Johann Schmeltz

Johann Schmeltz

Johannes Dietrich Eduard Schmeltz (May 19, 1839, Hamburg - 1909) was a German ethnographer and naturalist.

Schmeltz had no formal scientific training but studied with many well established Hamburg naturalists including Georg Semper, Otto Semper, Carl Friedrich August Alexander Crüger and Johann Georg Christian Lehmann. A keen lepidopterist he corresponded with Philipp Christoph Zeller. In 1863 Schmeltz became "Kustos" or senior curator of the Museum Godeffroy in Hamburg, which specialised in the natural history and ethnography of the South Seas. The museum was described in Dutch, Danish, German, English, and Austrian scientific journals as one of the best collections of its kind. His main business was to transfer all the natural and ethnographic material, which had been collected, to the accordant university departments for identification. After been sent back he had to fill it into the collection. He remained in this post after suspension of payment of J. C Godeffroy & Sohn in December 1879. In 1885 all inventory has to be sold as the whole quarter, where the museum had been located, would break down for new buildings. By then an authority on the ethnography of the Pacific islands he left Hamburg in 1882 to become the conservator of the Rijks Ethnographisch Museum in Leiden. He was director of the museum from 1897 to 1909.

Schmeltz was one of the founders and editor of Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie (Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde in Leiden, 1888-1968), an anthropological journal. Amongst the contributors and editorial panel were Otto Finsch and Rudolf Virchow and Edward Burnett Tylor. At this time he had the title "Doktor".

The correspondence of Johann Schmeltz (more than 3,000 letters, mainly from the period 1887-1900) is kept in Leiden University Library.