Neubaur, Fritz

Biologist

Born: 16.04.1891 in Ortelsburg (East Prussia)

died: 28.02.1973 in Heidelberg-Kirchheim

Fritz Neubaur had lived in Bonn since 1908, where he studied zoology, botany, geology and geography. He continued his studies in Berlin in 1914/15, but was soon called up for military service. In 1923, he completed his doctorate with a thesis on the birds of the Rhine Province. After three years as an assistant at the Botanical Institute of the Agricultural University, he worked for ten years at the Alexander Koenig Zoological Research Institute and Museum in Bonn. In 1937, he was appointed managing director of the "Reichsbund für Vogelschutz e. V." (previously "Bund für Vogelschutz") in Berlin. In 1940, he was called up for military service again.

After the war, he initially lived as a private scholar in Bonn until he took up a position as a scientific zoologist at the Municipal Museum in Wiesbaden (Museum Wiesbaden) on March 1, 1948 and became a member of the Nassau Association for Natural History (NVN). From 1952 to 1956, he was head of the museum's natural history collection(Naturhistorische Sammlungen des Museums), where he helped to rebuild the collections, which had been badly damaged by bombing.

He was secretary of the NVN for many years and later represented the association's office in the museum. Many lectures and excursions are associated with his name, the records of his observations on excursions, which are deposited in the archives of the museum's natural history collections, form a treasure trove for botanists and zoologists that has not yet been exhausted. Excerpts from these are printed in the yearbooks of the Nassauischer Verein für Naturkunde 88 to 98 of the NVN. In 1961, the association, of which he had long been a member of the board, made him an honorary member "in recognition of his great services as secretary of the association, his selfless lecturing activities and his numerous guided tours".

He identified the shrubs and trees in all of Wiesbaden's larger parks and labeled them in cooperation with the Parks Department.

Fritz Neubaur was most interested in the world of birds, and had been since his youth. He had a special talent for drawing and watercolor painting, which greatly benefited his publications. He was an honorary member of the Society of Rhineland Ornithologists and the German Association for the Protection of Birds.