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.
The Klaus Lackschewitz Papers consists of his autobiographies, a copy of
The collection is divided into four series:
Series I: Personal, 0.2 linear feet, 1965-1995
Series II: Plants Named After Klaus Lackschewitz , 0.2 linear feet, 1977-1998
Series III: Field Notebooks and Field Notes, 1.2 linear feet, 1966-1994.
Series IV: Other Botanical Work, 0.4 linear feet, 1968-1994.
Researchers must use collection in accordance with the policies of Archives and Special Collections, the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, and The University of Montana-Missoula.
Researchers are responsible for using in accordance with 17 U.S.C. and any other applicable statutes. Non-exclusive copyright transferred to The University of Montana.
[Name of document or photograph number], Klaus Lackschewitz Papers, Archives and Special Collections, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, The University of Montana-Missoula.
The first three series of the collection were held by Gertrud Lackschewitz following Klaus Lackschewitz' death. Items from Series IV were lent to Peter Stickney by Klaus Lackschewitz and then given from Stickney to the UM Herbarium and then from the Herbarium to the UM Archives.
Materials held by Gertrud Lackschewitz were donated to the Archives in May 2012. Materials held by Peter Stickney were donated to the Archives in August 2012.
The bulk of the material was received in three-ringed binders or in folders. The pages from these binders and folders were maintained intact and placed into labeled folders. Some of the binders contained notes physically written on the binder. For these cases, the binder was photocopied. The photo copy was then placed in the appropriate folder. The few photos that were received in this collection were maintained intact and placed in plastic protectors. The autobiographical sketch titled “My Botanical Work” was removed from the fourth series which was donated by Dave Dyer and placed into Series I: Personal.
A total of five plant specimens have been separated from the Klaus Lackschewitz Papers and are located at the University of Montana Herbarium.
Archives and Special Collections holds two oral history interviews of Gertrud Lackschewitz, OH 434-01 and OH 434-02, that include information about Klaus Lackschewitz.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.
This series contains articles published by Lackshewitz, autobiographies, biographies, and clippings about Lackshewitz.
Materials added in 2016.
This series contains articles, documents, and reports regarding
the two plant species,
This series contains the botanical diaries, field notes, and limited correspondence, maps, and photos within the botanical diaries. Each diary begins with general notes and then moves to the Herbarium Specimen List. Lackshewitz numbered each specimen that he encountered while doing field research from 1966 to 1994. If correspondence, maps, photos, and other notes are available, they tend to be towards either the front or back of the folder. Plants that were found within the materials of this series were removed and given to the University of Montana Herbarium.
This series contains materials loaned to Peter Stickney by Klaus
Lackshewitz. Rather than incorporate the materials into existing series they
have been arranged as their own grouping. These materials include field notes,