Bernt Wilhelm Westermann (1781 around Ringkøbing

Ringkøbing

Ringkøbing is a town in Ringkøbing-Skjern municipality in Region Midtjylland on the west coast of the Jutland peninsula in west Denmark. The town has a population of 9,742 .-History:...

 - 1868? in Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

) was a wealthy Danish

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 businessman who collected insects.

An amateur insect collector Westermann travelled to Calcutta

Kolkata

Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...

 (India) and later to Jakarta

Jakarta

Jakarta is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Officially known as the Special Capital Territory of Jakarta, it is located on the northwest coast of Java, has an area of , and a population of 9,580,000. Jakarta is the country's economic, cultural and political centre...

 (Indonesia) as an employee of an English business firm.

At the Cape of Good Hope

Cape of Good Hope

The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa.There is a misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, because it was once believed to be the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In fact, the...

, in Bengal

Bengal

Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...

 and Java he collected insects for English and Dutch friends, amongst others for Thomas Horsfield

Thomas Horsfield

Thomas Horsfield M. D. was an American physician and naturalist.Horsfield was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He was the grandson of Timothy Horsfield, Sr., a colonel and justice of the peace in Bethlehem, and a friend mentioned in Benjamin...

. In 1817 he returned to Copenhagen becoming a shipowner and owner of a sugar-refinery at Slotholmsgade in Copenhagen.

Insects from all orders acquired and collected during the rest of his life added to his Cape, Java and Bengal insects to form a magnficent collection. In all there were 45,000 species in beautiful condition. The collection can be admired today in the Royal Museum Collection in the University of Copenhagen

University of Copenhagen

The University of Copenhagen is the oldest and largest university and research institution in Denmark. Founded in 1479, it has more than 37,000 students, the majority of whom are female , and more than 7,000 employees. The university has several campuses located in and around Copenhagen, with the...

.

Sources

• Entom. Meddel. 15, 1936, p. 161-164, fig. 39-40 portr., p. 197-198.
• Flora Malesiana ser. 1, 5: Cyclopaedia of collectors, Supplement I
• Pont, A. C., 1995 Steenstrupia Copenhagen 21(2): 125 - 154 (Sammlungsverbleib) [11808].

External links

• Article about Westerman, from Dansk biografisk Lexikon (danish)