Dieter Fritsch

Dieter Fritsch was born in 1951 in Berlin, Germany.

In 1983 he became an occupational therapist, working with children in a kindergarten in Berlin, and from 1989 in Basel, Switzerland, in the University Hospital for children. He retired in 2012. Entomology was completely absent to his life until 1990. There he found the new publication of Günter EBERT and Erwin RENNWALD (eds): Die Schmetterlinge Baden-Württembergs, which just had been published and which aroused his interest. In 1993 he found a small population of Brenthis daphne, which was known from one specimen only in Baden-Württemberg. In 1998 he moved to Lörrach.

At the annual meeting of Baden-Württemberg lepidopterologists he learned a lot about “How to find larvae of Eupithecia sp.” In 1998 he also started collecting moths, getting mainly interested in Geometridae and Noctuidae and working together with the EBERT-team for the Baden-Württemberg books. In 2002 he found the first specimen of Caradrina kadenii for Germany.

His main focus was rearing Geometrid moths, especially those of the genus Eupithecia, the results are also included in the “The Geometrid moths of Europe” series (AXEL HAUSMANN, ed.).

In 2002 he visited the island of Samos (Greece) as a tourist, but completely stunned by the huge number of moths seen at the hotel lights, almost every species new to him. In 2009 he met Michael FIBIGER for the first time. He had been to Samos collecting moths the same year with colleagues from Denmark, and planned to go again in autumn.

This collecting tour was the first time where he met Morten TOP. This was the start for a very close friendship, together and with colleagues many collecting trips to Samos, the Pyrenees and southern Spain followed. During a visit at Bornholm he also met Vladimir KONONENKO, and learned about his idea of making a book like you find here. First looking for photos in the internet for the project, he later became a permanent member of the team.