Franz Gustav Straube

Franz Gustav Straube (born February 6, 1802 in Altenburg , † December 19, 1853 in Joinville ) was a German naturalist .

Franz Gustav Straube. Image by the Brazilian painter Pedro Macedo

biography

After the death of his parents Samuel Sigismund Straube (1761–1808) and Christine Concordia (Bach) Straube (1761–1808), he lived as a foster child with his maternal uncle, Gotthold Friedrich Bach (1770–1829, married to Friedericke Bach, née. Schuman, 1778-1830). In 1815 he left the family and moved to Dresden , where he studied and turned to natural history. There he married Johanne Augustine Schäpach (1797-1840) in 1828, with whom he had four children. In 1843 he married Ernesthine Wilhelmine Hübschmann. This connection resulted in 6 children.

progeny

The eldest son was Wilhelm Gustav Straube (1844–1924). He later called himself Guilherme Straube and was a member of parliament and mayor ( prefeito ) of the city of Cerro Azul in the state of Paraná , Brazil. His sixth son was Franz Gustav Straube (1853-1909), born in the " Colonia Dona Francisca ", later residing in Curitiba and father of four children, including Hugo Straube (1888-1930), doctor of philosophy and head of the authority for Protection of the Indians in Ibirama, Santa Catarina , and Guido Straube (1890–1937), professor, dentist and naturalist in Curitiba.

Scientific contributions

During his time in Dresden, Straube lived as a dealer in natural history objects. He mainly traded in insects (especially butterflies), but also in birds, mollusks and plants. In doing so, he not only earned his living, but also made scientific contributions in various European countries with his collections, such as B. in Austria and Germany. In 1846 he decided to revise the “Ordinance of European Butterflies”, which had previously been cataloged by Ferdinand Ochsenheimer (1767–1822) and Friedrich Treitschke (1776–1842) and in the famous edition “The Butterflies of Europe” in five editions (1807, 1808 , 1810, 1816 and 1825) had been published. On this occasion, he published two essays in 1846, which he presumably financed from his own resources and which were published and printed by the Louis Filitz printing house in Berlin. The first of these essays consisted of ten pages and was entitled "Alphabetically arranged directory of European butterflies according to Ochsenheimer and Treitschke together with the more recent discoveries on the use of the new systematic directories". The second article, with the same layout and comprising eleven pages, was "Systematically sorted list of European butterflies according to Ochsenheimer and Treitschke together with the more recent discoveries up to 1845".

These contributions show that Straube did not only collect and sell animal and plant objects to secure his livelihood, but also had a scientific interest. That spurred him on to a long research and collector trip in June and July of 1847 to Turkey, where he worked in Istanbul and Bursa . These were regions that until then had not been the target of scientific research at the time, or only in the beginning. From his expedition he brought molluscs, plants, beetles, butterflies and grasshoppers, which were intended for his collection.

Among the butterflies was the previously unknown Pachypasa dryophaga , the species and habitat of which was reported in the article "Comments on the breeding of Bombyx Dryophaga" in the Szczecin Entomological newspaper . This work was often referred to by experts of the time, not least because of his interesting discoveries about the plant species used by insects as a habitat. While it was assumed until then that she used European oaks as habitat, Straube found out that she only used the cupressus cypresses, which are common in Turkey.

Two years later (1849) Straube was accepted as a member of the Association for Silesian Entomology, which was based in Wroclaw .

In 1851 the idea arose to emigrate to Brazil in order to get to know the great biodiversity of this country and to open up business opportunities with European natural history museums. It is possible that his decision was influenced by the orchid mania that existed at the time, which arose in Europe in the mid-19th century. The interest in the plants he collected in Brazil was so great that various newspapers from Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic reported on his travels. In the same year an Austrian newspaper reported on the whereabouts of the collected specimens and mentioned the orchid cultivation of the famous German botanist Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach (1824–1889).

Travel to Brazil

Through some contacts he joined a group of German emigrants who were recruited by the "Hamburg Colonization Association of 1849", which was to organize a large-scale colonization of the south of Brazil on behalf of the Kingdom of Brazil.

After completing the necessary preparations, Franz Gustav Straube went together with his son Franz Julius Straube on board the Danish schooner “Gloriosa” under the command of Captain WF Toosbuy with the destination Brazil. The departure of a total of 75 passengers took place in Hamburg on July 19, 1851. The assistants Ferdinand Baldoin Conrad and Julius Agathon Lehmann, employed by him, also traveled with him. They finally reached the port of Sao Francisco (today Sao Francisco do Sul, Santa Catarina) on September 27, 1851. A few days later he went to the recently founded colony "Donas Francisca" (today in Joinville ), where he a House built on the banks of the Matias River.

In 1852 he was followed by his wife Ernesthine and four children, one of whom fell victim to measles on the high seas. The famous naturalist Johann Friedrich Theodor Müller , collaborator and reporter for Charles Darwin and one of the most vehement advocates of the theory of evolution , also traveled on the same ship .

A short time later, on December 19, 1853, Straube died without having completed his project. Only part of the material he had collected could be preserved thanks to his new assistant, the surveyor Carl Pabst, who had settled there.

Species named after Straube

In 1853 the entomologist Franz Xavier Fieber found out that two specimens of the Orthoptera collected by Straube in Bursa (Turkey) were new species, which is why he named them after the German scholars Paranocarodes Straubei and Isophya Straubei .

literature

• Assmann, 1854. Directory of the 1847 at Constantinople a. Brussa found butterflies . Journal of Entomology 8: 14-17.

• FX fever, 1853a. Scientific reports Synopsis of the European Orthoptera with special consideration of the species occurring in Bohemia as an extract from the work “The European Orthoptera” available for print . Lotos: Science Journal 3: 115–129.

• FX fever 1853b. The European orthopters . Lotos: Journal of Natural Sciences 3: 184–188.

• F. Ochsenheimer, 1806. The butterflies of Saxony, with consideration for all known European species . Part 1: moths, or day butterflies . - Leipzig (Schwickert). IV (recte VI) + 493 pp.

• F. Ochsenheimer, 1807. The Butterflies of Europe , vol. 1. Leipzig (butcher). 2 + 323 pp.

• F. Ochsenheimer, 1808. The Butterflies of Europe , vol. 2. Leipzig (butcher). 30 + 241 pp.

• F. Ochsenheimer, 1810. The Butterflies of Europe , vol. 3. Leipzig (butcher).

• F. Ochsenheimer, 1816. The Butterflies of Europe , vol. 4. Leipzig (butcher). X + 212 pp.

• F. Ochsenheimer, F. Treitschke, 1825. The Butterflies of Europe , vol. 5/1. Leipzig (butcher). 414 pp.

• FG Straube, 1846a. Alphabetically arranged list of European butterflies according to Ochsenheimer and Treitschke together with the more recent discoveries. For the use of the newer systematic inscriptions . Berlin, Louis Filitz. 10 p.

• FG Straube, 1846b. Systematically ordered list of European butterflies according to Ochsenheimer and Treitschke along with the more recent discoveries up to 1845 . Berlin, Louis Filitz. 11 p.

• FG Straube, 1849. Remarks on the breeding of Bombyx Dryophaga . In: Stettiner Entomologische Zeitung . 10 (1): 156-160.

• FG Straube, 1853a. Entomological contributions I: Entomological remarks: collected on a trip to the Orient in the months of May to September 1847, treatises of the Natural Science Society Saxonia zu Gross and Neuschönau 1: 9-14.

• FG Straube, 1853b. Entomological contribution II: Notes on the breeding of Bombyx Dryophaga [“Entomological contribution: Notes on the reproduction of Bombyx dryophaga”]. Published in Treatises of the Natural Science Society Saxonia zu Gross and Neuschönau 1: 14–19.

• EC Straube, 1992. Guido Straube: perfil de professor . Curitiba, Editora Expoente. 135 p.

• E. Warchalowska-Sliwa, DB Chobanov, B. Grzywacz, A. Maryanska-Nadachowska, 2008. Taxonomy of the genus Isophya (Orthoptera, Phaneropteridae, Barbitistinae): comparison of karyological and morphological data . Folia Biologica 56 (3-4): 227-241