Finsch, Otto (1839 - 1917)

Summary

Otto Finsch joined the Museum of Natural History in Leiden, Holland to pursue his love of ornithology. His interests broadened to ethnology when in 1864 he joined Bremen's Museum of Natural History and Ethnography. He remained at that museum for over 10 years becoming its director in 1876. Finsch's first exploration to the Pacific was in 1879 and was funded by the Humboldt Foundation. His second trip was in 1884 and was not for scientific exploration, but for finding land suitable for habitation. This trip was organised by the South Sea Plotters – a group of influential Germans wanting to set up German colonies in the Pacific – of which Finsch was a member. Finsch returned to Germany and ethnological studies in the late 1880s. He was a division head at the Museum of Natural History in Leiden, then at the Municipal Museum in Braunschweig, Germany. Otto Finsch built up a large collection of material from the Pacific especially primitive money and was appointed professor by the duke of Braunschweig.

Details

Chronology

1861 - 1863

Career position - Assistant, Museum of Natural History in Leiden, Holland

1864 - 1875

Career position - Curator of the Museum of Natural History and Ethnography in Bremen, Germany

1868

Education - Honorary Doctorate, University of Bonn in Germany

1876 -

Career position - Director of the Museum of Natural History and Ethnography in Bremen

1879 - 1882

Career position - Expedition to the Pacific

1884 - 1885

Career position - Expedition to Australia and the Pacific including Duke of York Islands, East Cape, Humbolt Bay on the Samoa

1897 - 1904

Career position - Division Head, Museum of Natural History in Leiden, Holland

Published resources

Books

• Finsch, O., Neu-Guinea und seine Bewohner (Bremen, Germany: C. Ed. Muller, 1865), 185 pp. Details
• Finsch, O., Systematische Uebersicht der Ergebnisse seiner Reisen und schriftstellerischen Thätigkeit (1859 - 1899) (Berlin: R. Friedlander & Sohn, 1899), 157p pp. Details

Book Sections

• Govor, E.; and Howes, H., 'Russia and the Pacific: expeditions, networks, and the acquisition of human remains' in The Routledge companion to indigenous repatriation: return, reconcile, renew, Fforde, C.; McKeown, C. T.; and Keeler, H., eds (London: New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 295-315. Details
• Sack, P. G., 'Finsch, Otto (1839-1917), ornithologist, ethnologist and pioneer of German colonialism' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 4: 1851 - 1890 D-J, Douglas Pike, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1972), pp. 170-171. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A040183b.htm. Details

Journal Articles

• Howes, Hilary, 'Between wealth and poverty: Otto Finsch on Mabuyag, 1881', Memoirs of the Queensland Museum: Culture, 8 (1) (2015), 221-51. Details
• Howes, Hilary S., '"It is not so": Otto Finsch, Expectations and Encounters in the Pacific, 1865-85', Historical Records of Australian Science, 22 (1) (2011), 32-52, https://doi.org/10.1071/HR11002. Details
• Singelmann, 'Prof. Dr. Finschs Anteil an der Erwebung des deutschen Suedseeschutzgebites', Deutsche Kolonialzeitung (1909). Details

Resources

• Wikidata, http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q60592. Details
• VIAF - Virtual International Authority File, OCLC, https://viaf.org/viaf/15522024. Details
• 'Finsch, O (1839-1917)', Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-1119020. Details

Resource Sections

• Howes, Hilary, 'A "perceptive observer" in the Pacific: life and work of Otto Finsch', in Berose - Encyclopédie internationale des histoires de l'anthropologie, 2018. https://www.berose.fr/article1468.html?lang=fr. Details