Wilhelm Pfitzer

Wilhelm Pfitzer (21 January 1821 - 31 July 1905) was a German horticulturist.

Wilhelm II Pfitzer in 1844, founded a nursery on a property at Militärstraße, Stuttgart in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, where his father, Wilhelm I Pfitzer, owned a property for his private gardening interest. Wilhelm II founded a family firm that exists to this day and which has been a major influence on the development of many flower types, especially Dahlias, Gladioli, and Canna.

With his wife, Friederike, née Schickler (married 12 July 1849, died 27 December 1892), he extended the nursery around the vegetable and flower seed trades.

Property at Fellbach In 1909, the original property was sold for building as the city expanded and the company looked for new land outside Stuttgart. In 1910, they acquired of rural land near the railway station at Fellbach, about six miles (10 km) outside Stuttgart. Offices, warehouse, greenhouse, and nursery beds rapidly emerged.

Pfitzer's Flower Show Up to the Second World War thousands of visitors from all around the world descended annually on Fellbach to visit Pfitzer’s Flower Show. In addition, a multitude of young apprentices and sons of others in the trade enjoyed training at Fellbach, at what was recognised as one of the leading places of horticultural education in the world at that time.

Gladiolus were still the most important and largest department of the firm, but Canna still provided a steady supply of business as they continued to hybridise new cultivars.

World War two During World War II, most employees were conscripted and the nursery business had to be restricted and relocated. Vegetable type crops were ordered to be grown, regardless of the loss of valuable flowering stock. Head gardeners, too old for military service, had to contend with prisoners of war being billeted at Fellbach, and taught to grow vegetables. This was not onerous for the prisoners as it ensured that they ate much better than other prisoners of war did.

The attempts at saving flowering stock that was carried out directly against the law only met with limited success, and much stock was lost during that time. Much will never be recovered. Sadly, many “Pfitzeraners” never returned and much knowledge and experience was lost. Some of the world's leading hybridisers had been working at Fellbach before hostilities.

Post World Wars After the war, the company was never able to regain its market share. Hostility to German goods existed for a while in both Europe and the USA, but more important, the neighbouring countries with favourable climates started to predominate. With their more favourable climate, they could produce in one year a harvest, or many harvests, that would take 2–3 years in Fellbach. In addition, the wage costs were more favourable to Mediterranean competitors.

The firm had to retrench, and wound-up leases on much of its land and reduced its work force. It focussed on just Dahlias, Gladiolus, and Canna. In order to publicise its products to potential customers, many of whom had never heard of the companies’ world-leading reputation, they involved themselves in numberless local and foreign gardening shows, fairs and exhibitions, competing successfully and with distinction. However, by the mid-1980s the firm had diminished in size to just six employees and of garden beds.