Heinrich Ernst Karl Jordan, 1861-1959

Abstract

Karl Jordan, affectionately known for very many years by those most closely in touch with him as ‘K. J.’, was born the youngest of seven children of farming stock in the small village of Almstedt near Hildesheim in Hanover on 7 December 1861. As a child he had to help on the farm, yet found time to indulge a lively interest in the wild life of his surroundings. At the age of five he lost his father, and but for the generosity of an uncle who enabled him to attend the Hildesheim High School, his massive contributions to the study of entomology might never have been forthcoming. In 1882 he entered the University of Göttingen and four years later took his degree in botany and zoology, passing Summa cum Laude . Two years later, after securing a teaching diploma and putting in a year’s military service (not without hardship), he was appointed a master at Münden Grammar School. Here he remained five years and here it was that he became known to two men whose acquaintance was to shape his whole future career. One was A. Metzger, Professor of Zoology at the Academy of Forestry, the other Count Berlepsch, an enthusiastic amateur ornithologist. In 1891 he married Minna Briinig with whom he had fallen deeply in love whilst both were still in their teens. It proved a profoundly satisfying marriage, broken only by her death in 1925. Although he quite rapidly acquired a British, indeed an international outlook, she remained to the end German, yet stoically bore the distresses this caused during the 1914-1918 world war.