Nicolai Anders von Hartwiss

Von Hartwiss was born Ritter (esquire) Nikolaus Ernst Bartholomäus Anhorn von Hartwiss (Hartwiß) in 1793 at his father's estate at Kokenhof, near Wolmar, Livonia (now Valmiera, Latvia).^[1]

The family Anhorn von Hartwiss (double name) comes from Switzerland. His grandfather, Silvester Samuel (1708–1782), descended from Swiss Protestant pastors and emigrated to Russia. His father, Heinrich Ernst, was a registered member of the Livonian nobility (reg. 1769). He married his first cousin Christina Louisa. Nikolaus was their tenth child.^[2][3] By that time, Livonia (present-day Latvia and Estonia) had been absorbed into the Russian Empire as the Governorate of Livonia, but the nobility still retained its ancient Baltic German forms and spoke Low German.^[4][5]

Hartwiss was educated at the German-speaking Imperial University of Dorpat (1809–1812), where his studies were interrupted by the Napoleonic Wars.^[2][3][6] He was an officer in the Imperial Russian Army from 1812 to 1818; he was discharged as a result of his wounds.^[2]

Hartwiss at one time gained practical gardening experience laying out fields of flowers, fruit trees and both exotic and domestic trees on his father's estate.^[2] From 1819 to 1824, he lived in Riga, gardening and fruit growing, with a collection of 500 varieties of fruit trees and roses.^[3]

In 1824, he was appointed by Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov, governor-general of New Russia, to the Russian Imperial Botanical Garden at Nikita, Crimea. In 1827, he became its second director, which he remained until he died. He extended the Imperial Botanical Garden's collection of plant varieties from more than a thousand to about three thousand, including the largest collection of fruit varieties in Europe.^[3]

From Nikita, he organised plant hunting expeditions into the surrounding territories, especially the Crimea and Abkhazia in the Caucasus.^[2][3]

He and his first wife, Elizabeth Feodorovna Baroness von Rosen, had a 500-acre estate^[7] called Artek near Bear Mountain (Ayu-Dag) in Crimea.^[8] After the death of his first wife in 1855, he married a young girl from Riga, Leontine Werther, in Simferopol on 2 February 1858. However, she died at the end of the same year giving birth to a daughter.^[3][9]

Von Hartwiss collected plants in Georgia and the Crimea. Some species were named by him, some named after him.^[2] "Three long expeditions [were made] to the Caucasus in search of new ornamental plants for the Crimea … Caucasian fir, spruce, … Caucasian basswood, rhododendrons, azaleas and other flowering shrubs."^[3]

Von Hartwiss imported many plants for the Botanic Garden, including roses. In 1827 he began to breed roses. These were partly for the Garden itself, but also for the Alupka Palace of Count (later Prince) Michael Vorontsov. Some thirty of his roses were sold from the Alupka Palace nursery.^[2][17]