Schmitz (Father Ernst)

This distinguished German priest was born in Rheydt on 18 May 1845, the son of Frederico Schmitz and Elizabeth Schmitz, and entered the Congregation of the Mission of St Vincent de Paul on 25 September 1864. In 1874 he served for a time as chaplain of the Princess Maria Amélia Hospice (Hospício da Princesa Dona Maria Amélia), but it was only in 1878 that he took up residence in Madeira. There he at first held that post again, and then, from 27 September 1881, that of vice-rector of the Funchal Seminary (Seminário do Funchal). In this latter office he rendered outstanding services to science and education, founding in 1882 a natural history museum that still exists today (see Seminary Museum), in which he succeeded in assembling the most varied specimens of the Madeiran fauna. In 1898 he withdrew to Theux, in Belgium, but at the end of 1902 he returned to the post he had left at the Funchal Seminary. He gave it up only on 7 July 1908 when, at the request of the Imperial German Government, he went to take charge of the hospice (hospício) of São Paulo in Jerusalem. In 1914 he moved to the German Hospice at Tabgha, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee (Lake Tiberias), and in the summer of 1920 he took over the direction of the Hospice of São Carlos in Haifa, where he died on 3 December 1922.

Father Ernst Schmitz was chiefly an ornithologist, but his studies and observations extended to several other branches of zoology, some of them unknown here in Madeira. Dr Auguste Forel’s work on the ants and Władysław Kulczyński’s on the arachnids of the archipelago are based on material collected by the Revd Schmitz. He also devoted great attention to the study of molluscs, both marine and terrestrial, of fishes, of some groups of insects, of corals, etc., etc. Although he was no student of botany, we nevertheless owe him a fine collection of marine algae, which was studied by Professor Schmitz, a German algologist. Among the species and varieties that recall the name of the former professor and vice-rector of the Funchal Seminary, we may cite Motacilla boarula Schmitzii and Strix flammea Schmitzii (birds), Scopulus Schmitzii (a fish), Plagiolepsis pigmaea Schmitzii (an ant), Dienches Schmitzii (a hemipteran), Trochosa, Prosthesima, Lephthyphantes and Entelecara Schmitzii (arachnids), Pseudochelidura Schmitzii (an earwig), Sympherobius Schmitzii (a neuropteran), Cabralia Schmitzii (a mollusc) and Bystropogon madeirensis Schmitzii (a plant of the family Labiatae).

In Portugal, Father Ernst Schmitz was a member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences (Academia das Ciências de Lisboa) and of the Portuguese Society of Natural Sciences (Sociedade Portuguesa das Ciências Naturais). He contributed to the Annais de Sciencias Naturais of Porto, the Ornithological Jahrbuch of Hallein (Austria), the Ornithol. Monatsberichte of Berlin, Cosmos of Paris, etc. The most valuable of his works is unquestionably the one entitled Die Vogel Madeira's, for it brings together everything that was known in 1899 about the ornithology of the Madeira archipelago.

Father Schmitz, who became a naturalised Portuguese citizen while living among us, often told his friends that what he loved best in the world was Madeira, in Madeira Funchal, and in Funchal the Seminary. He was indeed a great friend of our island, as he proved on many occasions. On 13 November 1922, already on the brink of the grave, he was still writing a letter to the editor of A Esperança (‘Hope’), which that newspaper published, declaring that his love of Madeira had never left him and that, since 1908, when he left for Palestine, he had not let a single day pass without offering a prayer to the Almighty for his many friends and acquaintances on this island.

In 1908 the students of the Diocesan Seminary published a pamphlet entitled Preito e Homenagem (‘Tribute and Homage’), which gave prominent and well-deserved emphasis to the high merits and virtues of this illustrious priest. The most cultivated and socially distinguished people of the whole archipelago contributed to the publication.