Hermann Schlegel

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Hermann Schlegel

Hermann Schlegel (June 10, 1804 - January 17, 1884) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
ornithologist.

Early life and education
Schlegel was born at Altenburg

Altenburg

Altenburg is a town in the States of Germany of Thuringia, 45 km south of Leipzig. It is the capital of the Altenburger Land district....
, the son of a brassfounder. His father collected butterflies, which stimulated Schlegel's interest in natural history

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards the observational than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research that is published in magazines than in academic journals....
.

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Hermann Schlegel (June 10, 1804 - January 17, 1884) was a German

Germany

Early life and education

Schlegel was born at Altenburg

Altenburg

Natural history

Buzzard

A buzzard is one of several large birds, but there are a number of meanings as detailed below....
's nest led him to the study of birds, and a meeting with Christian Ludwig Brehm

Christian Ludwig Brehm

Christian Ludwig Brehm was a Germany pastor and ornithologist. He was the father of Alfred Brehm.Brehm was born near Gotha , and studied at the University of Jena....
.

Schlegel started to work for his father but soon tired of it. He travelled to Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the Capital of Republic of Austria and also one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.7 million...
in 1824 where, at the university, he attended the lectures of Leopold Fitzinger

Leopold Fitzinger

Leopold Joseph Franz Johann Fitzinger was an Austrian zoologist.Fitzinger was born in Vienna and studied botany at the university of Vienna under Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin....
and Johann Jacob Heckel. A letter of introduction from Brehm to Joseph Natterer gained him a position at the Naturhistorisches Museum

Naturhistorisches Museum

The Naturhistorisches Museum Wien or NHMW is a large museum located in Vienna, Austria.The collections displayed cover 8,700 m?, and the museum has a website providing an overview as a video virtual tour....
.

Ornithological career

One year after his arrival, the director of this natural history museum, Carl Franz Anton Ritter von Schreibers

Carl Franz Anton Ritter von Schreibers

Carl Franz Anton Ritter von Schreibers was an Austrian naturalist who was a native of Pressburg . He earned his medical doctorate from Vienna in 1798, but also studied botany, mineralogy and zoology at the university....
, recommended him to Coenraad Jacob Temminck

Coenraad Jacob Temminck

Coenraad Jacob Temminck was a Netherlands aristocrat and zoologist.Temminck was the first director of the National Natural History Museum at Leiden from 1820 until his death....
, director of the natural history museum of Leiden

Leiden

Media:Nl-Leiden.ogg is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland in the Netherlands and has 118,000 inhabitants. It forms a single urban area with Oegstgeest, Leiderdorp, Voorschoten, Valkenburg, Rijnsburg and Katwijk, with 254,000 inhabitants....
, who was seeking an assistant. At first Schlegel worked mainly on the reptile

Reptile

Reptiles, or members of the class Reptilia, are air-breathing, cold-blooded vertebrates that have skin covered in scale as opposed to hair or feathers....
collection, but soon his field of activity extended to other zoological groups. It had been intended that Schlegel be sent to Java to join the Natural History Commission, but the untimely death of Temminck's intended successor, Heinrich Boie

Heinrich Boie

Heinrich Boie was a Germany zoologist. He was the brother of Friedrich Boie.Boie studied law at Kiel and G?ttingen. At university he became interested in natural history through the lectures of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and Friedrich Tiedemann....
, prevented the realization of this project.

It was at this time that Schlegel met Philipp Franz von Siebold

Philipp Franz von Siebold

Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold was a German physician. He emerged as the first European to teach Western medicine in Japan. He obtained significance for his study of Japanese flora and fauna that were endemic to the unique biotic island landscape....
. They became firm friends and collaborated on Fauna Japonica (1845-1850).

Director of the natural history museum

When Temminck died at the beginning of 1858, Schlegel succeeded him as director of the natural history museum, after having spent 33 years under his direction. Schlegel was particularly interested in south-east Asia, and in 1857 sent his son Gustav to collect in birds in China

China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
. Gustav arrived to find that Robert Swinhoe

Robert Swinhoe

Robert Swinhoe was an England natural history.Swinhoe was born in Calcutta, India. There is no clear record of the date of his arrival in England, but it is known he attended the University of London, and in 1854 joined the China consular corps....
had got there first. In 1859 Schlegel sent Heinrich Agathon Bernstein

Heinrich Agathon Bernstein

Heinrich Agathon Bernstein was a Germany zoologist from Wroclaw.In 1859 Hermann Schlegel sent Bernstein to collect birds in New Guinea.Bernstein is commemorated in the names of a number of animals, including the Chinese Crested Tern Sterna bernsteini and the Lesser Black Coucal Centropus bernsteini....
, to collect birds in New Guinea

New Guinea

New Guinea, located just north of Australia, is the List of islands by area, having become separated from the Australian mainland when the area now known as the Torres Strait flooded after the last glacial period....
. After the death of Bernstein in 1865 he was succeeded by Hermann von Rosenberg

Hermann von Rosenberg

Hermann von Rosenberg was a German naturalist who was born in Darmstadt. In late 1839 he enlisted in the Dutch Harderwijk, and soon afterwards was stationed in the Netherlands East Indies as a military cartographer tasked with making topography surveys....
.

Schlegel took on a young assistant called Otto Finsch

Otto Finsch

Friedrich Hermann Otto Finsch was a Germany ethnographer, natural history and colonial explorer....
. At the same time, he started to publish a scientific magazine, Notes from the Leyden Museum as well as a vast work of 14 volumes, Muséum d'histoire naturelle des Pays-Bas (1862-1880). He employed three talented illustrators: John Gerrard Keulemans

John Gerrard Keulemans

Johannes Gerardus Keulemans was a Netherlands bird illustrator....
, Joseph Smit

Joseph Smit

Joseph Smit was a Netherlands zoological illustrator.Smit was born in Lisse. He received his first commission from Hermann Schlegel at the Leiden Museum to work on the lithographs for a book on the birds of the Dutch East Indies....
and Joseph Wolf

Joseph Wolf

Joseph Wolf was a Germany artist....
.

The end of Schlegel's life was difficult: his wife died in 1864, Finsch moved to the natural history museum at Bremen, and the collections of the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture situated in London. Its collections, which number more than 7 million Object , are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginning to the present....
started to eclipse those of Leiden.