Gesneriaceae expert who founded the Gesneriad Research Foundation in Sarasota, Florida, after beginning his career at the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Miami. Born in the village of Klettendorf, East Prussia (now part of Poland), Wiehler first came to the United States as an exchange student. He had endured a distressing journey before completing his education in Europe, where he had enjoyed the first 15 years of his life in relative privilege living on a large farm, his father the village mayor.
His father was, however, never heard of again after being drafted into the German army in 1944. The rest of the Wiehler family were forced to flee their home in early 1945 as Russian troops advanced. They travelled west in a horse drawn wagon in bitter weather; Hans’ grandmother died soon after the ordeal began, while his aunt and brothers left the caravan to find safety elsewhere. Hans and his mother, Hedwig, continued west, eventually stowing away on a German boat at Gotenhafen (Gdansk). However, the boat was struck by a Russian torpedo and though they escaped with their lives, they had lost all their possessions. Boarding a converted minesweeper they eventually reached Swinem⟼nde, from whence they travelled to Hamburg and, reunited with Hedwig’s sister and Hans’ two brothers, at a refugee camp on the banks of the Elbe at Gl⟼ckstadt.
Hans spent the rest of his youth in Oldendorf, continuing his schooling in Hildesheim, which entailed an arduous 60km round trip each day. He nevertheless gained his high school qualification in 1950 and decided to study theology on a one-year exchange in the U.S. He had been baptised into the Mennonite Church in 1946 (the American Mennonites sent valuable packages of food and luxuries to help poverty stricken post-war Germany). Perhaps it was the kindness of the Mennonites that persuaded Wiehler to give up the chance of an apprenticeship at the Max Planck Institute in favour of attending the Eastern Mennonite College in Harrisonburg, Virginia (and then Goshen College in Indiana). He attained a bachelor’s degree from the Eastern Mennonite College in 1954 and a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1956 from the Goshen Biblical Seminary. He joined the Bruderhof community in New York in 1958, where he met his wife, Anne Gale. Together they lived for some time in a commune in Pennsylvania and had a family before Wiehler decided to take a new path.
In 1965 he left Pennsylvania (shortly followed by his wife and children) and returned to New York to study botany at Cornell. He worked as a research assistant and teaching assistant and it was at this time that his passion for the Gesneriaceae family was born. Following his master’s degree at Cornell he went on to take his doctorate at the University of Miami, working on epiphytes with orchid authority Calaway Dodson. In 1973, when Dodson became the first director of Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Miami, he took his student with him, along with Wiehler’s gesneriad cuttings. Wiehler became associate editor and business manager of the garden’s journal, Selbyana (1975-1981). Wiehler was awarded his PhD in 1979 and left the gardens in 1982 to set up the Gesneriad Research Foundation in Sarasota, where he devoted two further decades to field research on neotropical species. In the year before his death he donated the foundation’s collection to the Selby Gardens. It included nearly 2,000 collections, including 30 types for Gesneriaceae species published by Wiehler. Although known as a taxonomic 'splitter', many of his revisions were accepted.
Sources:
J.R. Clark, 2003, ✢In memoriam: Hans Wiehler 1931-2003✢, Selbyana, 24(1): i
L. Desmon, 2005, ✢Hans Wiehler: A Tribute✢, Selbyana, 25(2): 239-244.
