Lanny Quarles

Learning Spanish


From April to October 1854 Staudinger collected in Sardinia with the
intention to discover the larvae of Papilio hospiton in which he
succeeded after many failures. In 1855 he collected in the Alps
(Carinthia, Glockner area). In April 1856 he started on a voyage to
Iceland together with C. Kalisch. On his return in the autumn of 1856
he became engaged to entomologist Grabow's daughter and married her on
January 21, 1857. The same night the couple departed and travelled via
Paris, Lyon, Marseilles – where they stopped and learned Spanish
within ten days – Barcelona, Valencia and Almería to Malaga, where
they stayed for a month. Then they spent nine months in Granada
(living in the Alhambra) where Staudinger collected extensively and
where their daughter was born on November 2. In December they went via
Malaga to Chiclana near Cadiz, spent the first half of 1858 there and
finally returned to Berlin in July. Because of the costs of his
travels Staudinger founded a business and, with the help of his
father-in-law, began to sell parts of his collections. Over the years
this grew into a substantial and successful naturalist business with
worldwide connections. In 1859 the Staudinger family moved to Dresden
where his son Paul was born the same year. In Dresden Staudinger built
the Diana-Bad (Diana Baths) in 1864, a large facility with bath tubs,
steam baths, and Irish-Roman baths which Staudinger loved since this
type of bath had helped him when he had a bad cold on a journey. When
his city dwelling became too small in 1874 he moved to the "Villa
Diana" in Blasewitz near Dresden. In 1879 the Danish-born entomologist
Andreas Bang-Haas (1846-1925) entered into the business, married
Staudinger's daughter in 1880 and became co-owner of the firm, now
"Staudinger & Bang-Haas", in 1884 or 1887. In 1884 the growing company
moved to the larger "Villa Sphinx" and ten years later a two-story
wing had to be added. From the mid-1880s onward Staudinger entrusted
the company business more and more to Bang-Haas and concentrated on
his work in Lepidoptera taxonomy. Staudinger died on October 13, 1900
during a recovery trip in Lucerne, Switzerland.


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