Ludwig Cohn (zoologist)

Ludwig Cohn, around 1930

Ludwig Cohn (* 1873 ; † 1935 ) was a German zoologist and explorer in New Guinea .

life and work

Ludwig Cohn had been a zoological assistant at the “Municipal Museum for Nature, Ethnology and Commerce” (today: Überseemuseum ) in Bremen since 1904, and from 1920 head of the natural history department. On behalf of the museum, he undertook two research and collecting trips to New Guinea .

On his first South Sea voyage in 1908/09, he visited the Solomon Islands . Together with the captain and excellent South Sea expert Karl Nauer . Cohn researched on the island of Buka and the place Toboroi on the island of Bougainville , as well as on the island of Tijob . Cohn and Nauer collected hundreds of objects, including entire houses, such as For example, a bachelor's house from Tijob and a family house from Toboroi, which were central exhibits at the opening of the museum's South Seas exhibition in 1911.

Reduced replica of a stilt house from Toboroi on the island of Bougainville (Solomon Islands) in the Überseemuseum Bremen

Cohn made his second trip to the Admiralty Islands in 1912/13 . Here, too, he collected many ethnological and zoological objects, for example several series of handcrafted carvings.

A large part of the Cohn Collection in the Überseemuseum was lost during the Second World War.

Remarks

↑ Nauer, who had been deployed on the imperial mail steamer "Sumatra" since 1906, mainly for island service in the former German colony of German New Guinea (copra transport from the islands in the Bismarck archipelago and the Solomon Islands), was on this research trip for a few months on leave from his employer, Norddeutscher Lloyd . The director of the Bremen Überseemuseum, Hugo Schauinsland , came into contact with Nauer on one of the South Seas collecting trips in 1905/06. Due to Nauer's good relationships with plantation owners and locals, the Nauer museum acquired numerous ethnographic and natural history objects between the First and Second World War, including everyday objects and handicrafts such as boats, large masks and even entire huts from Melanesia and New Guinea.

literature

Gundula Rentrop: Ludwig Cohn - zoologist and explorer of the Bremen Municipal Museum 1904-1935. In: TenDenZen. Yearbook of the Übersee-Museum. Vol. 11, 2003, ISSN 0944-0844 , pp. 79-86.

Web links

Ludwig Cohn and his collecting trips for the Bremen Überseemuseum ( Memento from March 13, 2007 in the Internet Archive )

personal data
SURNAME	Cohn, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German zoologist and explorer in New Guinea
DATE OF BIRTH	1873
DATE OF DEATH	1935

[1] Nauer, who had been deployed on the imperial mail steamer "Sumatra" since 1906, mainly for island service in the former German colony of German New Guinea (copra transport from the islands in the Bismarck archipelago and the Solomon Islands), was on this research trip for a few months on leave from his employer, Norddeutscher Lloyd . The director of the Bremen Überseemuseum, Hugo Schauinsland , came into contact with Nauer on one of the South Seas collecting trips in 1905/06. Due to Nauer's good relationships with plantation owners and locals, the Nauer museum acquired numerous ethnographic and natural history objects between the First and Second World War, including everyday objects and handicrafts such as boats, large masks and even entire huts from Melanesia and New Guinea.