Friedrich Johann Count of Medem

Friedrich Johann Graf von Medem (born August 29, 1912 in Remten; † May 1, 1984 in Bogotá ) was a zoologist from a German noble family and representative of the IUCN's Crocodiles Specialist Group for South America. His mother was Ellen Countess of Medem .

He used different spellings of his first name, including Federico and Fred.

Life

Medem was born at the ancestral home of the von Medem family on Schlossgut Remten (now Remte) in Courland (now Latvia ). During the agrarian reform of 1920 Remten was expropriated . The estate was divided and a community school was set up in the castle. The Medem family left Courland and after several stopovers - Saint Petersburg , Finland , Sweden and Heringsdorf - finally settled in Silesia . Friedrich Medem attended school in Namslau and then the Knight Academy in Liegnitz . He graduated from high school in Riga .

Education

Medem studied from 1936 to 1938 at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin zoology , geology and paleontology . In 1937 Gustav Kramer gave him the opportunity to work with Reinhard Dohrn at the zoological station in Naples . Medem studied in Tübingen from 1938 to 1940. There he became a member of the Comradeship Ostland . From 1940 to 1942 he was again at the institute in Naples with a scholarship from the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology Max Hartmann from the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and completed his zoology studies in 1942 with a doctorate in Berlin. At that time Medem was mainly concerned with the fertilization substances of fish and was in close contact with the marine researcher Hans Hass , who also studied zoology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin from 1940 to 1944.

Military service

At the end of 1942, Medem was drafted as a military officer for the duration of the war by the High Command of the Navy and trained in oceanography in Greifswald. It was initially planned that he should be assigned to Max Hartmann at the new Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Piraeus for oceanographic measurements. Since the institute in Piraeus did not get out of the build-up phase due to the war, this assignment did not take place. Instead, Medem was assigned to a Wehrmacht unit and fought on the Eastern Front .

Emigration and Research in South America

After a short stay (1948/49) as an assistant at the Zoological Institute of the University of Bern , Medem emigrated to South America in 1950. There he found a new research area with the reptiles of South America (especially turtles and crocodiles). Most of his scientific publications were now in Spanish. In 1958 he received Colombian citizenship.

Thanks to a research assignment from the Guggenheim Foundation , in 1953/54 and 1961/62 he was able to carry out extensive studies on the comparative anatomy of crocodiles in numerous museums in the USA, including Harvard, New York, Philadelphia , Chicago and Washington.

On many expeditions, most of which he undertook alone, he penetrated the impassable areas of the Orinoco and the Amazon to investigate crocodile populations. From his expeditions lasting several months he brought back extensive collections, some of which he gave to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Almost 30 new animal species were named after Medem, including at least 5 reptile species (e.g. Micrurus medemi , a coral snake).

In the 1960s and 1970s, Medem lived with his wife and daughter in Villavicencio , about 75 kilometers southeast of Bogota. There he had a large farm, raised and examined crocodiles and turtles. His "Estacion de Biologia Tropical Roberto Franco" belonged to the national university and became the starting point for many scientific expeditions for international guest researchers. Since the 1940s, Medem has been in constant contact with Robert Mertens , the herpetology expert at the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research . Since 1957 he was a corresponding member of the Senckenberg Society.

In 1971 Medem was named a Representat of the Crocodiles Specialist Group in South America. This was a special group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) (German: Weltnaturschutzunion). In this capacity, Medem traveled to all countries in South America in order to persevere in negotiations with the government agencies responsible for nature conservation, whose protective laws were often not worth the paper they were written on.

Medem's two-volume main work Los Crocodylia de Sur America from 1981 and 1983 is still considered a standard work today.

Others

Correspondence with the marine researcher Hans Hass is in the archive of the Hans Hass Institute, correspondence with the biologist Max Hartmann in the archive of the Max Planck Society .

Medem was adjunct professor at the Universidad Nacional de Columbia in Bogota and a member of the Academia Colombiana de Ciencias Exactas Fisicas y Naturales .

Medem is the namesake of Herbario Federico Medem Bogotá, founded in 1984 at the Instituto Alexander von Humboldt in Bogota.

Works (selection)

• Contributions to the question of fertilizers in marine mollusks . Leipzig 1942 (dissertation)
• Ecology and disease transmission potential in the Colombian Amazon Basin. Final technical report . Springfield 1971.
• Los Crocodylia de Sur America . Bogotá, Ministerio de Educación Nacional, Fondo Colombiano de Investigaciones Científicas y Proyectos Especiales "Francisco José de Caldas". Two parts (1981 and 1983).

literature

• Obituary Friedrich Medem In: Nature and Museum. Senckenberg Natural Research Society. Volume 114-115, 1984, page 334
• William W. Lamar: Obituary Federico Medem . In: Herpetologica. Volume 40, Issue 4, 1984, pp. 468-472
• Christl von Walter: Portrait Friedrich (Fred) Graf Medem . In: Association of the Baltic Knighthoods (ed.): News sheet of the Baltic Knighthoods. Volume XX, No. 78, June 1978, p. 141. (with portrait photo)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Pictures and information on Schlossgut Remte ( Memento of the original from November 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ Micrurus medemi in The Reptile Database