The Marimurtra Botanical Garden commemorates today the 150th anniversary of the birth of Carl Faust (1874-1952), the founder of the Garden. For this reason, the Carl Faust Foundation has organized an event attended by patrons and staff. The president of the Foundation, Cristòfol Jordà, and several patrons placed a bouquet of flowers on Carl Faust’s head and, immediately afterwards, the Garden’s staff joined them to immortalize a group photo.
During the commemorative event, which took place this afternoon at Faust’s head -located in the Marimurtra Pergola- Jordà highlighted the relevance of the figure of Faust, whose mission in life was “to keep the Garden in operation so that it would last over time, and the proof that it went well is that it is now splendid”, Jordà pointed out. The president recalled that in Blanes Faust found “the best location because he was looking for a microclimate where he could grow plants that had little tolerance to cold and that could not be grown in the Nordic countries”.
Carl Faust was a man who loved natural sciences and, above all, botany, who dedicated all his assets and his life to the creation of the Marimurtra Botanical Garden with the aim of creating an experimental garden for European researchers and scientists.
Carl Faust was born on September 10, 1874 in Hadamar, Germany. Despite showing a clear inclination for natural sciences from a young age, he was pushed by his family towards commercial activity that would take him to Barcelona where he would found the company Faust & Kammann, SA, which still exists, with a partner.
Faust discovered Blanes in 1915 on a trip with his hiking friends and fell in love with the landscapes that mark the beginning of the Costa Brava. In 1918 he acquired part of the land of the current Marimurtra. And, in 1921, he had the house designed by the architect Josep Goday built. In 1942 he sold his share of the company to dedicate himself solely to the dream of his life: creating a Botanical Garden.
The Carl Faust Foundation was created in 1951 by the creator of the Marimurtra Botanical Garden, Carl Faust, a year before his death, with the aim of continuing his work. Among its founding objectives are “…the protection and promotion of studies of Mediterranean biology, especially in botany, […] seeking cooperation and international relations for the benefit, all in all, of scientific research and dissemination…”.
Currently, Marimurtra is a leading scientific facility in the country, as one of the two botanical gardens in Catalonia, the only one on the Costa Brava. In the tourism sector it has become one of the main tourist attractions of the Costa Brava, with over 150,000 visitors each year.
Here you can access the speech of the president of the Carl Faust Foundation, Cristòfol Jordà:
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