HERMANN AUGUST HAGEN. 419 



HERMANN AUGUST HAGEN. 



Hermann August Hag en was bom at Kouigsberg, East Prussia, 

 on May 30, 1817. I lis mother was Anna Dorothea Linck and his 

 father Carl Heinrieh Hagen, Professor of Political Economy, Technol- 

 ogy, and Agriculture at the University of Konigsberg. His education 

 was obtained at the Gymnasium Collegium Friedericianum and at the 

 Kneiphoiisehe Gymnasium ; and after graduating from the latter in 

 183G he studied medicine at the University of Konigsberg. 



Hageu's early interest in natural history, stimulated by his cele- 

 brated instructors, von Baer, Rathke, and von Siebold, was especially 

 directed towards entomology by his father and his grandfather, the 

 latter, Carl Gottfried Hagen, a Professor of Natural History in Konigs- 

 berg and author of " Chloris Borussica," a small volume published in 

 1819. 



It is said that the attention of young Hagen was called to the 

 Odonata, or dragon-flies, "because by chance the first specimen he 

 caught proved to be an undescribed insect of that order." 



In 1839 in company with Professor Rathke he visited Norway. 

 Sweden, and Denmark, and here, though he paid some attention to 

 the habits and structure of marine animals, he studied chiefly in the 

 principal entomological collections and libraries. 



He received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University 

 of Konigsberg in 1840; his thesis being entitled " Synonymia Libellu- 

 larum Europaearum," (Regimontii, 1840, 8°, pp. 84,) and indicating 

 thus early the exactness which was so marked a feature of all his 

 bibliographical woik. 



After his graduation in medicine, in 1840, Dr. Hagen studied in 

 Berlin, Vienna, and Paris, and, returning to Konigsberg in 1843, set- 

 tled there as a practising physician and surgeon. At the surgical 

 hospital, where for several years he was first assistant, he performed a 

 large part of the operations ; among the needy his services, always in 

 demand, were given with that ready tenderness so characteristic of the 

 sympathetic side of his nature. 



His native city also claimed a large amount of his time during the 

 years 1863-67, when as Vice-President of the City Council and a 

 member of the School Board he was required to report upon a great 

 number of subjects demanding much painstaking research. 



Though educated as a physician, like so many of the older German 

 men of science, Hagen, during all the years of his medical practice and 

 of his civic duties, published continuou-ly. His first entomological 



