Hellmut Ludwig Späth (4 December 1885 – 15 February 1945) was a German botanist and

plant nursery A nursery is a place where plants are plant propagation, propagated and grown to a desired size. Mostly the plants concerned are for gardening, forestry, or conservation biology, rather than agriculture. They include retail nurseries, which se ...

owner, murdered by the Nazi party. His nursery is now Späth-Arboretum.

Biography

He was born 4 December 1885, the son of Franz and Wilhelmine Späth, became the sixth and last manager of the Späth nursery on the death of his father in 1913. After studies at Cambridge, Hellmut returned to Berlin in 1910 and received his doctorate in 1912 from the Berlin Agricultural College. His dissertation was titled, ''The Locust Drive - a contribution to the knowledge of periodicity and annual ring formation in deciduous woody plants'', and was published by Paul Parey. Hellmut revived the nursery's fortunes during the Depression by joining the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...

and obtaining lucrative landscaping contracts for the new

autobahn The (; German , ) is the federal controlled-access highway system in Germany. The official term is (abbreviated ''BAB''), which translates as 'federal motorway'. The literal meaning of the word is 'Federal Auto(mobile) Track'. Much of t ...

s and other public works. However, his outspoken criticism of the Nazi regime saw him incarcerated in

Sachsenhausen concentration camp Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners t ...

, where he was executed by firing squad in 1945. The nursery had closed in 1944, and in 1947 the arboretum passed into public ownership and became known as the Späthsches Arboretum. In 2009, a

Stolperstein A (; plural ) is a concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution. Literal translation, Literally, it means 'stumbling stone' and metaphorically 'stumbling block'. ...

(small, cobble stone-sized memorial plaque) was installed at his old school, Landesschule Pforta, to commemorate Späth as a victim of the

Nazi regime Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...

."Allgemeine Berichte"
Landschule Pforta, official website. Retrieved June 11, 2010

References

External links

Späth Arboretum on Baumschulenweg

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spath, Hellmut Ludwig 1885 births 1945 deaths 20th-century German botanists Nurserymen People who died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp German civilians killed in World War II German people executed in Nazi concentration camps People executed by Nazi Germany by firing squad Resistance members killed by Nazi Germany