Theodor Kleinschmidt (6 March 1834 in
Wolfhagen
Wolfhagen () is a town in the district of Kassel, in Hesse, Germany. It is located 12 km southeast of Bad Arolsen, and 23 km west of Kassel on the German Timber-Frame Road. In 1992, the town hosted the 32nd Hessentag
The Hessenta ...
– 10 April 1881 in
Utuaia,
Bismarck Archipelago) was a German
trader,
explorer
Exploration refers to the historical practice of discovering remote lands. It is studied by geographers and historians.
Two major eras of exploration occurred in human history: one of convergence, and one of divergence. The first, covering most ...
and
naturalist.
Biography
Kleinschmidt studied
commerce
Commerce is the large-scale organized system of activities, functions, procedures and institutions directly and indirectly related to the exchange (buying and selling) of goods and services among two or more parties within local, regional, nation ...
and went to the
United States of America
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...
in 1843. He launched out in business in
Saint Louis (Missouri) but went bankrupt and had to leave for
Australia then on to
Fiji to flee his creditors. But his trade with the natives was not brilliant, in particular because of the
economic crisis of 1874. The
Museum Godeffroy
The Museum Godeffroy was a museum in Hamburg, Germany, which existed from 1861 to 1885.
The collection was founded by Johann Cesar VI. Godeffroy, who became a wealthy shipping magnate a few years after the expansion of the trade towards Austral ...
of Hamburg then offered a new opportunity to him. The institution charged him with collecting natural history specimens, fauna and flora, in the
Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capit ...
and
New Hebrides
New Hebrides, officially the New Hebrides Condominium (french: link=no, Condominium des Nouvelles-Hébrides, "Condominium of the New Hebrides") and named after the Hebrides Scottish archipelago, was the colonial name for the island group ...
, territories largely unexplored hitherto. He was assassinated by natives in 1881. He was the uncle of the priest and ornithologist
Otto Kleinschmidt
Otto Kleinschmidt (13 December 1870 – 25 March 1954) was a German ornithologist, theologist and pastor.
Career
Kleinschmidt was born as the son of the factory overseer Adolph Kleinschmidt and his wife Elise (maiden name Dreydorf) in Geinsheim ...
(1870–1954).
Eponym
The
pink-billed parrotfinch (''Erythrura kleinschmidti'') was named in his honour by
Otto Finsch
Friedrich Hermann Otto Finsch (8 August 1839, Warmbrunn – 31 January 1917, Braunschweig) was a German ethnographer, naturalist and colonial explorer. He is known for a two-volume monograph on the parrots of the world which earned him a doctorate ...
.
References
Literature
*
Walther Killy
Walther Killy (26 August 191728 December 1995) was a German literary scholar who specialised in poetry, especially that of Friedrich Hölderlin and Georg Trakl. He taught at the Free University of Berlin, the Georg-August-Universität Göttinge ...
(Hersg.): ''Enzyklopädie der Biographien''. Saur Verlag, München, 2000
1834 births
1881 deaths
People from Wolfhagen
German naturalists
German emigrants to the United States
{{Germany-archaeologist-stub