Max Schmidt (Zoo Director)

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Maximilian Schmidt (also Max , born October 19, 1834 in Frankfurt am Main ; † February 4, 1888 in Berlin ) was a German veterinarian and zoo director in Frankfurt and Berlin.

Life

Max Schmidt was born in Frankfurt on October 19, 1834, the son of a master blacksmith. After completing his apprenticeship as a blacksmith, he studied veterinary medicine in Stuttgart and Berlin from 1852. He obtained his doctorate in Gießen in 1857 and then worked as a practical veterinarian in Frankfurt. From January 1, 1859, Schmidt became a contract veterinarian at the just-founded Frankfurt Zoo . After an educational trip through zoos in Belgium, Holland and England, which served to expand his knowledge of the care of foreign animals, Schmidt was appointed director of the Frankfurt Zoological Garden on September 18, 1859. During his tenure, the zoo was relocated from Bockenheimer Landstrasse to its current location, at that time Pfingstweide. After many years of fruitful activity in Frankfurt, Schmidt finally accepted an appointment as director of the Berlin Zoological Garden on February 1, 1885 . But in Berlin he was not granted a long creative period. Schmidt died of a stroke on February 4, 1888, at the age of 53. The hippopotamus house, built from clinker bricks in the Moorish style, remained the largest construction project that he was able to realize in the Berlin zoo.

On January 19, 1879, Max Schmidt was elected a member ( registration number 2218 ) of the Leopoldina Academy of Sciences in the zoology section .

literature

  • Heinz-Georg Klös, Hans Frädrich & Ursula Klös: Noah's Ark on the Spree. 150 years of the zoological garden in Berlin. Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-927551-29-5 .
  • Christoph Scherpner: From citizens for citizens. 125 years of Frankfurt am Main Zoological Garden. Zoological Garden of the City of Frankfurt am Main, 1983, ISBN 3-9800831-0-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. Scherpner (1983), page 23.
  2. Scherpner (1983), pages 32 ff.
  3. Scherpner (1983), page 63.
  4. Klös et al. (1994), pp. 95-97.
  5. ^ Member entry by Maximilian Schmidt at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on July 8, 2012.