Biography

German plant collector in northeastern Brazil and Amazonia. Luetzelburg spent many years exploring on behalf of the Brazilian government, his rock-hard constitution and ostensible immunity to malaria suiting him to long and arduous journeys. He also built a highly respected reputation for himself in his homeland, where herbaria in Munich and Berlin gratefully took delivery of his extensive plant collections. He died in Germany, however, having spent the last years of his life as a member of the SS.

Philipp Freiherr von Luetzelburg (or Lützelburg) was born in Landsberg am Lech, near Munich, Bavaria. After his schooling in Augsburg and Memmingen he trained as a pharmacist, being apprenticed in Ottobeuren, Reichshofen (Elsass), Basel, Cologne and Murnau, before entering university in Munich in 1904. Qualifying in 1906, he then dedicated himself to botany and in autumn 1907 became an assistant in the Plant Physiology Institute at the University of Munich, where he received his doctorate two years later with a thesis on the genus Utricularia L. In 1910, funded by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Luetzelburg travelled to Brazil and began making collections in the region of Rio de Janeiro. His first consignment of plant material arrived in Munich in 1911, while Luetzelburg decided to stay in Brazil after being appointed to the chair of the botany department at the Agricultural College of Sao Bento, Bahia, in 1912. He was also recruited to the botany department of the 'Inspectoria federal de Obras contra as Seccas' (the Federal Inspectorate of Works Against Drought).

Over the next decade he made numerous plant collecting expeditions in the environs and further afield, in between trips working variously as a teacher and pharmacist. In 1912-1913 he visited the dry regions of Bahia, Piauí and Goiás, and also sent plants from the Organ Hills (Serra dos Órgãos) in 1913 (all to Munich). Between 1910 and 1918 he made about 45 excursions in all to the Organ Hills. 1913-1914 saw Luetzelburg explore Piaui again, and also Maranhão. At the onset of the First World War, however, he was dismissed from service by the Brazilian government. He would have liked to return to his home country at this point; in fact he attempted to board a Norwegian steamer bound for Europe, but the conflict on the other side of the Atlantic forced him to remain in South America. Brazil, incidentally, was the only South American country to declare war on Germany in the First World War, in 1917, though it was a reluctant move because of the high proportion of German immigrants living within its borders, including a government minister.

Luetzelberg's nationality did not apparently restrict his movements, despite this state of affairs. In 1915 he was in Minas Gerais and in 1916 he accompanied the geologist and influential politician Miguel Arrojado Ribeiro Lisboa (head of the Inspectorate of Works Against Drought) travelling south through São Paulo, Paraná and Santa Catarina states. Luetzelburg later requested the botanist Mattfeld name a genus after his friend, Arrojadoa Mattf. After travelling in Paraná in 1916, he explored the jungles around Rio Doce and Rio Mutum in Espírito Santo state (1917), going on to the Serra Chuqué in 1918-1919. This was followed by a lengthy period in the dry states in the north-east (Ceará, Paraiba, Pernambuco and Rio Grande do Norte) as he was reappointed to the Inspectorate.

Granted a well-earned holiday from his tireless expeditioning, in 1922 he returned to Germany, arriving in Munich with 47 crates full of plant material (including ferns, bryophytes, marine algae, fruits and wood samples) plus a variety of preserved non-botanical specimens, mainly insects. He had amassed some 28,000 specimens since 1911, and the job fell to taxonomists in Germany to determine the plants. Lists of his plant collections were published by R. Pilger in Notizblatt des Königl. botanischen Gartens und Museums zu Berlin under the series title "Plantae Lützelburgianae brasilienses", while Theodor Herzog determined his mosses and O.C. Schmidt the algae. Luetzelburg meanwhile dedicated himself to analysing the geography of his collections, resulting in a pioneering study of the semi-arid caatinga vegetation in the north-east. The three volumes of Estudo Botanico do Nordéste appeared in 1925 and 1926, as well as a volume of maps (Mappas Botanicos do Nordeste do Brasil) which illustrated not only the itineraries of Luetzelburg himself but also those of his predecessors in the botanical exploration of Brazil: Martius, Gardner, Glaziou, St. Hilaire, Pohl, Sellow, Spencer and Moore. Despite being written in Portuguese, the oeuvre became a classic work on the steppe-like landscape. Luetzelburg remained in Europe until 1926, also giving lectures at the Geographical Society in Munich at the behest of fellow explorer Princess Theresa von Bayern.

Crossing the Atlantic once more he joined the Rondon Commission in 1927 and embarked on his next adventure in 1928. The boundary survey led by Cândido Rondon took Luetzelburg deep into Amazonia and the borders of Colombia and Venezuela, including Mount Roraima. The fruits of this expedition (whose primary aim was to map the borders between Brazil and the Guianas, Venezuela and Columbia) included about 9,000 further specimens, including a number of new palms. Sent to Germany, the angiosperms were determined by K. Suessenguth and the Gramineae by R. Pilger. In 1930, his work as part of the Rondon surveys at an end, Luetzelburg organised an expedition to the region between the Rio Negro and Venezuelan Guaiana, for which he obtained sponsorship from the government of British Guiana. This year also saw him awarded the Golden Medal of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. The following year he was appointed secretary of the German-Brazilian cultural exchange programme (Kulturaustauschvereinigung) and in 1933 was tasked with studying the forests of Crato (Ceará) by the Brazilian government (c.1933-1937). Again, more of his botanical yields went to Munich.

The year 1936 saw the roving botanical explorer marry Marianne Naessl, whom he had met in Rio de Janeiro. The wedding marked a turning point in Luetzelburg's life; never again would he endlessly roam the Brazilian caatinga nor penetrate its jungles, instead his career choice at this point in history has forever stained his reputation. Wishing to return to Germany now (partly because of his wife's health), he was directed to speak to SS commander Heinrich Himmler, a cousin of his wife, about the possibility of obtaining a position in the Nazi organisation, the Ahnenerbe. After producing a family tree that showed the Luetzelburgs had no Jewish ancestors (a membership requirement of the early SS), the pair returned to their homeland in 1938, a position in the Ahnenerbe (soon to be incorporated into the SS) awaiting Philipp von Luetzelburg in Berlin.

His reputation as a botanist led Himmler to place Luetzelberg at the head of the Forschungsstelle für Botanik (Botanic Research Department) of the Ahnenerbe, the 'scientific' and historical research branch of the SS. (His commitment to his work also earned him a place in the Waffen SS later in the war). His tasks in Berlin drew both on his earlier pharmaceutical training as well as his experience in Brazil. He was required to investigate poisons sourced from plants such as the autumn crocus (Colchicum autumnale L.) as part of the Reich's intentions to utilise biowarfare, and occasionally worked with the notorious doctor, Sigmund Rascher, known for his inhumane experiments on living subjects.

Luetzelburg also drew up lists of plants of potential economic importance, especially oil-rich species that could be cultivated in future German colonies in tropical climates. Some of his early studies for the Ahnenerbe concerned the influence of the moon and geomagnetic forces on crops. He also put much effort into completing a history of exploration in Brazil, which led him to undertake research in Paris on several occasions, but the 1,000-page manuscript was lost towards the end of the war when American forces entered Berlin.

The actions of the hailed explorer did not go unnoticed; Adolpho Ducke criticised him in the 1945 paper "Um pseudo-botânico Nazi no Brazil", for example. Little else has been published about Luetzelburg the man, especially in languages other than German and Portuguese. An obituary was only published in 1955, some seven years after his death (in Berichte der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft); neither have his volumes on the flora of north-east Brazil ever been translated into English. His work in Nazi-era Germany would turn out to be his last, for he died a few years after his country's defeat, depressed and saddened both by the fall of the fascists and the loss of his manuscript. He had been living in his wife's original home of Weilheim, Upper Bavaria. The genus Luetzelburgia Harms (Leguminosae) is named after him. Duplicates of his specimens are found in the herbarium at the Botanic Gardens in Rio de Janeiro.

Sources:
J.P. Frahm and J. Eggers, 1995, Lexikon Deutschsprachiger Bryologen: 300
O. Huber and J.J. Wurdack, 1984, "History of Botanical Exploration in Territorio Federal Amazonas, Venezuela", Smithsonian Contributions to Botany, 56: 47
G. Simon, 2008, Chronologie Luetzelburg, Philipp von:
http://homepages.uni-tuebingen.de/gerd.simon/ChrLuetzelburg.pdf, accessed 12 November 2009
K. Suessenguth, 1955, "Philipp Freiherr von Luetzelburg", Berichte der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft, 68a: 65-69.