Kurt Camillo Loos (25 January 1859 – 27 July 1933) was a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

forester and ornithologist active in

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; ; ) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. In a narrow, geographic sense, it roughly encompasses the territories of present-day Czechia that fall within the Elbe River's drainage basin, but historic ...

. Loos was a founder of bird-ringing in Bohemia and was involved in founding a ringing station and a scientific organization in

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

called ''Lotos'' which also produced a periodical of the same name.

Biography

Loos was born in Brunndöbra,

Klingenthal Klingenthal is a town in the Vogtland region, in Saxony, south-eastern Germany. Geography Klingenthal is situated directly on the border with the Czech Republic opposite the Czech town of Kraslice. Klingenthal is 29 km southeast of Plauen, ...

, the son of Karl Friedrich Moritz Loos who was a teacher at the church school. When the family moved to Arnoldsgrün and he went to the secondary school at

Plauen Plauen (; ; ) is a town in Saxony, Germany with a population of around 65,000. It is Saxony's 5th most populated city after Leipzig, Dresden, Chemnitz and Zwickau, the second-largest city of the Vogtland after Gera, as well as the largest cit ...

where he was a contemporary of Franz Helm with whom he spent time outdoors. His brother P. A. Loos later became German Vice consul in Argentina. He then studied natural sciences at the

Leipzig University Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...

and worked as a forest officer in the Karlsfeld district. He trained at the Tharandt Forest Academy after which he worked at Königstein and then Schlenau, Bohemia, from 1881 to 1898. The

Liběchov Liběchov (; ) is a town in Mělník District in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 1,100 inhabitants. Administrative division Liběchov consists of two municipal parts (in brackets population according to the 2021 cen ...

district was then put under his charge and he established a ringing station on the

Elbe The Elbe ( ; ; or ''Elv''; Upper Sorbian, Upper and , ) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Republic), then Ge ...

river and founded the Lotos Natural Science Society in Prague who published a periodical called ''Lotos'' which ran from 1914 to 1931. He also observed individual pairs of birds over a long duration and produced a monograph on the life of the black woodpecker in 1910 and on the eagle owl in Bohemia (1906). He retired in 1926 and lived in Liběchov. He died in Mendoza, Argentina where he was visiting his brother who was the German Vice consul. He was buried in Liběchov.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Loos, Kurt 1859 births 1933 deaths People from Klingenthal German ornithologists Leipzig University alumni