Talking to a French waterlily enthusiast in Barcelona, about an Austrian hybridizer. That’s how these things start in our line of work. That is also how I got to know about Wolfgang Fleischer and decided to write about him.
Unfortunately Wolfgang Fleischer died in 2014. It has been a hassle to find someone who could and wanted to give me more information about this very intriguing man. Luckily we’ve found Christoph Fischer from Fichgreen who was willing to answer our questions.
His life before Anna
Wolfgang Fleischer was born on the 6th of June 1943 and studied history and philosophy. As a student he met the Austrian writer Heimito von Doderer and became his secretary. After Heimito’s death in 1996, Wolfgang published his first book, a biografie about his former employer.
He was called a multitasker and there is a good reason for it. He was a writer, a translator, he made documentaries, wrote plays, …
Wolfgang used to live in Italy and he also resided in Latin-America for a while, so it’s not a surprise that he was also multi-lingual. He could read German, French, Spanish, English and even taught Ancient Greek. He was also learning Arabic and Russian and while on it, freshened up his Latin. But of course we aren’t interested in this man for his multi-lingual knowledge, although I must say, I’m very impressed.
Anna
We are more interested in what happened after he met his wife Anna Dobler. She seems to be the one who got him interested in water gardening in the first place. Although he was very versatile, he liked to call himself a gardener, in the presence of his wife. Needless to say she must have had a big influence on him.
After their marriage, they built their lovely home (laid out by Wolfgang) and their private swimming pond in Arbesthal. They must have gotten the hang of it, because soon afterwards they started the nursery and the pond construction business. The next years, it was their main source of income.
Anna, who was managing the pond business, and Wolfgang, who managed the nursery, developed together principles on how to build natural swimming ponds without pumps and filters.
In 2004, they passed their 10+ years of experience on to Christoph Fischer. Now almost 15 years later, he still is in the natural swimming pond business based on their principles.
He had a goal
His goal in hybridisation was primarily to come up with something new that was not similar to anything already on the market. Therefore Wolfgang was not interested in the easy and well known potential parents.
He would not compromise
Why keep something if it doesn’t meet your standards?
He rigorously eliminated new hybrids (most likely more than 50) that did not meet his high standards. He made only a few exceptions, like with Nymphaea Wolfgang Jöbstl. Although the leafspread was too big for his standards, he kept it for its exceptional flower.
Answering the question immediately: “There are already too many, as they are so easy to come up with.” and there they went, in the trashbin.
He did not sell koi food
We let Christoph Fischer do the talking about this one: “One afternoon, when I was still a trainee at his nursery, a group of people arrived and looked over from the street to spot somebody.
I told Wolfgang that customers arrived and he went to meet them. To me it looked like they were having a good time with Wolfgang.
Visionair
Apparently Wolfgang was on the right track of winning some awards if he hadn’t throw them away.
Wolfgang had occasionally established new hybrids similar to Wanvisa. He considered them to be infected by a virus and destroyed them all.
He was not interested in any attention to his person nor in any competition to produce more hybrids than others.
But still, he managed to create and preserve more than 15 hybrids:
- Nymphaea ‘Arbesthal’, named after the village where the nursery was located
- Nymphaea ‘Bertrand Russell’, named after the man who won the Nobel price for literature in 1950
- Nymphaea ‘Carnuntum’, named after a village in Austria, that used to be the capital of the Pannonia Superior province
- Nymphaea ‘Etelka’, named after Wolfgang Fleischer’s mother
- Nymphaea ‘Helen Heinz’, named after the wife of a good friend of Wolfgang
- Nymphaea ‘Karuli’, named after the Austrian Garden TV presenter Karl Ploberger and his wife Uli
- Nymphaea ‘Mischu’, a name picked by a friend of Wolfgang
- Nymphaea ‘Pannonia’, named after a region in Austria, that used to be a province of the Roman Empire
- Nymphaea ‘Peter Petrich’, named after the owner of the swimming pond company BioTop (Austria)
- Nymphaea ‘Richard Weixler’, named after a natural swimming pond pioneer in Austria
- Nymphaea ‘Rubin’
- Nymphaea ‘Sibirica’, has red leaves and can freeze over in a small container in harsh winters. It also stops flowering when it gets to warm in summer
- Nymphaea ‘Vaclav Havel’, named after the last president of Czechoslovakia and Wolfgang Fleischer’s favourit hardy
- Nymphaea ‘Wilfried Morawetz’, named after a close friend who was a botanist
- Nymphaea ‘Wolfgang Fleischer’, named by Margit Seeber, after Wolfgang passed away
- Nymphaea ‘Wolfgang Jöbstl’, named after someone who helped him digging some of the ponds
If you are interested in buying any of his hybrids, you can contact Margit Seeber at Nymphea.eu, but we also have a lot of his hybrids in our collection.
Margit also has a few of his “dwarf” waterlilies that are free-flowering but unfortunately are not propagating very well, we do wonder if they will ever be available though.
Books:
- Das verleugnete Leben: Die Biographie des Heimito von Doderer
- Heimito von Doderer. Das Leben. Das Umfeld des Werks. In Fotos und Dokumentationen
- Der Schwimmteich im Garten: Anlage, Bepflanzung, Betreuung. Mit zahlreichen Bauanleitungen und detaillierten Pflanzenbeschreibung
- Schwimmteiche: Die besten Gestaltungsideen, die schönsten Anlagen
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