Christian Ludwig Brehm


Christian Ludwig Brehm was a German pastor and ornithologist. He was the father of the zoologist Alfred Brehm.
Brehm was born near Gotha, and studied at the University of Jena. In 1813 he became the minister at Renthendorf, a village sixty miles south of Leipzig, where he remained until his death. His extensive writings included Beiträge zur Vogelkunde, which described 104 species of German birds in minute detail, and Handbuch der Naturgeschichte aller Vögel Deutschlands.
Brehm accumulated a collection of 15,000 bird skins. He offered these to the Berlin Zoological Museum, but the sale fell through. After his death they remained in the attic of his house, where Otto Kleinschmidt discovered them some years later. Kleinschmidt persuaded Lord Rothschild to buy them, and the collection arrived at his Natural History Museum at Tring.

Works