Otto Uttendörfer

Otto Uttendörfer (born January 14, 1870 in Königsfeld in the Black Forest , † March 21, 1954 in Herrnhut , Saxony ) was a theologian and ornithologist . As an ornithologist, Uttendörfer is best known for his systematic studies of the diet of European birds of prey and owls , the results of which he and his colleagues published in two books and numerous magazine articles.

Life

The feeding of the goshawk was one of the research areas in Uttendörfer

Uttendörfer was born in Königsfeld as the son of Otto Ferdinand Uttendörfer and Marie Uttendörfer, b. Scheuber born.

He attended school in Gnadenfeld in 1877 and 1878 , in Herrnhut from 1878 to 1882 and in Niesky from 1882 to 1889 , where he passed his school leaving examination on March 19, 1889. He then studied theology from 1889 to 1892 at the theological seminar of the Moravian Brethren in Gnadenfeld and completed his studies with a theological examination. From 1892 to 1897 he worked as a teacher in Niesky, despite his own admission that he had insufficient knowledge of botany, he was employed there as a teacher of natural history. After a one-semester stay in Göttingen, where he attended zoological and botanical lectures and took part in mineralogical excursions, he was ordained as a deacon at the end of 1897 and then headed the secondary school in Gnadenfrei ( Silesia ) as co-director until 1901 . He passed two rector exams in 1899 and 1900 and from 1901 to 1903 headed the teachers' college of the Brethren in Niesky, where he taught natural sciences. Uttendörfer then held various positions in the school system, from 1916 he was head of the Moravian local school of the Brethren. From 1919 he also took on various functions in the German Unity Directorate (DUD), the governing body of the European-Continental Province of the Brethren , most recently from May 1930 until his retirement on July 1, 1937 as deputy chairman.

Scientific work

Uttendörfer began in 1894 together with William Baer with the systematic search for plucking in birds of prey. From 1901 onwards, a working group of pluckers and gunk hunters was formed around Uttendörfer , which grew steadily and probably comprised a maximum of 100 people. By 1922, more than 10,000 bird of prey plucks could be evaluated. In his main work, The Diet of the German Birds of Prey and Owls , published in 1939 , he was finally able to depict the diet of 21 European bird of prey and owl species on the basis of 255,314 vertebrate remains. Another book with additional evaluations was published in 1952. Uttendörfer received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Berlin on February 12, 1950 at the request of Erwin Stresemann and Konrad Herter . Until his death in 1954 he dealt very intensively with the history of the Brethren and with its founder Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf . For his research and publications in this field he also received an honorary doctorate from the Theological Faculty of the Philipps University of Marburg on December 20, 1950 .

Works (selection)

• O. Uttendörfer: The diet of the German birds of prey and owls. Reprint of the 1st edition from 1939, Aula-Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1997 ISBN 3-89104-600-6
• O. Uttendörfer: New results on the diet of birds of prey and owls. Vogelwartenbuch Nr. 31. Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart, 1952.

literature

• HC Stamm: Otto Uttendörfer and his working group for research into the nutritional biology of birds of prey and owls. Announcements of the Association of Saxon Ornithologists 8, 2001: pp. 577–603.

Web links

• Literature by and about Otto Uttendörfer in the catalog of the German National Library .
• Literature by and about Otto Uttendörfer in the bibliographic database WorldCat .