Christian Ludwig Brehm (24 January 1787 – 23 June 1864) was a German pastor and ornithologist. He was the father of the zoologist Alfred Brehm.

Life

Brehm was born in Schönau near Gotha on 24 January 1787. He was educated at University of Jena to be ordained as minister at Renthendorf in 1813 where he remained until his death on 23 June 1864. He wrote Beiträge zur Vogelkunde (1820–22), which described 104 species of German birds in minute detail, and Handbuch der Naturgeschichte aller Vögel Deutschlands (1831) which described 900 bird species. Brehm accumulated a collection of 15,000 birds until his death, which included samples from his son, Alfred Brehm. Alfred collected these birds from Sudan, Egypt, and throughout Europe. He offered these to the Berlin Zoological Museum in March 1835 because he feared that a storm would destroy his house, 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 in 1897; they consisted of 9,000 skins, and the collection arrived at his Natural History Museum at Tring in 1932. However, the collection returned to Germany, where it was moved to Museum Koenig, located in Bonn.

Works