German amateur botanist who developed an idiosyncratic view of cactus taxonomy. His publications Die Cactaceae (The Cactaceae, six volumes, 1958-1962) and Kakteenlexikon (Cactus Lexicon, first edition 1966) were substantial works that demonstrated a true passion for these plants, but also garnered criticism for some careless descriptions of taxa. Backeberg based much of his work on collections made during extensive travels through Central and South America. An autodidact, many of his classifications were, however, based on flawed assumptions about the family's evolution.
Curt Backeberg was born in Lüneburg, Hanover. After serving in the First World War he worked for a Japanese exporting firm in Hamburg and in 1925 set up his own firm with links to South America. His interest in cacti was awakened in 1927 when he met the Czech plant hunter Alberto Vojtěch Frič. He joined the German Cactus Society and decided to begin importing cacti, becoming an enthusiastic collector of the plants. He also met Professor E. Irmscher, a well-known geobotanist, who helped to inspire his studies of the geographical distribution of cacti. Over the next decade his interest in the plants would take him on repeated trips to Mexico and South America. He wrote several popular travelogues about these cactus-hunting journeys and compiled cine-film documentaries that also looked at other aspects of life and natural history on the continent. This pursuit provided him with a new line of work during the Second World War as a travelling film presenter for the Nazis, entertaining German troops stationed in occupied France with his documentaries.
After the Second World War Backeberg remained in France, engaged until 1955 in curatorial work at the botanical garden of Marnier-Lapostolle, 'Les Cèdres', on the south coast. It was here he began to compile his manual, The Cactaceae, a popular reference work that was admired by some but reviled by others for its extreme tendency to split genera based on unjustified views of characters. He was even reported to have once published the name of a new species based on a plant he had seen only from a moving train in the mountains of Bolivia. One of his opponents, J.D. Donald, wrote a scathing review of his work and derided Backeberg devotees ("How blind are the disciples of this man!" he wrote in the National Cactus and Succulent Journal of Great Britain in 1967). Backeberg founded his system of classification upon the belief that cacti originated in the West Indies and migrated northwards and southwards during their evolution. He maintained that northern and southern groups of cacti were unrelated and held little regard for the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature.
Backeberg died of a heart attack in 1966. Unpublished novels, short stories and poetry were discovered at his estate, while parts of his cactus collection went to the International Organization für Sukkulentenforschung, Zurich, and to the Jardin Exotique in Monaco.
Sources:
J.D. Donaldson, 1967, National Cactus and Succulent Journal, 22(1): 20
L.E. Newton, 1966, "Curt Backeberg, 1894-1966", Cactus and Succulent Journal of Great Britain, 28(2): 23-24.
