Carl Wilhelm Hahn

[5] Carl Wilhelm Christian Hahn was born in Weingartsgreuth, Upper Franconia, as the first son of Johann Michael Hahn (1734–1824), who was court and palace gardener on the estate of Baron von Seckendorff, later palace gardener for Count Friedrich von Pückler.

[6] Afterwards, he lived with his parents in Fürth, and according to Hahn, made up his mind to devote his life to his predilection for natural history, an interest he had possessed since early childhood and which intensified during his studies in Erlangen.

When his "often promised and well earned position"[7] failed to materialize, Hahn undertook what was for that time, in his field, a very unusual step and went freelance.

He was also given this honour in the field of arachnology: Carl Ludwig Koch, who continued "Die Arachniden" after Hahn's death, called a genus after him in 1841 (Hahnia), on which later the name of the whole family was based – Hahniidae Bertkau, 1878.

Ascertaining whether Hahn broke with his publisher or Lechner with him has not been possible, but a separation took place some time before the publication of the sixth installment.

Indeed, in 1831, the first installment of "Die Arachniden" had already appeared in Zeh's Bookshop in Nuremberg as an obvious substitute for the "Monographie der Spinnen".

In the sixth installment of the "Monographie der Spinnen", publisher Lechner 1831 inserted a small-format "message", which announced that Hahn had been relieved as editor.

For obvious reasons, Lechner was not in a position to print anything new, though he still had original drawings in his possession, which he published without Hahn's consent.

On basis of recent investigation,[19] the correlation between installments and the years of publication has been clarified as: A definitive representative copy of "Monographie der Spinnen" probably does not exist (any more).

That Hahn was a good observer and gave exact descriptions is shown clearly by the example of Eresus annulatus (= E. sandaliatus (Martini & Goeze>, 1778)) and E. cinnaberinus (= E. kollari Rossi, 1846).

Thirdly, spider illustrations in the "Monographie der Spinnen" show Hahn to be an above-average artist and lithographer.

In contrast to the French manuscripts with their terse descriptions and infrequent illustrations, the 2000-plus pages of beautifully coloured plates of this work captured the attention of zoologists everywhere.

French arachnologist Simon was incited by the high number of species, described from Germany in "Die Arachniden", while from his native France almost nothing had been done.

In particular, "Die Arachniden" was very influential in founding a German tradition of active interest in arachnology, which flourished for nearly a century.