Friedrich Dörries

Friedrich Carl Gustav Dörries (born July 10, 1852 in Hamburg , † February 21, 1953 in Volksdorf ) was a German explorer and zoo keeper .

Live and act

Friedrich Dörries was a son of the trained baker Friedrich Nicol Daniel Dörries (1822-1917). The father later worked 40 years as a forage master in the Hamburg zoo . During this time he created a scientifically important collection of birds and butterflies. His wife was called Betti Wilhelmine (1827–1916). Dörries had the brothers Henry Gustav D. (1861-1904) and Edmund D. (1865-1958), who worked as taxidermists and went on research trips partly together with Friedrich and partly alone.

Friedrich Dörries completed a professional training as a gardener. Since his father had aroused an interest in insect and ornithology, he took a trip to East Asia as a steward on February 19, 1877 . There he hiked a dangerous route from Nagasaki to Osaka , collecting 519 different plants. In mid-June 1877 he boarded a ship to Vladivostok in Yokohama . From here he undertook further trips with his brother Henry, during which he expanded his ethnographic, ornithological and entomological collection.

From July 15, 1877 to the winter of 1878, the brothers lived on the volcanic island of Askold , which was considered a paradise for birds and insects. In 1879 they switched to the Sui and lived mostly in the abandoned Baranowski military base . They spent 1880 and 1881 on the Ussuri , most of them in Kassewitsch . 1882 they inquired about 250 km from Khabarovsk from the Bikin and returned in 1883 back to Askold. In 1884 they spent on Sidemi , in 1885 they went to the mouth of the Suifun and in 1887 back to the Bikin. In December 1887 they returned to Germany.

In 1889 Dörries went on trips again with his brother Edmund, first to the Kenteigebirge and from May 1890 to the area around Sutschan . In 1892 they moved on to the Jablonowy Mountains and in 1894 traveled overland from Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod , Kazan and Tomsk to Lake Baikal , from there to the Choezier Mountains to Nikolayevsk and Sakhalin . From this trip they brought back about 51,000  Lepidoptera , of which 270 species were considered new. In addition, there were 42,000 beetles, 5,500 prepared bird hides and skins of mammals, which experts took care of. The collected butterflies were taken over by Otto Staudinger , who based himself on the fauna of the Amur region.

In 1897 Dörries went to Hamburg , where he managed the insect house at Hagenbeck's zoo . On August 14 of the same year he married Aline Lercher (1875–1931), with whom he had four daughters. Dörries then undertook two trips for Carl Hagenbeck to catch animals on his behalf. In one of the trips he began in Siberia six copies of the Wapiti -Art Cervus canadensis Luedorfi / xanthopygus ( Isubrahirsch ) required for the park of the friend of Hagenbeck Lord Bedford (1858-1940) at his country house Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire were intended. Dörries brought these animals alive to Germany for the first time.

Dörries retired at the age of 81. He left travel reports and ornithological and entomological records.

literature

• Heinrich Bolau : Directory of the birds collected by Fr. Dörries on Askold on the East Siberian coast in Journal for Ornithology , April 1880, Volume 28, Issue 2, pp. 113-132
• Herbert Weidner: Dörries, Friedrich . in: Schleswig-Holstein Biographical Lexicon . Volume 1. Karl Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1970, pp. 128–129