Joachim Rohweder

Joachim Rohweder (2 September 1841 – 29 December 1905) was a German teacher, ornithologist and bird conservationist. He wrote one of the earliest comprehensive works on the birds of the Schleswig-Holstein region.

Life and work

Rohweder was born in Wapelfeld, Duchy of Holstein in a farming household. At the age of seven, he would have experienced the First Schleswig War. He studied at the village school and then at Hohenwestedt before training as a teacher. He was an assistant teacher at Hamburg during which time he attended lectures at the Johanneum. In 1862 he studied at a teacher training college in Bad Segeberg and took a special interest in the natural sciences. He graduated in 1865 and became a private tutor at the home of a magistrate named Stolz in Leck. He then worked at a naval school in Flensburg and in 1866 he moved to the Royal Gymnasium in Husum where he lived and worked for nearly forty years until his death.^[1]

Rohweder became an expert on the birds of the Schleswig-Holstein region and published notes in the ornithological newsletter edited by Rudolf Blasius. He became a campaigner for the protection of birds in the region and co-founded an animal protection association in 1879. The government of Schleswig-Holstein sent him to Heligoland in 1893 where he studied trapping practices and made suggestions for stopping them.^[2] He was involved in the protection of breeding seabird colonies on the islands of Sylt, Norderoog, and Süderoog. He was an ardent fan of Theodor Storm's poetry.^[1][3][4]

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  Part of Rohweder's list of birds of Schleswig-Holstein with seasonal distribution pattern indicated, 1875
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  Cover of an 1893 book on floral diagrams and plant classification
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  A memorial to Rohweder in Mildstedt