Hans von Boetticher

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Hans Paul Heinrich Franz von Boetticher (born August 30, 1886 in Staraya Derewnja near Saint Petersburg , † January 20, 1958 in Coburg ) was a German-Baltic zoologist , ornithologist and entomologist .

Working in the service of the Bulgarian king

Hans von Boetticher was the youngest son of the Imperial Russian Councilor and Notary of the Evangelical Lutheran General Consistory in St. Petersburg, Paul von Boetticher (1846–1922), who came from a German-Baltic family, and his wife Maria San Galli. In 1894 his parents moved to Berlin , where he graduated from high school in 1907. Boetticher first studied law and political science until 1910 before turning to the natural sciences. His first research trip took him to Eritrea in 1913 .

Boetticher's life was closely linked to that of the Bulgarian monarch Ferdinand I of Bulgaria (1861–1948) from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha . After the end of the war in 1918 he got his first job as a zoological assistant at the Royal Natural History Museum in Sofia , but then moved at the same place to the Royal Zoological Garden, which Ferdinand I had founded in 1886, one year after he took office. From February 1916 onwards, Boetticher was stationed as a deputy sergeant in a German field weather station in Bulgaria (Sitnjakowo) during the First World War . From here, in addition to the fauna landscape, he also examined the distribution of the black grouse in the Musala group in the Bulgarian Rila Mountains and thus caught the attention of the nature-loving king, who was particularly interested in birds.

After the capitulation of Bulgaria, Ferdinand I had to 1918 in favor of his son Boris III. abdicate and went into exile in Coburg . Boetticher initially stayed in Sofia and was promoted to director of the zoological garden. In his research and publications, the ornithology of Bulgaria was increasingly in the foreground. Further professional positions in Germany were the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt am Main and the Museum of the Zoological Institute of the University of Halle an der Saale. In addition, from then on he accompanied the bustling ex-king on several expeditions. In 1923 they both visited Egypt and Abyssinia , 1927–1928 Boetticher traveled alongside Ferdinand to Brazil , Argentina and Chile and from 1929–1930 he was next to Countess Victoria zu Solms-Rödelheim, Princess of Leiningen , at Ferdinand's side on the 2nd Africa -Expedition in Kenya , Uganda and Tanzania , whose ornithological discoveries he published in a special issue of the Journal of Ornithology 78, 1930. Ferdinand's description of the trip was published in Die Woche , No. 8 (1931).

In 1928 he received his doctorate at the University of Jena with the thesis Contribution to the knowledge of the morphology and phylogeny of the horny bird's beak cover with special consideration of its relationship to the snout shields of the dinosaurs .

Head of the Natural History Museum in Coburg

In 1931, on Ferdinand's recommendation, Boetticher succeeded Adam Brückner as director of the Natural Science Museum in Coburg. He held the office until 1955. Phylogenesis , systematics and zoogeography were now in the foreground of his studies . In ornithology he was particularly interested in investigations on ducks, chickens and gulls. He was the namesake of numerous species of ducks, so u. a. the South American Amazon duck (Amazonetta brasiliensis) and the copper mirror duck (Speculanas specularis). In a communication about the "Balkan laughing pigeon" he was one of the first to mention the nasal sounds of the turkish pigeon among the newer observers. More than 400 publications of scientific and popular content speak of his diligence and versatile knowledge.

In 1936 he dedicated an 86-page commemorative publication to his sponsor Ferdinand for his 75th birthday and both remained close friends until the ex-monarch's death in 1948.

His books on bird species in the “Neue Brehms-Bücherei” series, published from 1950 until his death in 1959, are still among the ornithological standard works and are being published in new editions.

According to plans by the master builder Christoph Kürschner from December 1921, Boetticher had a half-timbered villa built in Coburg am Hinteren Glockenberg in 1922 in the English country house style, which was demolished in 2005 due to wall sponge, as well as a small neo-Romanesque chapel in the garden, which is still preserved today. In 1922, the year his father died, Hans von Boetticher married Henriette Faber, 15 years his junior, with whom he had a daughter. His older sister Dagmar (1883–1970) was married to Bernhard Ludolf von Bismarck and from 1933 to 1949 she was the chairwoman of the Protestant Women's Aid in Brandenburg.

Von Boetticher was politically active in the All-German People's Party , for which he ran unsuccessfully in the Bundestag election in 1957 in the Coburg constituency .

Awards and honors

Works and essays (selection)

  • Winter bird life in the Coburg Hofgarten: ornithological observations in January 1919, Die gefiederte Welt Vol. 48 No. 6 (1919), pp. 46–47.
  • Ornithological observations in Coburg (Bavaria): Materials from the Coburg Land, Anzeiger der Ornithologische Gesellschaft in Bayern, Vol. 2 (1929) pp. 36-44.
  • Kakadus, Vogel Ferner Lands 1931, issue 5, pp. 24–30.
  • Contribution to a phylogenetically based, natural system of the cocktails (Tinami) on the basis of some taxonomically usable characters. Jenaische Zeitschr. Natural 69 (1934): pp. 169-192.
  • The geographical distribution of the seals, Zeitschr. for mammal studies. 9 (1934): pp. 359-368.
  • The Gaimardische Buntkormoran, Vogel remote countries 1935, issue 4, pp. 81-83.
  • List of types in the bird collection of the museum of the Zoological Institute of the University of Halle an der Saale. Magazine Natural science 94 (1940), pp. 205-214.
  • Thoughts on the systematic standing of some parrots. Zool. Number 143 (1943): pp. 191-200.
  • Our housebirds - an overview, Sebastian Lux Verlag, Murnau 1950.
  • La systématique des guêpiers. Oiseau. Rev. Ms. Ornithol. 5 (1951): pp. 194-199.
  • The widah birds and widows, Neue Brehms-Bücherei Heft 63, Geest & Portig, Leipzig 1952.
  • Goose and duck birds from all over the world, Neue Brehms-Bücherei Heft 73, Geest & Portig, Leipzig 1952.
  • The genus Columba L. Zoologischer Anzeiger, 153 (1954): 49-64.
  • The guinea fowl, Neue Brehm-Bücherei No. 130, A. Ziemsen, Wittenberg 1954.
  • The blue-footed booby "Camanay", Sula nebouxii Milne-Edwards. Anzeiger der Ornithologische Gesellschaft in Bayern 4 (1955): p. 375.
  • Noise birds, turakos and psangefruiters, Neue Brehm-Bücherei, issue 147, A. Ziemsen, Wittenberg 1955.
  • Albatrosses and other petrels, Neue Brehm-Bücherei Heft 153, A. Ziemsen, Wittenberg 1955.
  • Pelicans, cormorants and other pelvises, Neue Brehm-Bücherei, issue 188, A. Ziemsen, Wittenberg 1955.
  • Quail, Rephühner, Steinhühner and relatives, Oertel & Spoerer, Reutlingen 1958.
  • The half-monkeys and lemurs, Neue Brehms-Bücherei No. 211, A. Ziemsen, Wittenberg 1958
  • Parrots, Neue Brehms-Bücherei, issue 228, A. Ziemsen, Wittenberg 1959.
  • The pepper-eaters - Arassaris and Toucans, Neue Brehm-Bücherei No. 232, A. Ziemsen, Wittenberg 1959.

literature

  • Hellmut von Boetticher: News about the von Boetticher family , 11th episode, Langenhagen 1995

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Georg Aumann: Dr. Hans von Boetticher 70 years old . In: Yearbook of the Coburger Landesstiftung 1957 , pp. 205–206.
  2. ↑ Family tree
  3. ↑ Roselius, Ernst: The king travels - diary of the trip to South America of Tsar Ferdinand v. Bulgaria . Munich - Berlin 1929.
  4. ^ Böttcher, Hans-Joachim: Ferdinand von Sachsen-Coburg and Gotha 1861-1948, A cosmopolitan on the Bulgarian throne. Osteuropazentrum Berlin - Verlag (Anthea Verlagsgruppe), Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-89998-296-1 , p. 310-311, 360, 362, 366, 371 .
  5. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from September 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jadu.de
  6. ↑ http://www.worldcat.org/title/beitrag-zur-lösungen-der-morphologie-und-phylogenie-des-hornigen-vogelschnabeluberzuges-mit-besonderer-beruckichtigung-seiner-bedienstleistungen-zu-den-schnauzenschildern-der -saur / oclc / 247308972
  7. ↑ Harald Sandner: Coburg in the 20th century. The chronicle of the city of Coburg and the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha from January 1, 1900 to December 31, 1999 - from the "good old days" to the dawn of the 21st century. Against forgetting. Verlagsanstalt Neue Presse, Coburg 2002, ISBN 3-00-006732-9 , p. 228.
  8. ^ Peter Morsbach, Otto Titz: City of Coburg. In: Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation (Hrsg.): Monuments in Bavaria. Independent cities and districts. Vol. IV.48, Karl M. Lipp Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-87490-590-X , p. 128.
  9. ↑ http://www.brandenburgische-frauenhilfe.de/index.php?id=45
  10. ↑ Biographical note  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at www.kgparl.de, accessed on March 30, 2017.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.kgparl.de  
personal data
SURNAME Boetticher, Hans von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ornithologist
DATE OF BIRTH August 30, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Petersburg
DATE OF DEATH 20th January 1958
Place of death Coburg