Michael Christian Sommer

Michael Christian Sommer (born August 19, 1785 in Lübeck , † February 5, 1868 in Altona ) was a German wholesaler and insect trader.

Live and act

Michael Christian Sommer was a son of the spice dealer Johann Christian Sommer (* 1751 or 1752 in Grabow ; February 9, 1813 in Lübeck) and his wife Ilsabe Elisabeth, née Brandes (* September 27, 1757; † January 1, 1830 there).

Sommer ran a shop for consignment and freight forwarding businesses at Kleine Elbstraße 16 at the Altona fish market . He also traded iron, millstones and coal there. He had already collected numerous bugs and insects as a child. With the help of his business contacts overseas, he expanded his collections in adulthood. Later he also sold insects and developed into one of the largest traders and entomological commissioners of this era.

On May 9, 1812, Sommer married Johanna Friederica Maria Niefeldt (* March 12, 1789 in Hamburg; † November 29, 1858 in Altona). The couple had a son and three daughters. The daughter Elisa Marie (born May 8, 1815) married the natural scientist Hermann Burmeister on April 7, 1836 . When her husband emigrated to Buenos Aires in 1861 , she did not follow him and lived alone from 1863 at the latest. It is mentioned for the last time in the Altona address book from 1871.

Sommer traded with partners in Labrador , the United States , Mexico , western India , Venezuela , Suriname, and Brazil . He did other business with people in Chile , the Cape Colony , Sierra Leone and Sydney . Mostly ship captains mediated for him.

In addition to his own shops, Sommer sponsored numerous insect collectors overseas. To make their expeditions possible, he occasionally issued shares worth 10 Friedrichsdor . In return, the recipients of the share certificates received the copies that were of interest to them and collected during the trip.

Sommer maintained relationships with almost all insect dealers and specialist entomologists of his time. The entomologists sorted his own large collection of insects and praised him as extremely generous. One of the most important partners was his son-in-law Burmester, who had taken over the organization of a collection of orthoptera in 1831/32 . Burmester used Sommer's collection for numerous of his first descriptions of grasshoppers and beetles in particular.

On August 28, 1840, Sommer was made a knight by Dannebrog .

Before his death in February 1868, Sommer ruled that his collection could not be sold until two years after his death at the earliest. He stipulated that the collection was not to be sold in individual parts, but only allowed the entire collection or a division into families. The collection he left behind had an estimated value of 5,000 Courant marks .

The estate initially went to the son. The Altona dentist Johann Andre Ferdinand Baden (1828–1914) later bought the Beetle collection. The locust collection went to the Natural History Museum Vienna . The insect dealer Otto Staudinger bought the lepidoptera collection. The German Entomological Institute took over Sommer's extensive library .

literature

• Herbert Weidner: Summer, Michael Christian . in: Schleswig-Holstein Biographical Lexicon . Volume 2. Karl Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1971, pp. 223-224

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Royal. Danish court and state calendar for the year 1846. Altona, p. 63 ( digitized in: books.google.de ).