Wars of the Roses j 423423 423
It didn’t take Heim long to determine that Sprengel’s problems at the school had a psy-
chological component. To combat depression and alleviate his physical symptoms, Heim
urged Sprengel to seek comfort and relaxation in the study of nature. Heim himself was an
amateur botanist of some renown who had given botany lessons to no less a personage than
the young Alexander von Humboldt. Thus it was natural for Heim to encourage Sprengel
to take an interest in botany— a time- honored anodyne for the spiritually troubled— and
Heim even tutored Sprengel in basic botany. As early as 1782, Pastor Schulze reported that
Sprengel had begun taking nature walks for his health. The following year, his walks blos-
somed into extended trips. Heims’s prescription was working. By keeping his mind firmly
focused on nature, Sprengel managed to avoid any further allegations of abuse during all of- But in 1784, Heim unexpectedly closed his Spandau office and moved to Berlin. The
sudden departure of his physician, friend, and mentor may have precipitated a relapse, for
shortly afterward Schulze recorded that Sprengel was in trouble again for giving a physi-
cian’s son twenty strokes and banishing him to the school detention hall, ostensibly for not
knowing a Greek vocabulary word. Once again he was ordered to the town hall, where he
promptly expressed contrition and promised to mend his ways. This time he really meant it,
but not in the way his supervisors imagined. He had finally discovered a way to cope with
misbehaving and underperforming students: he ceased to care. From then on, according to
Schulze:
the headmaster went to the other extreme. He showed indifference towards whether
the children learned anything or not and hardly made an effort. He grumbled and let
everything go.^38It was a decisive moment in his career. From 1784 until his early retirement in 1793 at
the age of forty- three, he did no more than the minimum required to discharge his duties
as headmaster. Over the objections of his supervisors he took the unprecedented step of
cancelling all his private lessons (which he was not contractually obligated to give) even
though it meant a loss of income. Never again would he allow himself to become unhinged
by petty conflicts with students, parents, or supervisors. Henceforth, he would devote all
his creative energy to unraveling the secrets of nature and, by so doing, become closer to
God. He became an apostle of flowers.Sprengel’s Landmark Contributions to Floral Ecology
As an amateur botanist working in isolation from other scientists, Sprengel wrote The
Discovery of the Secrets of Nature in the Structure and Fertilization of Flowers^39 for the edi-
fication and amusement of the general public rather than for professional botanists. In it,
he described himself as a philosophical botanist— one who employs observation and reason
to determine the structure– function relationships in plants, specifically flowers. During
the classical period, the definition of “flower” included only the “showy” parts— the sepals,
petals, and stamens. The pistil was considered the immature fruit, separate from the flower
proper. In addition to functioning to protect the fruit, the flower was thought to refine the
sap, a necessary step for seed formation. This conception of flowers reached its apogee in the
seventeenth century in the uterine model of Malpighi.