Walter Linsenmaier

Walter Linsenmaier ( born August 18, 1917 in Stuttgart, † 31 October 2000 in Ebikon ) was a Swiss painter and entomologist.

Linsenmaier was born in 1917 in Stuttgart, in 1918 but his family moved to Switzerland. There he acquired after the completion of the school and an apprenticeship as a plasterer diploma as a drawing teacher in Lucerne. From 1950 he worked as a professional artist.

Walter Linsenmaier specialized in his work on nature drawings as illustrations of insects, for book and magazine illustrations, including Ernst Sutter publication bird of paradise and hummingbirds. Scenes from the life of the tropical bird of the year 1953 His created with colored pencils work is characterized by fidelity to nature and high detail out.

At home in Ebikon at Lucerne, he taught in 1952 along with his father, the " wildlife Panorama", a zoological museum that displays stuffed animals in representations of their natural habitats.

For his scientific work, Walter Linsenmaier was excited when he was once entrusted with the drawing of a wasp. Since then he has worked intensively with this group of insects. In 1951 he published his first major work in this area. With numerous other seminal work, he became one of the most important gold wasps experts of the 20th century, he described about 600 new species and subspecies, and wore a collection of an estimated 250,000 insects together, including the 60,000 gold wasps from around the world.

In 1982 he was awarded in recognition of his scientific and artistic achievements of the Honorary Doctorate of Philosophy and Science Faculty, University of Bern, 1985 the Central Swiss Culture Award and the 1992 Ernst Jünger price of Entomology of the State of Baden- Wuerttemberg.

In 2000, Walter Linsenmaier died at the age of 83 years. His collection was acquired by the Luzern Nature Museum.