Ferdinand Anton Franz Karsch (2 September 1853, in Münster – 20 December 1936, in Berlin) was a German arachnologist, entomologist and anthropologist. He also wrote on human and animal sexual diversity with his mother's maiden name included as Ferdinand Karsch-Haack from around 1905.

Life and work

The son of doctor Anton Karsch, he was educated at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and published a thesis on the gall wasp in 1877. From 1878 to 1921 he held the post of curator at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. Between 1873 and 1893, he published a catalogue of the spiders of Westphalia; he also published numerous articles on the specimens that the museum received from various explorers and naturalists working in Africa, in China, in Japan, in Australia, etc. This publication of others' work sometimes led to disputes over priority and nomenclature, for example with Pickard-Cambridge. Alongside his zoological activities, he published many works on sexuality and, in particular, homosexuality in both the animal kingdom and in so-called "primitive" peoples, including Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Kulturvölker – Ostasiaten: Chinesen, Japanese, Korea in 1906 on homosexuality in East Asian societies and in 1911 Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Naturvölker on homosexuality in Africa and indigenous societies of Asia, Australia and the Americas. Karsch lived in later life as an open homosexual in Berlin. He also founded and edited a magazine along with René Stelter called ''Uranos. Blätter für ungeschmälertes Menschentum'' (1921–23) where he wrote on his scientific ideas. The rise of Hitler to power and Nazi repression of homosexuality led to the eclipse of his reputation.

Some of the animals described

Spiders

Other animals

About homosexuality

Literature