Otto Staudinger
Otto Staudinger (2 May 1830 – 13 October 1900) was a German entomologist and a natural history dealer considered one of the largest in the world specialising in the collection and sale of insects to museums, scientific institutions, and individuals.
In the summer of 1843 his father purchased the Rittergut Lübsee near Güstrow where Otto – now under the instruction of tutor Hermann – began to collect Lepidoptera.
From October 1845 he attended the Gymnasium (grammar school) in Parchim and in summer 1849 received his Abitur (diploma qualifying for university admission).
From June 1850 to autumn 1851 he undertook entomological excursions and on the very first of these the capture of a series of freshly emerged Synanthedon tipuliformis in the cemetery of Stralau established his predilection for the clearwing moths (Sesiidae).
He became friends with fellow students Theodor Johannes Krüper (later director of the natural history museum in Athens) and Carl Eduard Adolph Gerstaecker (later professor in Greifswald) and met many of the Berlin entomologists of the era, especially Grabow, Simon, Scherffling, Libbach, Glasbrenner, Mützel, Streckfuß, Walther, the Kricheldorff brothers, Ribbe and Kalisch.
Their collecting grounds were mainly the Grunewald, the Jungfernheide (where at that time Staurophora celsia still occurred), the Wuhlheide, the Kalkberge near Straußberg and the lonely Finkenkrug, then situated deep inside the forest.
Accordingly, Staudinger spent May to August 1852 at Lake Geneva and in the Mont Blanc area, then he travelled across the Simplon Pass to Genoa and thence – always on foot – along the Riviera to Nice, Marseilles, and Montpellier where he stayed until late November, everywhere socialising with local entomologists.
From April to October 1854 Staudinger collected in Sardinia with the intention to discover the larvae of Papilio hospiton in which he succeeded after many failures.
The same night the couple departed and travelled via Paris, Lyon, Marseilles – where they stopped and learned Spanish within ten days – Barcelona, Valencia and Almería to Málaga, where they stayed for a month.
One of Staudinger's most valuable and durable achievements was the publication of three catalogues of the Lepidoptera of Europe and eventually of the entire palaearctic region.
These "Check-lists" as they would be called today were immediately accepted by lepidopterists, used as a basis of faunal lists and stimulated further taxonomic studies.
The next edition, bilingual in German and French, appeared in 1871 (Catalog der Lepidopteren des Europaeischen Faunengebiets [Catalogue of the Lepidoptera of the European Faunal Region]) and found wide distribution.
The business collection of palaearctic Lepidoptera went to Hans Kotzsch after Otto Bang-Haas' death and finally came to the Staatliches Museum für Tierkunde Dresden in 1961.
Dr. O. Staudinger & A. Bang-Haas, Blasewitz, Dresden, Germany WILL BUY OR EXCHANGE Clerids, Phanaeus, Monilema and all Cetonids from all parts of the world."
