Friedrich Wettstein, Ritter von Westersheim (24 June 1895 in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

– 12 February 1945 in

Trins Trins is a municipality in the district of Innsbruck-Land in the Austrian state of Tyrol located 20.3 km south of Innsbruck on the Gschnitzbach. The village was mentioned for the first time in 1030, as “Trunnes”. Formerly a part of the v ...

, Tirol) was an Austrian botanist.

Academic career

Fritz Wettstein was the son of

Richard Wettstein __NOTOC__ Richard Wettstein (30 June 1863 in Vienna – 10 August 1931 in Trins) was an Austrian botanist. His taxonomic system, the Wettstein system, was one of the earliest based on phyletic principles. Wettstein studied in Vienna, where he was ...

. From 1925 he was professor at

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...

, in 1931 in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

and in 1934 director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology in

Berlin-Dahlem Dahlem ( or ) is a locality of the Steglitz-Zehlendorf borough in southwestern Berlin. Until Berlin's 2001 administrative reform it was a part of the former borough of Zehlendorf. It is located between the mansion settlements of Grunewald and L ...

. Wettstein made a major contribution to botanical and genetical science. He worked especially on cytoplasmic inheritance in

mosses Mosses are small, non-vascular flowerless plants in the taxonomic division Bryophyta (, ) ''sensu stricto''. Bryophyta (''sensu lato'', Schimp. 1879) may also refer to the parent group bryophytes, which comprise liverworts, mosses, and horn ...

and

fireweed ''Chamaenerion angustifolium'' is a perennial herbaceous flowering plant in the willowherb family Onagraceae. It is known in North America as fireweed, in some parts of Canada as great willowherb, in Britain and Ireland as rosebay willowherb. In ...

. Following

Erwin Baur Erwin Baur (16 April 1875, in Neuried, Ichenheim, Grand Duchy of Baden – 2 December 1933) was a German geneticist and botanist. Baur worked primarily on plant genetics. He was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Breeding Research (since 1 ...

at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut, Berlin-Dahlem, he investigated hybrids and polyploids of mosses, and advanced the understanding of the relationships and characteristics of polyploid forms.

Political implications

Wettstein has been criticised because at international scientific conferences before the

war War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

he defended

National Socialist Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

racial ideas.Research Program: History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in the National Socialist Era
(PDF file, 320 kB)

Works

*''Morphologie und Physiologie des Formwechsels der Moose auf genetischer Grundlage'' (1924) *''Über plasmatische Vererbung sowie Plasma-und Genwirkung'' (1930) *''Genetik'' (1932) *''Karl von Goebel'' (1933)

References

Bryologists University of Göttingen faculty Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich faculty 20th-century Austrian botanists Austrian geneticists Austrian knights 1895 births 1945 deaths Max Planck Institute directors {{Austria-botanist-stub