Heinrich Agathon Bernstein

Heinrich Agathon Bernstein (22 September 1828 – 19 April 1865) was a German naturalist, zoologist and explorer from Breslau (Wrocław).

Heinrich Agathon Bernstein was born on 22 September 1828 in Wrocław, Lower Silesia, Poland, and died on 19 April 1865 at Senapan, Papua New Guinea. His father, Professor Georg Heinrich Bernstein, taught theology and oriental languages at Breslau University. By 1840 Heinrich had started at the Gymnasium in Wrocław (Maria-Magdalena), but after two years he departed with his parents and a teacher for a year-long in Italy. When returned to Wrocław he studied for three and a half years at the Saksian state school at Pforta, and proceeded to St. Elisabeth’s Gymnasium in Breslau and finish his education in 1849. In October 1849 he began studying medicine at the University at Wrocław, and became a doctor there on 16 November 1853 with his thesis De anatomia corvorum pars prima osteologia. Johann Ludwig Christian Carl Gravenhorst, whom he met at the university, was largely responsible for drawing out Bernstein’s interest in natural history. From 1852 Bernstein travelled extensively, visiting Poland, Austria, Hungary and France. Then in early 1854 he departed to the Netherlands, and never returned to Germany again.

Arriving in the Netherlands, Bernstein visited the large natural history collections at Leiden. Here he met Coenraad Jacob Temminck (director of the museum at Leiden), and soon enough he was ready to fulfil his dream to go to the tropics. To get to Indonesia he volunteered for the Dutch Army as medical specialist, and gained his passage as the ship’s doctor, departing on 18 June 1854. But his contract bound him to return soon afterwards. Once back in Leiden he took the exam for physician (16 April 1855), and in doing so gained some exclusive rights to work in the overseas possessions of the Netherlands.

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