Otto Finsch
Friedrich Hermann Otto Finsch was a
German ethnographer,
naturalist and explorer.
Finsch was born at Warmbrunn in
Silesia. At the age of 19 he travelled to
Bulgaria where he worked as a private tutor. He studied natural history in his spare time and published his first paper in the
Journal fur Ornithologie on the birds of Bulgaria. He became assistant curator at the Dutch Natural Museum in
Leiden, and then in 1864 he became curator of the museum in Bremen. In 1876 he accompanied the zoologist
Alfred Brehm on an expedition to
Turkestan and northwest
China.
Encyclopedia
Friedrich Hermann Otto Finsch was a
German ethnographer,
naturalist and explorer.
Finsch was born at Warmbrunn in
Silesia. At the age of 19 he travelled to
Bulgaria where he worked as a private tutor. He studied natural history in his spare time and published his first paper in the
Journal fur Ornithologie on the birds of Bulgaria. He became assistant curator at the Dutch Natural Museum in
Leiden, and then in 1864 he became curator of the museum in Bremen. In 1876 he accompanied the zoologist
Alfred Brehm on an expedition to
Turkestan and northwest
China.
Finsch resigned as curator of the museum in 1878 in order that he could resume his travels. Accompanied by his wife Josephine he visited the
Polynesian Islands,
New Zealand,
Australia and
New Guinea. He returned to Germany in 1882. In 1884 he returned to New Guinea as
Bismarck's Imperial Commissioner and negotiated for the north-eastern portion of that island, together with
New Britain and
New Ireland, to become a German protectorate. It was renamed Kaiser Wilhelm's Land and the
Bismarck Archipelago. The capital of the colony was named Finschhafen in his honour.
After returning to Berlin Finsch spent two years as advisor to the Neuguinea-Kompagnie. In 1898 he became curator of the bird collections at the Rijksmuseum in Leiden, and then in 1904 head of the ethnographical department of the Municipal Museum in
Brunswick, where he died.
Some species of parrot bear his name, including the
Lilac-crowned Parrot Amazona finschi and the Grey-headed Parakeet
Psittacula finschii. The Finsch crater on the
Moon is also named in his honor.
