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The estate of Rudolf Mell in the Historical Division

Holding identifier: N 020 Rudolf Mell

Historical Image and Document Collections > estates > N 020 Rudolf Mell

One of the estates held by the Historical Image and Document Collections of the museum is Rudolf Mell’s:

Rudolf Emil Mell (1879-1970) was a teacher of German and director of the German-Chinese Middle School in Canton (Guangzhou). In his private life he devoted himself to zoological research (with a focus on entomology), undertook numerous expeditions to the Cantonese surroundings, kept a small private zoo and was the author of numerous publications on the flora and fauna of south-east China, including contributions to the Fauna sinica. Today, Mell's zoological collections can be found in museums in Germany, Austria, Finland and the USA.

The estate of Rudolf Mell (N 020) comprises:

  • personal and professional correspondence
  • travel documents and court documents
  • manuscripts
  • publications
  • several photographic collections (plants, ethnographic photographs of China, architecture)
  • a private photo album
  • a Leibniz medal

Finding aids for the estate are available in the form of finding leaflets (thematically and chronologically, see download links, currently only available in German) and an entry in the Daphne database system (searchable in the Historical Division).

Finding aid (in German):

Citation rule: MfN, HBSB, N020 Nachlass Rudolf Mell No.