By George Beccaloni, March 2019
Heinrich Agathon Bernstein (22 September 1828 – 19 April 1865) was a German naturalist, zoologist and explorer from Breslau (Wrocław). He moved to what is now Indonesia in 1855 and in 1859 he became an official collector of animals and plants for the Leiden natural history museum. In 1860 Bernstein travelled to the Moluccas, seting up his base as Wallace did, on Ternate Island. Hermann Schlegel, the director of the museum urged Bernstein to keep ahead of Wallace, who was also collecting at that time in the area. Jansen (2008) recounts how "The rivalry was strong but gentlemanly. On 6 February 1861 Wallace wrote in a letter from Dili (Timor): 'The Dutch have just sent out a collector for the Leyden Museum to the Moluccas. He is now at Ternate, and goes to spend two years in Gilolo and Batchian, and then to N. Guinea. He will, of course (having four hunters constantly employed, and not being obliged to make his collecting pay expenses), do much more than I have been able to do; but I think I have got the cream of it all. His name is Bernstein; he has resided long in Java, as doctor at a Sanatorium, and tells me he has already sent large collections to Leyden, including the nests and eggs of more than a hundred species of birds! Are these yet arranged and exhibited? They must form a most interesting collection.'"
In a fairly recent article about Heinrich Bernstein, Jansen (2008), citing Veth (1879) says that he "...died on Batanta at 19 April 1865 of a liver abscess, and was buried either on Batanta or Ternate..." However, whilst reading Rosenberg's 1875 book Reistochten naar de Geelvinkbaai op Nieuw-Guinea in de jaren 1869 en 1870 I discovered the following passage (translated from the Dutch by Erica Tonnema): "There, in the park-like cemetery, a romantic site, on the feet of the proud ‘firemountain’ of Ternate [Mt Gamalama], a simple memorial, in the southeast corner of one of the nearby crossways, marks the grave of Dr. Bernstein...and it is that place, in the close proximity of his earlier residence, from the workshop, where he did so much research, in the name of science and made things ready for our homeland, that is for him the most appropriate resting place, because this was just not possible on gloomy Batanta, in the middle of the regions where he acquired his most precious results..."
References
Jansen, J. 2008. Pioneer of Asian Onithology Heinrich Bernstein. Birding Asia, 10: 103-107.
Rosenberg, C. B. H. von. 1875. Reistochten naar de Geelvinkbaai op Nieuw-Guinea in de jaren 1869 en 1870. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Veth, H. J. 1879. Overzicht van hetgeen, in het bijzonder door Nederland, gedaan is voor de kennis der Fauna van Nederlandsch Indie. Leiden.