Adalbert Seitz (1860—1938)

Adalbert Seitz (24 February 1860, Mainz — 5 March 1938, Darmstadt) was a German lepidopterist. He was the editor of Gross-Schmetterlinge der Erde (The Macrolepidoptera of the World). This is a sixteen volume work with four supplements. The first four volumes sand supplements describe the Palaearctic fauna and volumes 5—16 describe the Exotic fauna. Seitz planned to finish the whole work in 1912. This proved to be quite unrealistic. Several volumes remained unfinished. The first volume of the German edition was published by Lehmann Verlag in Stuttgart. After the publication of this first volume Lehmann sold the project to Alfred Kernen. Three language editions appeared, German, English and French, of which the last one remained very incomplete and was independantly published by Le Moult in Paris. During the First World War publication stopped and it took several years to resume publication. Alfred Kernen died in 1924 and his son Otto took over the publishing house. In order to reduce costs Otto established his own lithograph press. By this time chromolithography had become something of an anachronism, incredibly expensive and labour intensive. During the Second World War publication stopped. The stock was moved to a church-attic and 2 barns in the Black Forest. In 1944 the publishing house was bombed and destroyed. Finally in 1954 volume IV of the German edition was completed and published, after this publication was abandoned. Consulted collections of butterflies include those of the Natural History Museum, London, the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, the Senckenberg Museum at Frankfurt, as well as collections in Tokyo, Hong-Kong, Australia, South & North America.