Bibliography and Zoological Taxa of Paul Bartsch - Smithsonian ...

Bibliography and Zoological Taxa
of Paul Bartsch
Paul Bartsch was born on August 14, 1871, in
Tuntschendorf, a small village northeast of Glatz
in what was then the province of Silesia, Germany,
now a part of Poland. Here, at the foothills of
the Riesengebirge, a part of the Sudeten range that
separates Poland from Bohemia in Czechoslovakia,
young Bartsch spent his early years in a region
full of scenic and romantic beauty. His father,
Heinrich (later anglicized to Henry) Bartsch was
a fairly well-to-do proprietor of an inn and general
store on the highway that ran from Glatz in Silesia
across the mountains to Braunau in Bohemia. According
to Bartsch's unpublished autobiography,
his father was a gentle, easy-going man, a lover of
nature, from whom Bartsch received his first stimulus
to observe and appreciate the animal and
plant life about him. His mother Anna Klein
Bartsch, the business head of the family, was of a
more practical and energetic nature. After Paul
Bartsch was born, she took up the study of obstetrics,
eventually graduating in this field from
the University of Breslau. Bartsch tells us that she
Florence A. Ruhoff, Department of Invertebrate Zoology,
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, D.C. 20560.
Harald A. Rehder, Senior Zoologist in Mollusks, Department
of Invertebrate Zoology, National Museum of Natural
History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 20560.
Florence A. Ruhoff
Paul Bartsch
1871-1960
By HARALD A. REHDER
helped deliver hundreds of children in her village
before the family left Germany, and more than
1,500 more after they settled in Iowa.
When the depression following the Franco-Prussian
War made itself felt in the village of Tuntschendorf,
the Bartsch family was stricken especially
hard. Heinrich Bartsch had been bondsman for
numerous friends, and when, as a result of the
crisis, their businesses failed, he had to make good
as guarantor of their notes. All of the family's
possessions had to be sold or auctioned off to pay
the creditors. Rather than accept loans from
friends to maintain the family position, Anna
Bartsch urged that the family emigrate to America,
where friends in Lutesville, Missouri, offered to
help them make a new start.
In 1882 the family arrived in this country and
made its way across the country to Missouri. After
less than a year there of attempted farming and
part-time carpentry, Henry Bartsch moved his family
to Burlington, Iowa. Here he was received by
a friend who had found a position for Henry as a
cabinetmaker.
Young Paul soon began going to school, finding
employment in his spare time as cigar maker,
worker in a pickle factory, and as an upholsterer
in the establishment where his father was employed.
Here he occasionally assisted in a taxi-
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