laboratory, 140 Gothersgade, seen from Copenhagen Botani...
Figure 7.2. Map of Fanø and Manø (Mandø),with the Wadden Sea (Warming 1906, p....
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1. Danish Navy schooner Fylla, in Copenhagen harbor in 1888 (Official...
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1. Hierochloa borealis (synonym Hierochloe odorata, sweet grass from ...
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1. Podostemum ceratophyllum (Britton and Brown 1913, vol. 2, p. 205)...
Chapter 11
Figure 11.1. Associations on a sandy beach and further inland,West Indies (War...
Chapter 14
Figure 14.1. From the diagram for the classification of life zones or plant fo...
Figure 14.2. A burnt campo in Lagoa Santa (August 1865) (Warming 1892, p. 7)
Chapter 15
Figure 15.1. Helianthemum vulgare. Plain (P)and mountain (M) (Bonnier 1895a, p...
Figure 15.2. Plan of the Fontainebleau laboratory grounds (Dufour 1914, Plate ...
Chapter 15a
Figure C4.1. Portrait of Eugenius Warming circa 1900 and his signature (Marius...
Chapter 16
Figure 16.1. International Botanical Congress, Vienna, 1905. Warming is no. 41...
Figure 16.2a. Some of the delegates who attended the proceedings of the Phytog...
Figure 16.2b. Some of the delegates who attended the proceedings of the Phytog...
Chapter 17
Figure 17.1. The Carlsberg laboratory and the statue of its founder Jacob Chri...
Chapter 18
Figure 18.1. A derrubada: on the hill behind the fazenda(landholding), the for...
Figure 18.2. Salicornia herbacea (S. europaea)on the island of Fanø (Warming 1...
Figure 18.3. Average growth form of Spartina alterniflora (invasive halophilou...
Chapter 18a
Figure C5.1. Commemorative plaque for Warming in Mandø (Erik Christensen, CC B...
Guide
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Begin Reading
General Conclusion
References
Index of Names
Index of Terms
Other titles from ISTE in Energy
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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Series Editor
Françoise Gaill
Birth of Scientific Ecology
Eugenius Warming (1841–1924)
Patrick Matagne
First published 2024 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
ISTE Ltd27-37 St George’s RoadLondon SW19 4EUUK
www.iste.co.uk
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030USA
www.wiley.com
© ISTE Ltd 2024The rights of Patrick Matagne to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s), contributor(s) or editor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of ISTE Group.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023947134
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA CIP record for this book is available from the British LibraryISBN 978-1-78630-929-7
Foreword
In France, studies specifically devoted to the history of scientific ecology are recent, and their first authors can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The small group they formed was made up, in alphabetical order, of Pascal Acot, Jean-Paul Deléage, the late Jean-Marc Drouin (1948–2020) and Patrick Matagne, author, among others, of this book. All of them have published several acclaimed works, and have developed mutually fruitful and often esteemed scientific relationships.
Patrick Matagne is an outstanding historian of science. We only have to read his books and publications to be convinced. He holds a master’s degree in history commenced under the supervision of Alain Corbin, then a doctorate in epistemology and history of science (on the history of scientific ecology) after defending a thesis on this theme in 1994 under the supervision of François Dagognet (1924–2015). He then became a lecturer at the IUFM Nord-Pas-de-Calais, then Poitou-Charentes Poitiers.
This researcher with vast knowledge is also a man of the field who knows what he is talking about, as he also holds a master’s degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Poitiers. In 1998, after working on the Mesoamerican biological corridor, these degrees and scientific qualities led him to lead a seminar on the history of ecology at the University of Costa Rica’s Faculty of Social Sciences.
His latest work cannot be reduced to a simple biography, however erudite, of the Danish biologist Eugenius Bülow Warming (1841–1924), the botanist most often regarded as the founder of scientific ecology. This book is far more important, because when we look at Patrick Matagne’s work, we discover that its author combines all the scientific and stylistic qualities of his previous works.
Thus, the book resulting from his thesis entitled Aux origines de l’écologie and subtitled “Les naturalistes en France de 1800 à 1914” (CTHS, histoire des sciences et des techniques, 1999) presented remarkable originality: that of considering the importance of provincial naturalists, often non-professionals, in the emergence of modern ecological problems and, conversely, in the way they integrated into their “local” reflections the work of the first great ecologists. As a result of this book, the origins of scientific ecology, hitherto dated to the second half of the 19th century, can be traced back to the 1800s. This result is far from insignificant, which is no mean feat for a first major publication.
Similarly, the brilliant and profound introduction to Comprendre l’écologie et son histoire (Delachaux and Niestlé 2002) focused on the first North American nuclear explosion in the New Mexico desert in 1945. To my knowledge, Patrick Matagne was one of the first to highlight its tragically paradoxical importance, which ushered humanity into the “ecological age” by emphasizing the fragility and vital importance, in the truest sense of the word, of ecosystems.
This is why Les Enjeux du développement durable, the collective work he edited and published by L’Harmattan in 2005, does not represent a kind of editorial parenthesis in the reasoned publication of his research, but rather a fruitful transition. Indeed, the proceedings of the study days organized in 2003–2004 by the Espace Mendès France (Poitiers) mark a decisive stage in his work. Edgar Morin, who wrote the foreword to the work, made no mistake: this collection has contributed to bringing to scientific ecology what politics is most challenging for the future of the planet’s civilizations.
It is therefore hardly surprising that La Naissance de l’écologie (Ellipses 2009), which focuses on the work of Eugenius Warming as a criterion for the scientific nature of this new branch of biology, is now inseparably perceived as describing not only the birth of a new science, but also of a new political awareness, if not soon a new morality. This latest book from Patrick Matagne has inherited the same qualities as his previous works.
The book’s remarkable introduction takes the reader by the hand (the author is no stranger to this): “Eugenius arrived at his destination at around ten o’clock on July 8, 1863. After spending the night at Manoel’s farmhouse, his guide since his arrival in Rio de Janeiro, they left the mules to travel the last few leagues still separating them from Lagoa Santa on horseback.” It sounds like the beginning of an adventure book, even if it is the beginning of a highly documented, wonderfully illustrated academic history of scientific ecology. And, as in an adventure book, the reader, trapped by curiosity, wants to know more and more about Eugenius. In this respect, the use of first names introduces a welcome complicity between the biographer and his readers. Until now, we thought we were simply discovering a major founder of ecology, and that is what happens as we read on. But this founder is a human being, so essential that we often wish we had known him.
In this way, Patrick Matagne gives us a useful lesson in epistemology: despite what a superficial glance may suggest, science is never neutral, but always developed by sensitive human beings, in given material and cultural conditions. When he describes Warming’s distress at learning of his mother’s death in Lagoa Santa three months after leaving her, he is in no way concerned with anecdote, but paves the way to an innovative method of practicing the history of science, without which we would miss important aspects of the great Danish ecologist’s thought.
Pascal ACOT
Doctor
Institut d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences et des techniques
CNRS, Université de Paris 1, ENS-ULM
Acknowledgments
Pascal Acot, a French pioneer in the history of scientific ecology and a historian of environmental sciences, climate and climatology, did me the honor of reviewing my text, with all the wisdom and high level of expertise that characterize him.
Jean-François Beauvais, a temperate and tropical botanist, whose analytical eye supported the writing of this book, was kind enough to mobilize his naturalist skills.
My gratitude to them goes beyond mere convention. Their encouragement has played no small part in the success of this work, for which I am – of course – solely responsible.
Introduction
Eugenius arrived at his destination around ten o’clock on July 8, 1863.
After spending the night at Manoel’s farmhouse, his guide since his arrival in Rio de Janeiro, they left the mules to travel the last few leagues still separating them from Lagoa Santa on horseback. Eugenius had planned to stay there for two years, and would stay for an additional year.
“The morning was pleasant. Bluebell-shaped flowers and many others adorned the hills”; “the dew was like pearls in the grass”, he wrote in his diary1. At almost 800 m above sea level, on the vast plateau of what is now Minas Gerais, the temperature was mild at that time of the year2. “I let my gaze wander over the large square in the center of town”.
Although the square was vast, Eugenius was soon to discover that the “town” was no more than a “miserable village” with low-slung houses and streets made of earth, limestone and short grass, as his photographs show. In the early 19th century, Lagoa Santa had 500 inhabitants and 80 houses. Manoel pointed out the one he needed to go to. He entered and stood waiting while his guide went to inform the owner of the premises who was resting in his garden at the back. After his morning stroll, he usually enjoyed the shade of the biribá and palm trees3.
Figure I.1.Dr. Lund’s house and garden, on the right inthe image (public domain via Wikimedia Commons)
Eugenius was nervous. He was about to meet the Danish scientist whose secretary he was to become. Then entered “a thin man with gray hair”. Peter Wilhelm Lund had passed the age of 60, Eugenius was not yet 22.
“To my surprise, he greeted me in German4. He was normally supposed to use this language with Mr Brent, who replaced me temporarily. I think I replied in German, but then he realized he would have to speak in Danish”. We can assume that Eugenius’ surprise must have been tinged with a certain amount of annoyance, given his strong patriotic feelings against the conquering German Confederation.
For the time being, dramatic news awaited him.
“After a few minutes of conversation, he [Lund] remembered that mail had arrived for me”; “the first letter I opened, with a strange sense of anguish, brought me paralyzing news: my mother was dead”. We can imagine the grief of the young man, an only child and fatherless, discovering that his mother had died on May 5, 1863, less than three months after his departure.
He landed in Rio de Janeiro on April 27 and stayed for five weeks. Far from Europe and his University of Copenhagen, he was delighted to discover the tropical nature surrounding the city. Like all naturalists, he observed, collected, drew, described and – a rarity at the time, given the technical difficulties that discouraged many beginners – used the bulky and fragile camera he had packed in his luggage (Davanne 1867; Gunthert 1999, p. 205). Cautious and organized, he took a two-week photography course before his departure.
His uneasiness, and even his guilt, can be seen in the lines left in his diary:
It’s true that I had received a letter in Rio from my mother’s brother informing that she was ill, but, as he himself had said, there was no danger, as I had left her in very good health and as for many years she had never been ill, I didn’t attach much importance to the fact.
His uncle, who took him and his mother in after his father’s death when he was barely three, probably did not want to alarm him. In any case, if Eugenius had decided to return, he would have had to face another arduous journey by mule to Rio de Janeiro, wait for a ship to take him to Europe and sail for many weeks.
A strange coincidence: Lund also learned of his mother’s death while on a study trip in Italy with the Danish botanist Joakim Frederik Schouw. Arriving in Sicily, they hired a cart and two mules, passing through Messina, Catania, Syracuse and Agrigento. In Palermo, Lund received a bundle of letters, including one from his cousin telling him the sad news. He returned to Copenhagen for the last time in the summer of 1831. With no family ties, he hesitated between settling in Paris or Brazil. According to Danish zoologist Johannes Theodor Reinhardt with whom he had an ongoing correspondence, his mind was already made up (Luna Filho 2007, p. 71 ff).
What does the face of young Eugenius, photographed at the age of 21 shortly before his departure for Brazil, express?
The half-length portrait shows a serious, almost austere face, with a bare forehead and hair swept back. He is wearing glasses, a pencil beard and a budding moustache. Photographs from this period have a certain frozen quality, due to the technical necessity of requiring the subject to remain motionless. This portrait, taken in a photographer’s studio, has been retouched like almost all of them. The background is neutral, with only the upper part of the torso visible. He did not stare at the lens, his gaze seemingly lost in contemplation of a distant horizon.
The intention here was not to show the subject in a particular situation, unlike those naturalists captured in postures that give the illusion of movement while in their study, sometimes in nature observing a detail, magnifying glass in hand. Later, after a brilliant career, Professor Warming came to take his place in these “galleries of contemporaries”, “photographic portraits of famous figures from politics, science and the arts”, fashionable from the second half of the 19th century onwards (Rouillé and Marbot 1986, p. 33; Gunthert 1999, pp. 13–14)5. These representations were intended to signify the social success or scientific notoriety of the person being “portrayed”. The physiognomy of the Swiss Johann Caspar Lavater was popular. Portraits were thought to reveal the personality, feelings emotions and even the soul of the subject.
Figure I.2.Portrait of Warming at age 21 (Klein 2002, p. 19)
When did Johannes Eugenius Bülow Warming conceive the project that would make him the author of the first treatise on ecology? What was it intended for?
Mr Launay, professor of history at the Université François Rabelais in Tours, warned his students: to shed light on an individual’s intellectual, ideological, political and spiritual journey, ask yourself where he was, what he was going through and what decisions he made when he was 20.
This is how the destiny of an individual would then be written.
No one better than Balzac knew how to play with the destiny of his characters. In La Comédie humaine, he takes up the biological notion of milieu, defined by Comte in his Cours de philosophie positive and extended to human societies, where individuals interact with one another. Balzac sought to grasp the laws governing the distribution of social species. He analyzed the decisions, behaviors and aspirations of his characters. Drawing on the animal nomenclature established by paleontologist Cuvier and zoologist Buffon, he aligned the physical and the moral (Cohen 2004; Matagne 2004; Collet 2019).
Eugenius was born on November 3, 1841, on the small Danish island of Mandø in the Wadden Sea, the only son of Lutheran minister Jens Warming and Anna Marie von Bülow. Following his father’s untimely death, his mother left the island to live with her young child on the east coast of the Jutland peninsula, near Vejle, where Eugenius attended school before completing his secondary education in Ribe, less than 20 km from his native island. Introduced to botany by a natural history teacher, he became familiar with the plants of the Jutland coastline.
He enrolled at the University of Copenhagen in 1859, the publication year of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. An opportunity to travel presented itself. Professor Reinhardt proposed that he leave for Brazil to become secretary to the zoologist and paleontologist Lund, whose assistant he had been. Eugenius interrupted his studies.
He left on February 17, 1863 and returned to Denmark in October 1866.
On his return, he completed his studies in Copenhagen, then moved to Munich and Bonn to continue his research. He defended his doctoral thesis in 1871, the same year he married – he had eight children – then became temporary assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen at the age of 32, and professor at the University of Stockholm from 1882 to 1885. He returned to his home university, where he taught until his retirement. He was also the director of the Botanical Garden, where his herbarium, drawings, photographs and diary are now kept. A pedagogue, he devoted himself zealously to teaching, publishing botanical textbooks that met with great success. A man of the field, he felt it necessary to take his students outside the walls of the university. To open them up to the concepts and methods of botany and plant ecology, the botanical garden was not enough.
His work was enriched by his travels, which brought him into contact with landscapes and flora from latitudes as diverse as Greenland, Venezuela, the Caribbean, the Faroe Islands, Scandinavia and Tunisia, not to mention short stays in the Alps and the south of France.
How did the opportunities, the ups and downs of a life spanning more than 80 years shape the pastor’s son, who went on to become an internationally renowned scientist? What role did the unpredictable, the unexpected and the uncertain play?
To shed light on the work and the man, should we highlight his father’s death before he could retain any conscious memory of it, but which led to his move to the continent? Or his encounter with a natural history professor during his secondary school years? His decision to leave university before completing his studies and accept the offer to cross the Atlantic to become the secretary of an old scholar? The news of his mother’s death, far from everyone and everything? The discovery of exotic flora whose physiognomy, so different from that of Denmark, turned his understanding of botany and botanical geography upside down; the great European conflicts that severely affected his homeland?
These questions, along with others, will run through this narrative, whose ambition is to make the life of Johannes Eugenius Bülow Warming intelligible a posteriori, although it was unpredictable a priori, like all human lives (Morin 2021, p. 29–46, p. 143).
Notes
1
Pages 63–73 from Eugenius Warming’s diary are published by Klein, A.L. (
2000
).
Eugen Warming e o cerrado brasileiro
. UNESP, São Paulo. Other extracts are taken from Prytz, S. (1984).
Warming Botaniker og Rejsende
. Bogan, Lynge.
2
22°C annual average. The coldest month is July (average 18.8°C); the warmest is February (average 23.7°C).
3
Rollinia laurifolia
(Annonaceae),
Acrocomia sclerocarpa
and
Cocos capitata
(Arecaceae).
4
“
Ah, es ist Herr Warming, setzen Sie sich gefälligst Nieder
” (Ah, it’s Mr Warming, please sit down).
5
At the end of the 19th century, a snapshot was gradually mastered thanks to the introduction of the gelatin–alkaline combination.
PART 1From Mandø to Lagoa Santa
1Eugenius’ Birthplace
1.1. A deprived small island
A traveler discovering the island of Mandø in the 1840s on a November day with low clouds heralding rain would not have had the most pleasant of impressions. Certainly, temperatures would be above zero all day long, but they would remain in the single digits.
Coming from the nearby mainland at low tide through a passage created by the sand bank and roughly protected by two rows of posts – which have to be rebuilt every spring – visitors would discover a hostile, wind-beaten environment, a low, marshy land. According to an 1839 map, the altitude did not exceed 5 m above sea level. The day-tripper was not to linger too long, as the low light would fade by 4 p.m. An unpaved road took you to Ny Mandø (New Mandø) in just a few minutes, where the first houses in the mist could be made out and, behind them, the church built outside the village, as tradition dictates. Visitors could then walk between the houses protected by the dunes, with their adjoining garden surrounded by hedges on the south side.
It was here that Eugenius was born on November 3, 1841, in the land of “eternal November”, in the words of Danish poet Henrik Nordbrandt. For him, in Denmark:
The year has 16 months.
November, December, January, February,
March, April, May, June, July,
August, September, October,
November, November, November, November (Nordbrandt 1986; Viegnes et al. 2020, p. 151).
Figure 1.1.The island of Mandø (Manø) around 1870 (copy of the bulletin of general staff) (Warming 1906–1919, p. 116)
Mandø, Denmark’s smallest island, is part of the northern archipelago of the Friesland Islands, which form a dividing line between the North Sea and the Wadden Sea. The island is separated into two by a channel. By the time of Eugenius’ death in 1924, the two parts had virtually fused together due to the relatively rapid silting up and filling in of the channel (Oorschot 2009)1.
As an object of study, Mandø has long been deserted by historians and archaeologists for whom “the general idea is that nobody could ever have been so stupid as to live there, except if you were desperate, a monk or on the run” (Oorschot 2009, p. 3). The primary function of this desolate island would have been to house the graves of shipwreck victims.
The name Mandø first appeared in the literature in 1231. A church was mentioned in 1325. It was stated that it must pay four skilling sterling (silver coins) to the diocese of Ribe, on which it depended. There were three churches in the early 15th century. The present building dates from 1639, built on the highest point for safety. It was restored in 1727. Meanwhile, Lutheranism had implanted itself in the kingdom of Denmark–Norway under the reign of Frederick I. His son, Christian III, made the Reformation the national religion, and the University of Copenhagen became Lutheran. Royal property, the island of Mandø was bought at auction by its inhabitants in 1741. Traditionally, women were farmers on the island, in difficult conditions, as coastal marshland extends into arable land. Men were fishermen. Sailors, helmsmen, captains, they left their wives alone with their children, sometimes for weeks at a time.
The first school was built in 1776, with a home for the sole teacher. In 1884–1885, it was enlarged with the opening of a second class; by the end of the century, the island had a population of around 250 (92 farmers, 59 sailors, 22 industrialists and 13 tradespeople). There was a merchant, an innkeeper, two blacksmiths, a baker and a carpenter. An 1890 census counted 262 inhabitants but only 37 in 2013.
From 1870 onwards, the inhabitants tried to fix their island’s dune complex with vegetation to protect them from recurrent flooding. To the east, a dike was built by the women in 1887 to protect their village. The same year, an unpaved road linked the island to the mainland, passable at low tide and outside of storms. By 1888, the dike ran all the way around the island, except to the south-west, where the village was protected by the dunes.
Women were the true administrators and custodians of their territory, against all odds. We imagine them as strong and pugnacious, guarantors of the durability of a people and a village built, destroyed, moved, rebuilt on unstable, shifting ground, scanning the horizon beyond which the men disappeared and did not always return. The graves of the shipwrecked bear witness to this (Valdemar 1231; Geffroy 1851; Domeier and Haack 1963; Carré 1976).
The literature of the early 20th century liked to link the land to its inhabitants, in the tradition of German anthropogeography. The character traits of the Jutlanders, descendants of the ancient Cimbres people, are said to have been forged by the harshness of the farmers’ toil and the fishermen’s life, a harshness determined by that of the climate. The historical, geographical and economic studies on Denmark, published in particular to coincide with the 1900 World Fair, take up what has become commonplace, namely the opposition between the “alert” Fionian (from Hans Christian Andersen’s native island) and the “cheerful” Selandese (on the larger island of Copenhagen), and the “overbearing and serious” Jutlanders, whether continental or insular (Denmark has over 400 islands) (Paul-Dubois 1909, p. 659).
What can we learn from Gammel Mandø (Old Mandø) and its tragic history? asks Leo Oorschot in a historical and archaeological study of The Flooded Village of Mandø (Oorschot 2009, p. 3).
In the 20th century, studies were being carried out into the consequences of the appalling storm of October 11, 1634, which washed away the dikes and ancient protection built in the 8th and 9th centuries. The “great flood” accompanying this storm led to the destruction of many villages on Denmark’s west coast, between Ribe – opposite Mandø – and Tønder, 50 km to the south. On this terrible night, 500 people are thought to have perished. Ribe was reported to have a flood 6 m high. Gammel Mandø was reportedly unable to stand firm (Pontoppidan 1763–1781; Domeier and Haack 1963).
It is possible that the inhabitants took refuge in the dunes to the southwest of the island and set about building New Mandø (Ny Mandø), where Eugenius was born. But catastrophic floods were common at the time. It is not certain whether the flood of 1634 was the final blow to the village. Several authors mention another large flood in 1558, which caused half the population to flee. Those who remained escaped death by taking refuge on the roofs of their farms. After the tragedy, Svend, the island’s first pastor, came to support the few families still clinging to their small island and decided to build Ny Mandø in the southern part of the island, protected by dunes and relatively higher above sea level. The story goes that the pastor did not hesitate to come from the mainland even when the ground was flooded. It became customary to say of someone who could make progress where others were sinking in the mud: “he must have Mr. Svend’s boots”.
1.2. A Lutheran pastor’s son
When Eugenius’ parents moved to Ny Mandø, they were neither desperate nor on the run. His father, Jens, was born on March 25, 1797 in the hamlet of Råhede (parish of Hviding), on the west coast of Jutland, less than 10 km from the island where he became pastor. His parish came under the authority of the diocese of Ribe.
In Denmark, even more than in other Scandinavian countries, the parish is the true home of the religious community, in a country where the Lutheran Church plays a leading role (Jolivet 1961, pp. 24–26). It built a Christian ethic based on sacred texts, imbued with rationalism, and advocating altruism and charity. Originally, it was traditionalist and conservative in political and social terms. One thinks of the austere, authoritarian figure of the patriarch who reigns over his community, controlling its spirituality and morals, in the Danish film Babette’s Feast, directed by Gabriel Axel (1987), based on a short story by Karen Blixen. The action takes place in a small village in Jutland in the 19th century (Blixen 1961). This pastor would be quite comparable to the father of the main character in Danish writer Henrik Pontoppidan’s A Fortunate Man (Lykke-Per), written between 1898 and 1904.
At the time of Eugenius’ father’s ministry on the island of Mandø, “Grundtvigianism”, which relied more on the living word handed down by the apostles than on sacred texts, claimed to be the work of Pastor Grundtvig. A Lutheran conservator turned reformer, fighting against the religious rationalism of the Enlightenment, Grundtvig believed that religious life should animate and direct our actions (Lehmann 1931). The pastor who became A Fortunate Man’s stepfather is portrayed by Pontoppidan as more humane and attentive to individual feelings and aspirations than his character’s father2.
Grundtvig preached for the restoration of a religious and national sentiment, “after a phase of contraction and withdrawal” (Mougel 2006, p. 6) of Denmark, due to the loss of Norway to Sweden under the Treaty of Kiel signed on January 14, 1814. Involved in politics, he obtained a ruling from the Upper House that communities should choose their pastor. Legislative power was then shared between the Crown and the Rigsdag, Denmark’s two-chamber parliament (1849–1953). Members of the conservative Upper House (Landsting) were appointed by a complex censal system (12 out of 66 members were appointed for life by the Crown). Grundtvig sat in the reformist Lower House (Folketing), whose members were elected by universal male suffrage (must be over 30). He initiated a major popular education movement.
In bankruptcy, the Danish colonial empire sold almost all its trading posts and colonies in Africa and Asia to Great Britain. The most traumatic event was the loss of the Duchies of Lauenburg, and above all Schleswig and Holstein, at the end of the two Duchy Wars. The first (the Three Years’ War, 1848–1851) pitted Denmark against the German Confederation, the second against the Kingdom of Prussia united with the Austrian Empire, from February to July 1864. Denmark, which had believed it could benefit from the support of Sweden and Norway, found itself alone in the face of an invasion without a declaration of war. It was a setback for the Copenhagen government, opposed to the “Eider Danes”, who wanted only to keep Schleswig danophone, the river Eider marking the new German–Danish border, considering the claims of the German nationalists legitimate.
Meanwhile, the Constitution of June 5, 1849, signed by King Frederick VII, made Lutheran Protestantism the national church, but gave religious freedom to the Danish people. However, the King and Queen had to belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church (article 6). The Danish “People’s Church” was supported by the state, although this did not exclude support for other faiths or denominations (Dübeck 1997).
Under the terms of the Treaty of Vienna of October 30, 1864, which put an end to the Second Duchy War, the Danish border was now partly marked by the Kongeå, the river that historically formed the administrative boundary between the northern and southern regions. Schleswig was administered by Prussia, Holstein by Austria. Following Prussia’s victory over Austria at the Battle of Sadova (July 3, 1866), the two duchies were integrated into Prussia as the province of Schleswig–Holstein, part of the North German Confederation.
German blood ran in Eugenius’ veins. His mother, Anna Marie von Bülow af (de) Plüskow-Aggerupgaard-Bjørnemosen, was born in Kolding on November 23, 1801, 25 km south of Vejle. An analysis of her full name, in the order in which it is written, reveals her genealogy. She descended from an old noble family known from at least the 13th century. Bülow is located in Western Pomerania, in a region that became the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin between 1815 and 1918. The Bülow and Plüskow lines joined forces. Aggerupgaard (Agerupgård) is a large manor farm, with associated farms. There are several hundreds of these throughout Denmark. They were owned by aristocrats who enjoyed tax privileges until the early 20th century. Agerup is located in the parish of Våbensted, in the municipality of Guldborgsund (on the island of Lolland, Denmark’s fourth largest). In the early 18th century, the property was leased to Lieutenant-Colonel Nicolaj Christoph von Bülow af Plüskow. Christian Friederich von Bülow was born here on March 24, 1724. Finally, Bjørnemosen (Odense) refers to another farm acquired by Adam Gottlob Josva von Bülow, then by his son Rasmus Hartvig von Bülow, in the first half of the 19th century.
Eugenius’ maternal branch gave Denmark illustrious characters, close to power, some of whom acquired Danish nationality and were admitted to the nobility of their host country, where they made their fortunes. In fact, following his mother’s death, Eugenius received an inheritance that enabled him to pursue his studies in peace, before settling comfortably with his family and household staff in one of Copenhagen’s best neighborhoods3.
Eugenius’ future father, Jens Warming, was a farmer’s son, the second of nine siblings. His parents owned a farm in Ribeegnen. He was the only one in the family to have studied. He must have attended the Lutheran church in his parish of Hviding. In January 1833, he was chaplain at Lejrskov-Jordrup, two Lutheran churches located 10 km and 15 km west of Kolding, then at the end of September 1837 at Nørup-Randbøl, less than 20 km west of Vejle, where he built himself a small house with a plot of land. Jens practiced in the area where Anna Marie lived. He married her on October 12, 1838. He became pastor in Mandø on January 31, 1841, where Eugenius was born on November 3.
After Jens died of pneumonia on December 15, 1844, his widow lived for a time in Nørup with her brother on his farm (Nørupgård), some 10 km from Kolding. From 1854, she lived permanently in Kolding with her mother, Johanne Jensdatter Wissing, wife of von Bülow. Widowed in 1835, she came from a family of wealthy Kolding merchants and had a large fortune (Prytz 1984).
Eugenius rarely returned to his native island, no doubt deterred by political instability and wars. Lund put forward this argument in his decision not to return home. Between the end of the Duchy Wars and 1918, access to the island of Mandø was not easy. In May–June 1916, the largest naval battle of World War I, fought in the Jutland sea area, pitted the Royal Navy against the German navy. The coastal area was mined, from the mouth of the German river Ems in the south to the Danish port of Esbjerg in the north. However, from the 1880s onwards, Professor Warming made a number of excursions to the coast and islands of West Jutland and rediscovered his native island, which he visited for the first time in 1889. After 1895, he stopped making long trips, but his students praised his robustness and perseverance in going out into the field with them. Part of his work was devoted to flora and vegetation, which enabled him, as a teenager, to make his first observations of the ways in which plants adapt to a particularly selective environment.
Notes
1
Maps by Mejer (1651), Sørensens (1696, 1794, 1839, 1848, 1861, 1870, 1901 and 1910).
2
Another militant current,
Indre mission
(interior mission), urges believers to evangelize, like the missionaries in the colonies.
3
Johan Bülow made a career in the army, became owner of a large farm (Sanderumgård), chamberlain and then field marshal to the future King Frederik VI; Bernhard Ernst von Bülow held both Danish and German nationalities, and became Foreign Minister; Adolf von Bülow married the daughter of a Danish soldier and joined the Ministry of Finance; Lieutenant General Frederik Rubeck Henrik von Bülow led the Danish army against the Prussian army at the Battle of Kolding on April 23, 1849, an episode in the First Duchy War. The Danes retreated to Vejle and Fredericia, where their leader has had a statue since 1869. See:
https://www.ancestry.com
;
https://www.geni.com
,
https://www.myheritage.com
;
https://finnholbek.dk
;
https://www.geneagraphie.com
;
https://www.olhus.dk
;
https://biografiskleksikon.lex.dk/
.
2Jutland: At the Roots of a Passion
2.1. Decisive choices
Since 1814 (law on schools for the people, almueskolelov), education has been obligatory for all children aged 7–14 years old, with parents choosing between private tuition, private or state schools (Appell 1948).
Eugenius attended public school in the village of Nørup, 20 km west of Vejle. He lived with his mother on her brother’s farm, Jens Vissing Conrad von Bülow1. In this rural area, Eugenius began to nurture a passion for nature, then represented by the Randbøl moor. Before he went to school, his mother sent him to drawing classes and let him learn German, geography and natural history. Between 1850 and 1856, he continued his education at the Latin school (latinskole) in Kolding, a port town some 30 km south of Nørup, whose streets sloped down to the fjord (Appell 1948; Rauser 2004)2. Eugenius said he was confronted by the geographical proximity of the conflict – the First Duchy War was drawing to a close – and the patriotism of the Danes in Kolding. He remembered assiduously frequenting the school library and rubbing shoulders with country folk from a background different from his own.
For high school, his family chose the town of Ribe, some 50 km west of Kolding. Ribe, the oldest town in the Kingdom of Denmark, was a trading center founded in Viking times, largely destroyed by fire in 1580 and rebuilt around 1600. By the time Eugenius took up residence here, it had lost its economic importance. From then on, “the city vegetated obscurely in the shadow of its cathedral”, wrote historian Lucien Musset (1948, p. 316).
Figure 2.1.View of the Ribe cathedral tower looking west over the meadows. Photo by Warming (1906–1919, p. 108)
The private high school where Eugenius was enrolled had a very good reputation and aimed for excellence. It prepared students for entrance to the University of Copenhagen, the only university in the country until the Aarhus University was founded in 1928.
Eugenius’ family had ties and memories in this diocese. As we have seen, Ribe was a diocese on which Eugenius’ father’s parish depended. In addition, part of the family of Frederikke Lovise Eiler, his maternal uncle’s wife, lived in the diocese of Ribe. Her father was a minister in the parish of Jernved (he died in 1845), about 15 km from Ribe. However, Eugenius’ arrival at the age of 15 was the direct consequence of a political and educational choice made by Denmark, which his family had to face up to. An ordinance of April 17, 1839 led, in the years that followed, to the gradual abolition of small Latin schools, concentrating resources and pupils in the larger ones. Finally, his mother may have avoided choosing Copenhagen because of the recent memory of the terrible cholera epidemic of 1853, which claimed 4,800 lives. In the years 1856–1857, sanitation work and the reorganization of certain activities and neighborhoods were underway: a new livestock market, a safer municipal water supply, construction of healthy (social) housing outside the city center (Brumleby, Østerbro).
At Ribe high school, encounters and a context, notably linked to the consequences of the First Duchy War, were to be decisive at an age when personality was being built. Eugenius also developed a passion for botany and the landscapes of West Jutland.
2.2. Bewitching moorland
Eugenius usually walked along the coast of Jutland (Jylland), which he could reach on foot from the town. Its channel had gradually silted up since the terrible flood of 1634. It affected the entire coastline, but spared Esbjerg to the north, making it Denmark’s main direct outlet to the west.
The high school student recorded a particularly memorable excursion in his diary:
One afternoon, my comrades and I were taking a walk on the beach. There we were, by the water, as the luminous disk descended from the cloudless sky to the sea – then thousands of seabird voices formed a strangely mystical chorus. Twilight fell over the waters, amplifying a sense of mystery and secrecy. In a very special atmosphere, which I’ll never forget, we returned to Ribe via the polder meadows, which made walking difficult, as we had to cross large ditches.
In his diary, he repeatedly recalls the strong impressions left by this episode, arousing a mystical exaltation and a desire to penetrate the secrets of nature.
“Central and western Jutland was, at the beginning of the 19th century, nothing but a sea of moors, as far as the eye could see” (Musset 1948, p. 316). The coast and the western moorland could seem hostile to the traveler coming from latitudes with a less harsh climate, a less unstable coast, and more varied vegetation and landscapes. Despite the oceanic influence, the shores could be frozen for long weeks in winter. Born in “the poorest of the parishes of Jutland, in the middle of the moor” (in Sædding), further north, the great writer Kierkegaard only twice visited this moor of sand and heather, hot in summer and freezing in winter. An oil on canvas painted in 1855 by Frederik Vermehren, Shepherd on the Heath (Fårehyrde på heden), shows a shepherd with his dog in a flat, monotonous landscape where sheep graze. In the foreground is heather.
Eugenius did not give a description that would dissuade the walker during this escapade of high school students experiencing freedom. Like the Jutland writer and pastor Steen Steensen Blicher, who grew up in the marshy areas of Central Jutland, he was under the spell of this land, the historic heart of Denmark. Blicher describes this land of legends, the land of his ancestors (the Jutes people, known in the 5th century) and this landscape, for him also a symbol of peace and freedom:
This moor you’re entering now is vast and flat as the sea, and here and there, on the horizon, you see churches and houses, as if jutting out from a distant shore. I wish for you to see the sun shining so brightly on the day you first see the brown sea of heather! Those churches and houses, those heights and pyramids of peat would appear floating so much in the air, transforming their dark silhouettes every moment, and taking on the appearance of human beings, animals, trees, mountains and anything else the imagination can invent (Wyss-Neel 1971, p. 26)3.
As fall approached, brown took on the violet hues of flowering heather and the blue of bluebells.
“The moor, certainly, you’d hardly believe it. But come and have a look for yourself! The heather forms a sumptuous carpet, flowers abound as far as the eye can see” (Wyss-Neel 1971, p. 5), wrote Denmark’s most famous writer, Hans Christian Andersen.
In the late 19th century, Pontoppidan went furthest in the Edenic description of a pastoral scene:
On a calm summer’s evening, as the sun fades and casts like a golden glaze over every little pool of water, as the chubby-cheeked girls sing along the meadow paths, their strong shoulders laden with the yoke from which the milk jugs hang, when the red-haired boys waddle out of the villages on heavy horses, letting their hooves dangle to the tip of their big toe, when the marshes begin to bubble and the meadows to stretch their veils, it’s then that you can truly believe you’ve been transported to the land of Cocagne, where everything exudes peace and endless happiness (Paul-Dubois 1909, p. 659; Pontoppidan 1926).
Long after he had traveled to latitudes ranging from the Arctic to the tropics, Eugenius would always express – in a more sober style – his visceral attachment to the landscapes and vegetation of his native land, to which he too found every attraction.
2.3. A demanding school
Eugenius attended one of the country’s oldest “cathedral schools” (Katedralskolen), after Roskilde and Viborg. It was founded in 1145 on the site of an existing school. Originally, “cathedral schools” were created by bishops in association with their cathedrals, to provide the Church with an educated clergy. When Bishop Elias handed over the Ribe school to the cathedral chapter, there was a very fine Renaissance-style building, from the 14th century, with a monastic vocation, Puggård. In the early 18th century, new buildings came to rival the Copenhagen school.
Eugenius arrived just in time for the building’s inauguration on September 5, 1856. In his speech, Rector August Bendtsen appealed to the Muses of the arts and sciences, to which the building was dedicated, for the good and benefit of the fatherland. The school was modern in its organization and facilities, yet rooted in a history symbolized by Puggård (Karsdal 1995).
A ministerial decree of May 13, 1850 opened up the curriculum to a new range of subjects, requiring more teachers, classrooms and places for assemblies. These included natural history, German, French, Latin and drawing. Eugenius developed a passion for the first subject and notable skills in the other four. The regulations specified the conditions a student needed to meet to be admitted to the university. Among other things, he had to be able to write in Latin without mistakes and speak it with a certain fluency. Eugenius was listed in the register for 1859, the year of his graduation. He was listed as an “illustrious alumni”.
The key words of the “Disciplinary Regulations of the Cathedral School for Ribe Disciples” (Disciplinariske Bestemmelser for Ribe Kathedralskoles Disciple, 1848) were decency and dignified behavior. These recommendations also applied to the outside world. Everywhere and at all times, “students” had to behave in a moral manner. Rector Bendtsen (appointed in 1845) added a handwritten note to the regulations, forbidding students to walk with a cane (Paludan 1995). A dispensable accessory for the elegant man, this sign of social belonging was little appreciated by a Protestant who insisted on transmitting moral values based on humility. Day or evening canes, for the city, the country or travel, this panoply was outlawed. There was no question of Ribe’s high school students strolling through the night sporting a distinguished cane, as Kierkegaard used to wear on the streets of Copenhagen.
Whereas in the past students thought only of having fun and drinking, now they had to take part in the cultural and associative life led by the Ribe Byes forenede Klub-selskab (Ribe United Club Society). A significant proportion of students came from the upper classes of society. They attended a school where they were expected to hold their own without ostentation and prepare themselves for a high social position.
Laurids Johannes Koch, a former pupil who left school in 1892 and went on to become a pastor and writer, reported that corporal punishment was customary, but proportioned to the offense committed and in a moderate manner. Floggings with soft canes or “nuts” (punches to the head) did not seem to be experienced as ill-treatment. In fact, when the choice was given by the teacher, preferring a slap to a reprimand was a kind of code of honor on the part of the pupils. Koch pointed out, as an exception, that one teacher earned respect “almost without hitting” (Koch 1945, p. 153). The teaching staff was made up of competent and respected teachers, such as Peter Trugaard, listed in Ribe in 1880, a fluent German speaker and specialist in French literature, and a believer in the “nut”.
Figure 2.2.Eugenius with other Ribe high school students (Fogh 1915, p. 7)
It was a demanding school, requiring great self-discipline. The former student declared that he acquired a solid body of knowledge, habits of work and reflection, and classical training in Nordic and Danish literature, with instruction in Old Norse (the medieval Scandinavian language), Greek and Latin. His only regret was that the school’s remoteness cut the students off from the movements that were driving the capital’s youth at the time. When Koch went to school, after the Second Duchy War, Denmark was cut off from its southern territories. Between the two Duchy Wars, the situation was different. The Duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Saxe-Lauenburg were still attached in personal union to the King of Denmark. This was Eugenius’ situation, and he seemed to have enjoyed his high school years.
We see him posing with four comrades. They are all in uniform: a black jacket open over a buttoned vest, a white shirt and a bow tie. One of them, Pedersen, was for a time the editor of Skolens Satyr, the school newspaper. Eugenius became editor-in-chief. The authors published poems and prose essays of a satirical nature, dealing with school issues and teachers. They belonged to a group, the Ribe Discipelforening (association of Ribe students), which brought together “the best comrades of the 7th (A + B) and 6th class” (Fogh 1915, p. 7). Each meeting was “rather exclusive and secret, since the sons of civil servants and teachers, or pupils staying with teachers, were not allowed to take part”. This is why a certain Nielsen, who appears in the photo, did not take part. They met every Saturday evening at the participants’ homes, including, in 1857–1859, in Pedersen’s shared dormitory at the Pontoppidan grocery store in Sønderportsgade (a Ribe street not far from the high school)4. Eugenius described this comrade, a future priest at Ribe Cathedral, as a rather cold person.
The group formed by the “disciples of Ribe” therefore had its own rules of admission and operation, and its own organ of distribution. Unfortunately, the group’s successors were not up to the task, and their journal fell into ridicule. Be that as it may, the association disappeared in 1861 (but was reborn along with others).
2.4. The political context
In 1859, his last year at Ribe, Eugenius played a role in Soldaterløjer (Soldiers’ Jokes). It was a musical comedy by Hostrup, with songs recounting the story of a farmer and his daughter, forced to take in Prussian soldiers during the First Duchy War. The choice of this entertainment was obviously not innocent.
The play was revived in 1909, at a time when Denmark was living under the regime imposed after the Second Duchy War. In Eugenius’ time, there were only male actors, some of whom had to take on female roles. This was no longer the case in the early 20th century, as evidenced by a photograph taken in 1909 in which a woman (presumably playing the role of the farmer’s daughter) could be seen posing on the theater stage set up in the gymnasium, along with six other actors, two of whom were wearing military garb and another the farmer’s smock. A few spectators were seated, and a woman was at the piano (Fogh 1915, p. 46).
Figure 2.3.Photo taken after the performance of Soldaterløjer (Soldiers’ Jokes) in 1909 (Fogh 1915, p. 46).
