Born in Switzerland, Hermann Jaeger (1844-1895) was a grandson of the educator and school reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827) and learned the profession of a gardener. He emigrated to the USA and settled east of Neosho (Missouri) in 1865. Together with his brother John he cultivated grapes there. Subsequently, he worked as a breeder of grape varieties, regularly wrote articles about them for magazines and exchanged information with European grape experts. For this purpose, he preferred to make selections of wild gra pevines of the species Vitis lincecumii from the Ozarks region in Missouri. Jaeger experimented with crosses of other American species such as Vitis aestivalis and the phylloxera-resistant Vitis rupestris. In the 1870s, the phylloxera plague escalated in Europe. When the cause of vine death was finally identified, a worldwide search for resistant vines began. The entomologist in charge of Missouri, Charles Valentine Riley (1843-1895), noticed the great resistance of the Jaeger varieties to the pest.
The Jaeger vines and also many others from Missouri nurseries were exported in huge quantities to Europe and used in the fight against the pest. The most important were Jaeger 43 and especially Jaeger 70, which was later named Munson after the US botanist Thomas Volney Munson (1843-1913), who was a friend of his. This was mainly used by the French breeder Albert Seibel (1844-1936) for many of his new breeds and became the progenitor of many French hybrids. Jaeger vines were also involved in the new breeding of the American hybrids America, Estella, Kiowa, Longworth, Quintina, Rosette and Waubeck. For his services to vine and wine, Hermann Jaeger was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour (Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur) by the French government in 1893, as well as the French Order of Agricultural Merit (Ordre du Mérite agricole); the certificate to this effect is in the possession of a great-grandson. Two years later he disappeared without a trace, leaving behind a suicide note; suicide is suspected.
Hermann Jaeger: unknown, Public domain, Link
Deed: by George Gibson, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link
