Eduard Böcking

In 1792 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe found hospitality at the house of his father Louis Bocking (1758-1829) a wealthy merchant and vineyard owner in Trarbach.

Bocking studied in Kaiserslautern, Heidelberg, Bonn, Berlin and Gottingen and received his PhD in Jurisprudence in 1822 for his thesis De Mancipii Causis.

In a peculiar way his irritable and sincere nature and harshness of character was mixed with an almost childlike softness of disposition and a warm attachment to everything that was dear to his heart.

Gifted by nature with an agile body and stately appearance, married young and happy to his beautiful and beloved wife in 1830, blessed with five children, close friends with King Friedrich Wilhelm IV and other important men near and far, endowed with fortune which he used in his sensible way primarily to build his villa on the Rhine and to facilitate and expand his famous library, who was highly respected as a writer and teacher so at the end of his fourth decade he stood there as a richly blessed and enviable man but just a few years later it was his turn to mourn the long suffering and joyful death of the one he loved most on earth and the passing of others dear to him, we hear him complain about the feeling of his own morbidity that has been growing ever more acutely over the years and about other adversities that seem all too likely to weaken his courage, however, the dwindling joy in life did not diminish his desire and strength for works faithful fulfillment of his profession and we see him working diligently up until his death with the old iron industry and full freshness of mind which remained with him until the end of his life which he knew was near when he completed his last academic semester in March 1870.

His eldest son Adolf Theodor Böcking was a German-American Naturalist who was one of the first to study and record the Rhea americana or Nandu in its natural habitat of Uruguay in 1860.