Wilhelm Meise (ornithologist)

Wilhelm Meise (born September 12, 1901 in Essen , † August 24, 2002 in Hamburg ) was a German ornithologist .

Live and act

In 1924 Wilhelm Meise enrolled at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin . He studied zoology , botany , chemistry , geography and mathematics . At the suggestion of Erwin Stresemann , he wrote his doctoral thesis in 1928 with the title The spread of the carrion crow (Corvus corone L.) on the spread of the carrion crow and its hybridization with the hooded crow . The results of this study have been cited in numerous textbooks as an example of the hybridization of birds at the species level. In 1929 he moved to Dresden and became a curator in the department for vertebrates at the Museum für Tierkunde Dresden . In 1930 he married. From this marriage there were three children. In 1936 he published the study on the systematics and distribution history of house and willow sparrows, Passer domesticus l. und Hispaniolensis T .: About genesis through crossbreeding in the bird world , in which he examined the systematic and evolutionary relationships between the house sparrow and the willow sparrow and in particular the status of the Italian sparrow .

After spending three years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Siberia , he joined the Berlin Museum of Natural History in 1950 . In 1951 he became curator for ornithology at the Zoological State Institute and Zoological Museum in Hamburg and assistant professor at the University of Hamburg . He held these positions until 1969 and 1972 respectively. From 1952 to 1962 he was President of the Jordsand Association . In 1955 he went on an expedition to Angola . In the following period he published several scientific papers on the geographic variations, speciation and development history of African birds. Between 1960 and 1992 Meise published 47 parts of the Handbuch der Oologie , a series of books that Max Schönwetter started in 1960 and was continued by Wilhelm Meise after his death on April 21, 1961. On 3666 pages, the work describes all bird species and subspecies whose eggs are known.

Meise's approximately 170 publications deal mainly with birds, but occasionally also with the systematics of scorpions , spiders , lizards , snakes and mollusks . He contributed to the encyclopedia Grzimeks Tierleben and translated English works such as Birds of the World by Roger Tory Peterson and James Fisher into German. In 1972 he retired. Just one month before his 101st birthday, he died in Hamburg in 2002.

Works (selection)

• 1929: List of types of the State Museum for Animal Science in Dresden: Part 2: Birds
• 1929: List of journals that are available in the building of the Museum für Naturkunde: containing the journals of the Zoological Museum, the Zoological Institute, the Geological-Paleontological Institute, the German Society for Mammal Studies, the German Ornithological Society, the German Entomological Society.
• 1930: Theoretical on the history of bird migration
• 1931: The cuckoo
• 1933: Scorpiones: The Norwegian Zoological Expedition to the Galapagos Islands 1925; 8th
• 1934: The bird world of Manchuria
• 1936: On the systematics and distribution history of the house and willow sparrows, Passer domesticus l. And Hispaniolensis T .: About genesis through crossbreeding in the bird world
• 1937: On the bird life of the Matengo highlands near the northern end of Lake Nyasa.
• 1951: The noctule bat
• 1957: Fifty years of sea bird protection: Commemorative publication by the Jordsand Association on the establishment of bird sanctuaries on the German coasts
• 1958–1966: Natural history of birds: a manual of general and special ornithology (3 volumes)
• 1960–1992: Handbook of Oology (47 parts)
• 1979: The Colorful Book of Birds - Introduction to Ornithology (German translation of Birds of the World (Roger Tory Peterson & James Fisher, 1964))

literature

• Jürgen Haffer : In memoriam: Wilhelm Meise, 1901-2002 . The Auk. April 2003. Online
• H. Hoerschelmann & J. Neumann: Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Meise September 12, 1901 to August 24, 2002 In: Journal of Ornithology. Volume 144, Number 1 / January 2003

Web links

• The Egg Collection Finnish Museum of Natural History