Friedrich Hermann Otto Finsch (8 August 1839, Warmbrunn – 31 January 1917, Braunschweig) was a German ethnographer, naturalist and colonial explorer.

He then spent two years in Russe, Bulgaria on an invitation from the Austrian Consul and gave private tutoring in German while exploring the birdlife of the region.

After publishing the two volume monographs on the parrots of the world, Die Papageien, monographisch bearbeitet (1867–68), he obtained an honorary doctorate from the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Bonn.

[2] Finsch was shocked by the punitive actions of the English Methodist missionary George Brown (1835–1917) and was concerned by the violent conflicts between the natives and westerners.

After witnessing a cannibal feast at Matupit he commented that the people were still not classifiable as "savages" as they maintained neat agriculture, had their own song, dance and followed commerce.

[4] He returned to Germany in 1882[5] and began to promote the creation of German colonies in the Pacific along with the South Sea Plotters, an influential group led by a banker Adolph von Hansemann.

In 1884 he returned aboard the steamer Samoa to New Guinea as Bismarck's Imperial Commissioner to explore potential harbours under the guise of scientists and negotiated for the north-eastern portion of that island, together with New Britain and New Ireland, to become a German protectorate.

Seeking return to Germany, he finally joined the ethnographical department of the Municipal Museum in Brunswick in 1904 and worked the remainder of his life there.

In 2008, following international treaties, some of the human remains that he had collected from Cape York and the Torres Straits that were held in the Charité Medical University in Berlin were repatriated.