Anophthalmus hitleri was discovered in the former Yugoslavia on June 20, 1932, four months after the Austrian-born Hitler became a German citizen and four days before he, as head of the Nazi Party, demanded that the government declare martial law throughout the country. country. The discoverer, a naturalist named Vladimir Kodric, stumbled upon the insect in a cave named Pekel (English translation: hell) near the town of Celje, in modern-day Slovenia. The specimen is now behind glass in the Natural History Museum in Basel, Switzerland.
Kodric sent the specimen to Oskar Scheibel, a railroad engineer whose hobby was coleopterology, the study of beetles. Scheibel was convinced that the insect represented a new species, but delayed publishing the news to confirm this. In 1937, with Hitler in prison as chancellor, Scheibel reneged on a promise to name the beetle after Kodric and register it as Anophthalmus hitleri. He then informed the chancellery in Berlin about the insect and its new name. (Some experts have suggested that Scheibel may have been mocking Hitler by naming a blind bug after him, but the accompanying description reads: “Given to Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler as an expression of my admiration.”)
Given Hitler’s penchant for beetles — in 1933 he commissioned Ferdinand Porsche to design a “people’s car” (volkswagen, in German), which became the VW Bug — it’s perhaps no surprise that recognition pleased the leader of the Nazi, who sent Scheibel a thank you. Surprisingly, simultaneous offers to introduce varieties of a rose and a strawberry named for Hitler did not progress. According to Michael Ohl’s 2019 book, “The Art of Naming,” Hans Heinrich Lammers, head of the Reich Chancellery, denied the same request, informing the inquiring parties that Hitler was “under careful consideration” “requests that a name in his honor be more kind. will not be used.”
Hitler had strong views on what animals should be called. In 1942, the German Society for Mammalogy passed a resolution to change the common names for bats (Fledermaus) and shrews (Spitzmaus), arguing that they are not maus, or mouse. The society’s decision brought a swift response from Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary. On orders from the exasperated Führer, Bormann ordered Lammers to “communicate with the responsible parties, in no uncertain terms, that these name changes must be restored immediately.”
The message continued: “If the members of the Society for Mammalogy had nothing more important to the war effort or wiser to do, perhaps an extended battalion construction work could be arranged in the Russian field.”
