Karl Faust was a German businessman and scientific patron, established in Catalonia from 1897. Despite showing concern for natural sciences from a very young age, his parents thought it appropriate for him to study commerce. He went to Barcelona, first as a worker for the Körting Hermanos company, and later he established himself on his own.
Having already passed the age of fifty, he decided to recover the illusions of youth and dedicate himself to science. He invested his fortune in the construction of a botanical garden that was to be, at the same time, a research and educational center for Europeans from the center and north of the continent, who would find, in Blanes, the favorable conditions for numerous plants from arid and tropical climates. that in their countries of origin they could grow only in greenhouses. He named the garden Marimurtra, uniting in a single word one of the characteristic Mediterranean plants that grows in these lands, the myrtle, with the Mediterranean that bathes the feet of the garden.
A board of trustees manages the Private Foundation which, from the moment of his death, has guaranteed the continuity of his altruistic project.