Max Fleischer

Richard Paul Max Fleischer (Lipine, 1861 – Menton, France, 1930) was a German painter who combined his artistic work with scientific research. He trained in Breslau and qualified as an art teacher in 1881, then continued his studies in Munich and Paris, where his interest in the natural sciences grew, and moved to Zurich in 1892 to study geology.

In the late 1890s the botanist Melchior Treub invited him to Java as an illustrator. There he painted landscapes and temples while also collecting plant specimens and studying the island's mosses, work that later made him a well-known bryologist. After several years on Java he travelled to New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, Australia, New Zealand and South America, and returned to Germany in 1903.

From 1908 to 1913 he revisited maritime Southeast Asia. In 1914 he joined the botanical museum in Berlin and, three years later, was appointed professor of botany at the University of Berlin. In 1925 he travelled to the Canary Islands to paint and study their mosses, and the following year he settled in The Hague. After his death, an antiquarian in Leipzig bought his collections and library.