Background
He was born at Etzelwang in the Upper Palatinate and died at Hersbruck, near Nuremberg.
He was born at Etzelwang in the Upper Palatinate and died at Hersbruck, near Nuremberg.
A physician, he practised at Hersbruck. A celebrated botanist, he had a very species-rich herbarium. He also assembled a very important insect collection which was the basis of a vast work Faunae insectorum germanicae initia (Elements of the insect fauna of Germany), published at Nuremberg between 1796 and 1813.
Illustrated by Jacob Sturm (1771–1848), with more than 2,600 hand-colored plates of individual, lifesize insects, this work was issued in 109 parts over the 17-year period of its serial publication, a common pattern for illustrated natural history works in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Academy of Useful Science. German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.