Klaus Lackschewitz papers, 1965-1998

Klaus Heinrich Lackschewitz was born on May 4, 1911 to Werner Lackschewitz and his wife in the then Russian province of Livonia which would become the independent republic of Latvia in 1918. Klaus spent his early years in Dorpat, now Tartu, Estonia. Shortly after the founding of the independent republic of Latvia in 1918, Klaus’s father, who earned his forestry degree in Germany, was appointed to the State Department of Forestry in Riga. In Riga, Klaus Lackschewitz graduated from a German Gymnasium with a Classics emphasis. His father and teachers strongly encouraged his interests in the natural sciences. Lackschewitz studied botany and zoology for several years at the Institutum Herderianum Rignese, a German College.

Due to the virulent political climate of the 1930s, the German minority in the Baltic was increasingly disenfranchised; under severe economic pressure Lackschewitz turned from an academic career to a practical one. He took a two year intensive course in agriculture at Landwirschaftliche Schule near Berlin. From 1935 to 1939 he leased a farm in Latvia. He was married to his first wife sometime before 1939.

After Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Treaty of Non-Aggression in 1939, Latvia was annexed to the Soviet Union. As a result, one hundred and fifty thousand ethnic Germans, including Lackschewitz, were exiled from Latvia and ordered to resettle western Poland. Shortly thereafter, Lackschewitz was drafted into the German Army. He served on the Russian Southern Front from 1941-1945. He was wounded, captured, and placed in a POW camp in northern Russia from 1945-1947 where he served as an interpreter. His knowledge of edible plants augmented their starvation rations. Lackschewitz returned to a West Germany devastated by war in 1947. He had a hard time fitting back into society and decided that he could not resume a relationship with his first wife.

While in West Germany, Lackshewitz worked a number of odd jobs. Before immigrating to the United States in the spring of 1952, he was hired by a German born sponsor to rehabilitate a farm in New Jersey but had little success. He worked in greenhouses and for landscaping companies in the New York area from 1952-1960, making a livelihood from his beloved hobby of gardening. He married Gertrud Degenhard in 1954.

The University of Montana hired Gertrud Lacksckewitz as a German instructor in 1960. Klaus took an immediate interest in the native flora of Montana especially in the alpine regions. In 1965 he was working in the University’s Herbarium. This allowed him to pursue his passions: investigating and collecting native plants in their natural habitat to further one’s knowledge about them and weaving their austere beauty into garden design. From 1965 to 1976, Lackshewitz worked as a horticulturist for the Department of Botany at the University of Montana. In 1966, he worked on the Native Plant Garden around the University of Montana Botany Building with the help of chairman Sherman Preece. He was the botanist in 1977 for a floristic project in Colorado. From 1978-1979, he was employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on a floristic study of the C.M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and the Fort Peck Refuge. He established a herbarium in Lewistown, Montana, for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. From 1979-1980, he was employed by Gulf Oil Company to survey Dawson, Richland, Roosevelt, and Sheridan counties in Montana. He was the assistant to the curator of the University of Montana Herbarium and a Faculty Affiliate of the Department of Botany, University of Montana from 1968-1982.

Lackschewitz collected sheets of notes for over twelve thousand herbarium specimens, mostly from Montana mountain ranges. The Anaconda Pintler Mountains, Bitterroot, Beartooth Plateau, and the Front Range east of the Continental Divide yielded the largest collections. He visited many other mountains as well. Many of Lacksckewitz’s specimens had never been collected in Montana before. Agoseris lackschewitzii and Lesquerella klasii turned out to each be unknown species. He wrote the guidebook Vascular Plants of West Central Montana in 1991 which contains the fruit of his observations.

Lackshewitz had six children; four from his first marriage: Klaus Christian Lackschewitz, Immo Lackschewitz, Burigna Lackschewitz, and Bagman Tacherech and two from his second marriage: Anna McCall, and Elizabeth Underwood. He died on August 10, 1995 in Missoula, Montana.