Otto Finsch: images of the Pacific, 1879-1885

Best known today for his involve-ment in the German colonial annexation of northeastern New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago, Friedrich Hermann Otto Finsch (18391917) was a self-taught ornithologist, ethnologist, and museum curator. He was rec-ognized in his own lifetime as a perceptive observer and collector par excellence, but struggled to gain traction for his interpretations of Pacifi c peoples and societies among his for-mally trained peers (Luschan 1897: 76; Schmeltz 1894: 268). The town of Finschhafen in Papua New Guineas Morobe Province still bears his name, as do several bird species and a crater on the moon (the latter designated posthumously in his honor by the International Astronomical Union in 1976).