Hans Sauter (entomologist)

Hans Sauter (born June 21, 1871 in Augsburg , † May 7, 1943 in Taiwan ) was a German entomologist who lived permanently in Taiwan from 1905.

Life

Hans Sauter studied biology in Munich and Tübingen and began a doctoral thesis on stink bugs with Theodor Eimer (1843–1898) in Tübingen . Shortly before the completion of his dissertation, the doctoral supervisor died, and the filling of the chair dragged on longer, so that Sauter finally lost interest in working in the orphaned laboratory and did not graduate. In 1902 Sauter went to Taiwan (Formosa), which at that time belonged to Japan and was largely unexplored entomologically. He settled in the port city of Anping (安平) and collected insects there. Then he went to Tokyo and from April 1903 he lived as a German teacher in the city of Okayama , where he met and married his Japanese wife. In Japan he was mainly interested in fish and reptiles and published a scientific paper on this. In 1905 he returned to Taiwan with his wife, where he stayed until the end of his life. He worked for an English tea trading company (Tait & Co., 德 記 洋行), but was also very committed as an entomologist and collected insects. He traveled large parts of the island and also the interior of the island, which was not entirely safe at the time, as the Taiwanese natives still practiced headhunting . He collected in all areas that were accessible to him. Most of the insects he collected came to the German Entomological Institute (DEI, then in Berlin, then in Eberswalde, now in Müncheberg). The extensive collections are published in 120 articles under the title "H. Sauters Formosa-yield" in the institute journals of the DEI and are still among the most valuable collections of the DEI. The insects that Hans Sauter collected are still an essential basis for research into the extremely rich insect world of Taiwan. German and European entomologists were made aware of the extremely rich insect fauna of the island of Taiwan through Sauter's work, the diversity of which exceeds that of other much larger islands ( Japan , Madagascar ).

Since Germany was at war with Japan and the United Kingdom during the First World War, Sauter lost his job at the English tea trading company and was under surveillance by the Japanese authorities. At first he lived on his savings, but then because of the circumstances he lost all interest in collecting, so that the world war meant the end of his intensive scientific work. After his savings ran out, Sauter began to earn a living by taking German, English and piano lessons. Sauter was the first in Taiwan to give private piano lessons. As a result, he made a significant contribution to the encounter of Taiwanese with European culture. After his wife died in 1916, he raised his seven children alone. In old age he was mainly interested in amphibians and reptiles.

literature

• Keh-Miin Chen: Hans Sauter (1871-1943). In: Taipei today. (6) Nov 1, 2002, pp. 58-59.
• T. Esaki: Hans Sauter. In: Works on morphological and taxonomic entomology from Berlin-Dahlem. Volume 8, No. 2, 1941, pp. 81–87 ( (full text; pdf) )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Hans Sauter . In: Biological Reichsanstalt and German Entomological Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (ed.): Work on morphological and taxonomic entomology from Berlin-Dahlem . tape 8 , no. 2 , July 15, 1941 ( online [PDF]).
2. ^ H. Sauter: A new Ateleopodid Fish from the Sagami Sea. In: Annotationes Zoologicae Japonenses. 5, 1905, pp. 233-238.