Ernst Gustav Kraatz

Kraatz was involved in improving the standards of taxonomic description in German entomology and he was a proponent of a national collection that allowed public access to specimens.

Through the influence of his father's friend Carl August Dohrn he shifted to study entomology at the University of Berlin.

He had already been a member of the Stettiner Entomologischer Verein, Société entomologique de France and the Wiener zoologisch-botanische Gesellschaft.

Kraatz was critical of the Kustodenherrlichkeit or the high-handedness of curators who made access to collections difficult.

Loew (d. 1878) were incorporated into the zoological museum, Kraatz argued for its separation and this split the Berlin Entomological Club and Kraatz then founded the Deutsche Entomologische Gesellschaft (DEG) and many of the coleopterists shifted their camp.

Writing on the work of Viktor Ivanovitch Motschulsky (with whom he had a running feud) he made use of the term "Mihisucht"' in 1862 which was later translated as the ''mihi'' itch.

[2] Kraatz worked on the beetle fauna of the whole world using the vast collections in the Natural History Museum of Berlin and described numerous species.

Ernst Gustav Kraatz (1831-1909)
Kraatz in 1872