Ferdinand Karsch-Haack

Ferdinand Anton Franz Karsch (2 September 1853, in Münster – 20 December 1936, in Berlin) was a German arachnologist, entomologist and anthropologist. He also wrote on human and animal sexual diversity with his mother's maiden name included as Ferdinand Karsch-Haack from around 1905.

Life and work

The son of doctor Anton Karsch, he was educated at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and published a thesis on the gall wasp in 1877. From 1878 to 1921 he held the post of curator at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. Between 1873 and 1893, he published a catalogue of the spiders of Westphalia; he also published numerous articles on the specimens that the museum received from various explorers and naturalists working in Africa, in China, in Japan, in Australia, etc. This publication of others' work sometimes led to disputes over priority and nomenclature, for example with Pickard-Cambridge.

Alongside his zoological activities, he published many works on sexuality and, in particular, homosexuality in both the animal kingdom and in so-called "primitive" peoples, including ''Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Kulturvölker – Ostasiaten: Chinesen, Japanese, Korea'' in 1906 on homosexuality in East Asian societies and in 1911 ''Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Naturvölker'' on homosexuality in Africa and indigenous societies of Asia, Australia and the Americas. Karsch lived in later life as an open homosexual in Berlin.Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller, Man for Mann, pp410,411 He also founded and edited a magazine along with René Stelter called ''Uranos. Blätter für ungeschmälertes Menschentum'' (1921–23) where he wrote on his scientific ideas. The rise of Hitler to power and Nazi repression of homosexuality led to the eclipse of his reputation.

Some of the animals described

Spiders

* '' Misgolas'' 1878 – New South Wales, Australia
* ''Portia schultzi'' 1878 — Central, East, Southern Africa, Madagascar
* ''Holothele'' 1879 – Venezuela
* ''Linothele'' 1879 — South America
* ''Sphaerobothria'' 1879 – Costa Rica
* ''Thelechoris'' 1881 — Africa, Madagascar
* Tribe Diplocentrini 1880
* ''Acontius'' 1879 — Africa
* ''Heterothele'' 1879 – Africa Congo
* ''Pedinopistha'' 1880 – Hawaii
* ''Campostichomma'' 1891 — Sri Lanka (one species)
* ''Corinnomma'' 1880
* ''Megalostrata (spider), Megalostrata'' 1880
* ''Chilobrachys'' 1892
* ''Myrmarachne''

Other animals

*''Potamarcha'' (1890)

About homosexuality

* ''Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Naturvölker'', 1911
online at archive.org
* Karsch, F. (2024). ''The Same-Sex Life of Indigenous Peoples. 2 Parts''. (M. Lombardi-Nash, Trans.). Jacksonville, FL: Urania Manuscripts. (Original work published 1911)
* Karsch, F. (2022). ''Karl Heinrich Ulrichs' predecessor Heinrich Hössli (1784–1864): The first known literary activist and parent of a gay man''. (M. Lombardi-Nash, Trans.). Jacksonville, FL: Urania Manuscripts. (Original work published 1903)
* Karsch, F. (2021). ''Male and female homosexuality in animals on the basis of literature''. (M. Lombardi-Nash, Trans.). Jacksonville, FL: Urania Manuscripts. (Original work published 1900)

Literature

* Robert Aldrich (historian), Robert Aldrich, Garry Wotherspoon, ''Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II'' (2nd ed), Routledge, 2002, , pp. 281–282.
*

References

External links

Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Naturvölker
(1911)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Karsch, Ferdinand
1853 births
1936 deaths
German anthropologists
German sexologists
German taxonomists
German arachnologists
German lepidopterists
Hymenopterists
German gay writers
Gay scientists
German LGBTQ scientists
20th-century German LGBTQ people
19th-century German LGBTQ people
German male non-fiction writers
19th-century German male writers
20th-century German male writers
19th-century German zoologists
20th-century German zoologists
People from Münster
Scientists active at the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
First homosexual movement