Carl Eduard Hellmayr (29 January 1878 in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

– 24 February 1944 in

Orselina Orselina is a municipality in the district of Locarno in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. History Orselina is first mentioned in 1182 as ''Concilio Meziano''. In 1323 it was mentioned as ''Orsarina''. During the Middle Ages and into the Ea ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

) was an

ornithologist Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the "methodological study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them." Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and th ...

Biography

Hellmayr was born in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

and studied at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...

, although he did not complete his degree. After his studies he worked in Vienna, Munich, Berlin, Paris, Tring (England), and Chicago. He spent the years 1905–1908 studying Baron Rothschild's private collection of natural history specimens at Tring, near London. There he received guidance from the German ornithologist

Ernst Hartert Ernst Johann Otto Hartert (29 October 1859 – 11 November 1933) was a widely published German ornithologist. Life and career Hartert was born in Hamburg, Germany on 29 October 1859. In July 1891, he married the illustrator Claudia Bernadine E ...

. In 1908, Hellmayr was appointed Curator of the Bird Department at the Bavarian State Museum, which he had helped organize in 1903 and where he became a specialist in Neotropical birds, studying Johann Baptist von Spix's collection of Brazilian birds. In 1922, he was made Curator in Zoology at the Field Museum in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. He stayed there until 1931. His books included 13 of the 15 volumes of the ''Catalogue of Birds of the Americas'' (1918–1949), a work initiated by Hellmayr's predecessor,

Charles B. Cory Charles Barney Cory (January 31, 1857 – July 31, 1921) was an American ornithologist and golfer. Biography Cory was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His father had made a fortune from a large import business, ensuring that his son never had to ...

. With Henry Boardman Conover he published ''The Birds of Chile''. In 1931, Hellmayr went back to Vienna. After the

Nazi takeover Adolf Hitler's rise to power began in the newly established Weimar Republic in September 1919 when Hitler joined the '' Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' (DAP; German Workers' Party). He rose to a place of prominence in the early years of the party. Be ...

of Austria in 1938, he was arrested and briefly jailed for reasons that are not fully known but probably related to his unsympathic views toward the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

(Hellmayr did not make political statements in public, but his interest – as an amateur

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

– in the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...

shows that he was more than casually interested in such topics). After his release he emigrated with his wife to Switzerland. Following a long period of declining health, he died in 1944 in Orselina, near Locarno. Historian François Vuilleumier writes that "Hellmayr's pivotal role was first and foremost to bring order to henomenclatural chaos" of his day that had resulted in erroneous citations and hindered analysis of species and genera.

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External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hellmayr, Carl Eduard 1878 births 1944 deaths Austrian ornithologists Scientists from Vienna

Biography

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Further reading

External links