Klaus Zimmermann (zoologist)

Klaus Zimmermann (born July 7, 1894 in Berlin , † February 5, 1967 in Ellenberg ) was a German zoologist. His main research interests were small mammals and the mammals of Crete .

Live and act

After completing his Abitur in 1913, Zimmermann began an apprenticeship as a timber merchant at the request of his parents, as he would later take over his family's company. He interrupted this training during the First World War. Since he was more interested in zoology, he broke off his training in 1926 and devoted himself to studying zoology, which took him via Berlin to the University of Rostock . In 1929 he was awarded a doctorate there with a dissertation on "the systematics and geographic variability of the Palaearctic Polistes ( Hymenoptera : Vespidae )". phil. PhD. He then worked for Nikolai Wladimirowitsch Timofejew-Ressowski at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin-Buch . His main areas of research were genetic problems in insects and population analysis in small mammals. In 1939 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht. In 1942 he took part in a collective expedition to Crete organized by the Wehrmacht, from which he brought many samples and living specimens of small mammals. At the end of the war he was the leader of a replacement dog squadron near Munich. He returned to Berlin, where he worked in the animal testing department of the Institute for Vitamin Research and Testing in Potsdam - Rehbrücke . Here he investigated, among other things, the synthesis of vitamins in the appendix of rabbits and other small rodents. In 1951 he took over the management of the mammal department of the Zoological Museum at the Humboldt University in Berlin. In 1956 and 1964 he undertook collective expeditions to China. In 1964 Zimmermann retired.

Zimmermann authored several articles on the Mammalian Fauna of Crete, including The Rodentia of Crete , Notes on the Wild Goat of Crete , The Big Picture of the Mammalian Fauna of Crete, and The Carnivora of Crete , which were published in the Journal of Mammalogy in 1953.

He also published on his trips to China. There is a lot of information about the Campbell dwarf hamster .

Zimmermann was a member of the Society of Friends of Natural Sciences in Berlin and the German Society for Mammal Studies . He was also an honorary member of the American Society of Mammalogists .

In 1953 Zimmermann described the Cretan population of the dormouse as the new subspecies Glis glis argenteus . However, today, like all other geographical variations, this is considered a synonym for the nominate form Glis glis . In 1952 he also studied the Crete wildcat ( Felis sylvestris cretensis ), which was scientifically described by Theodor Haltorth a year later.

Dedication names

In 1953 Otto Wettstein named the Crete shrew ( Crocidura zimmermanni ) in honor of Klaus Zimmermann.

Works (selection)

• 1959: Pocket book of our wild mammals (with Lieselotte Finke-Poser, Michael Lissmann and Gerhard Richter)

literature

• Konrad Herter : Encounters with people and animals. Memoirs of a zoologist 1891–1978 . Duncker & Humblot, 1979. p. 315
• Theodor Haltorth : Klaus Zimmermann on his 60th birthday In: Mammalkundliche Mitteilungen , 1954. S. 178

Individual evidence

1. ↑ K. Zimmermann: To the mammal fauna of China: Results of the Chinese-German collecting trip through North and Northeast China 1956 In: Mitteilungen Zoologisches Museum Berlin 40, 1964, pp. 87–140.