Carl Friedrich Schmidt (1811)

Not to be confused with Carl Friedrich Schmid or Carl Friedrich Schmidt aka F. Schmidt aka Fedor Bogdanovich.

Carl Friedrich (C.F.) Schmidt (1811-1890)

Carl Friedrich (C.F.) Schmidt (1811, Stettin – 1890, Berlin) was a German botanist. He was a specialist in spermatophytes and a renowned artist and lithographer. He was also a prolific botanical artist (Akademishem Künstler zu Berlin) who illustrated many of the Germanic botanical works of the 19th century.^[1] The standard author abbreviation C.F. Schmidt is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name.^[2]

Biography

In collaboration with Otto Karl Berg (1815-1866), professor of pharmaceutical botany at Berlin University,^[3] Schmidt was published in Darstellung und Beschreibung in den Pharmacopoea Sämtliche Borussica offizinellen Gewächse aufgeführten (1853). Publisher: Arthur Felix, Leipzig ^[4] Schmidt both drew and lithographed the plates. Benjamin Daydon Jackson describes this work, a survey of plants used in the Prussian pharmacopoeia, as "A thoroughly good book, probably the very best of its class; both in text and illustrations". ^[5]

Berg and Schmidt also published the Pharmacopoea Borussica aufgeführten offizinellen Gewächse in 1846.^[6] ^[7]

C.F. Schmidt was a contributing artist to the work Köhler's Medizinal Pflanzen. Publisher: Gera-Untermhaus : F.E. Köhler, [1883-1914]. ^[8] ^[9] Medizinal Pflanzen was published in 1887 in Gera, an east-central German city south of Leipzig. The set of four volumes was a noteworthy achievement and included plants of medicinal interest from several European nations. It was described by Sitwell and Blunt ^[10] as "From the botanical standpoint the finest and most useful series of illustrations of medicinal plants." ^[11] Köhler's Medizinal Pflanzen was edited by Gustav Pabst, a German botanist. The remarkable feature of the publication is its nearly 300 finely detailed illustrations, expertly drawn by the artists L. Müeller and C.F. Schmidt, which were skillfully rendered by K. Gunther in chromolithography. ^[12] Chromolithography is the process of rendering images on stone or zinc plates, then inking them with color inks to yield color pictures.

In the 1860s, if not earlier, C.F. Schmidt was the proprietor of his own photography studio in Halberstadt, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. ^[13] Halberstadt is 10 miles from Blankenburg am Harz, the village of his son's birth in 1833.^[14]^[15] There are several possibilities of why Schmidt's son was born in Blankenburg but the studio was located in Halberstadt. Among them:

the family lived closer to Halberstadt but attended church in Blankenburg, thus the birth records indicate the son's birth as Blankenburg, or
the family lived in Blankenburg at the time of the son's birth in 1833, but later moved to Halberstadt where C.F. opened his photography studio.

These questions will likely go unanswered.

Family

Born in Stettin, Pommern, Brandenburg-Prussia,^[16] C.F. Schmidt would likely have been an acquaintance, perhaps even a close childhood friend, of Otto Karl Berg, who was also born in Stettin. It is with Berg, as adults, that Schmidt collaborated on several important scientific publications. Schmidt was four years older than Berg. In 1832 C.F. Schmidt married Christiane Johanne Kast.^[17] They had at least one son, Johann Christian Julius Schmidt,^[18] born in 1833 in Blankenburg am Harz, Germany. ^[19]^[20]