Fritze, Ernst Albert

Physician, biologist

born: 22.07.1791 in Herborn

died: 13.05.1839 in Jakarta

After attending the Pädagogium and Hohe Schule Herborn, Fritze studied medicine in Göttingen, Marburg and The Hague from 1812. He interrupted his studies due to the wars of liberation against Napoleon and took part in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 as an assistant doctor in the Nassau-Oran regiment. In 1817, he entered Dutch service and worked as a naval surgeon in Jakarta. He rose to become head of the Dutch East Indies medical service.

After learning about the establishment of a natural history museum in his native Nassau (later the Natural History Collection in the Wiesbaden Museum), he sent numerous exhibits from the Southeast Asian and Australian world to Wiesbaden for safekeeping from 1825 onwards. These included botanical, zoological and ethnological collections. For example, the museum has rare animal specimens from the tropical island world of Indonesia, such as the Java tiger, Java leopard and Sumatran rhinoceros. This brought to Wiesbaden evidence of a lost natural world that no longer exists today, particularly due to overpopulation. The Fritze Collection is therefore one of the most important historical and scientific exhibits in the Wiesbaden Museum.

Working as a doctor was particularly dangerous in Jakarta, as the city was a place where tropical diseases were rampant due to the construction of canals by the Dutch. Fritze also fell seriously ill with a fever in 1838 and died a year later.