Otto Staudinger (2 May 1830 – 13 October 1900) was a German entomologist and a natural history dealer considered one of the largest in the world specialising in the collection and sale of insects to museums, scientific institutions, and individuals. Life Staudinger was born in Groß Wüstenfelde, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, from a Bavarian family on his father's side. His grandfather was born near Ansbach and came to Holstein at the end of the 18th century where Staudinger's father was born in Groß Flottbeck in 1799. His mother, a born Schroeder, was from Mecklenburg, born in Putzar at the Count of Schwerin's estate in 1794. At the time of Otto Staudinger's birth in 1830 his father was the tenant of the Rittergut Groß Wüstenfelde. At the age of six or seven Otto was introduced into entomology by his private tutor Wagner who collected beetles. In the summer of 1843 his father purchased the Rittergut Lübsee near Güstrow where Otto – now under the instruction of tutor Hermann – began to collect Lepidoptera. From October 1845 he attended the Gymnasium (grammar school) in Parchim and in summer 1849 received his Abitur (diploma qualifying for university admission). In October 1849 Staudinger took up the study of medicine at the University of Berlin. In his second semester he changed to natural history under the impression of Dr. Stein's inspiring zoology lectures. From June 1850 to autumn 1851 he undertook entomological excursions and on the very first of these the capture of a series of freshly emerged Synanthedon tipuliformis in the cemetery of Stralau established his predilection for the clearwing moths (Sesiidae). He became friends with fellow students Theodor Johannes Krüper (later director of the natural history museum in Athens) and Carl Eduard Adolph Gerstaecker (later professor in Greifswald) and met many of the Berlin entomologists of the era, especially Grabow, Simon, Scherffling, Libbach, Glasbrenner, Mützel, Streckfuß, Walther, the Kricheldorff brothers, Ribbe and Kalisch. Their collecting grounds were mainly the Grunewald, the Jungfernheide (where at that time Staurophora celsia still occurred), the Wuhlheide, the Kalkberge near Straußberg and the lonely Finkenkrug, then situated deep inside the forest. In autumn 1851 Staudinger seems to have fallen ill (though the biographical sources are silent about the nature of his ailment) and after a prolonged illness he was advised to go on a recovery trip. Accordingly, Staudinger spent May to August 1852 at Lake Geneva and in the Mont Blanc