Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Goetsch (25 October 1887 – 20 March 1960) was a German zoologist and entomologist who was best known for several books on the ants.
In 1929 he moved to South America and became a professor at the University of Santiago de Chile, holding the position until 1931.
His work on giant ants made him identify a so-called "active ingredient T" (or Vitamin T)[2][3] which he promoted as a medicine for children, it was later produced from Torula.
[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] Goetsch's work inspired Carl Stephenson who wrote Leiningen Versus the Ants (1938, the German original in 1937) to produce a revised work after World War II called Marabunta in which Goetsch is introduced as a character who is an expert on the ants.
In the 1937 edition Goetsch considered ant society as an ideal that humans had yet to reach and ended the book with “in dem der eineschweigend verzichtet, der andere freudig opfert und gibt” (“some quietly renounce while others joyfully sacrifice and give”), a line that was taken from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.