Friedrich Robert von Beringe

Friedrich Robert von Beringe (21 September 1865 - 5 July 1940) was a German army officer. He was the son of Mathilde Luise and Captain Karl Robert von Beringe of the Prussian Cavalry. de:Friedrich Robert von Beringe (German). In the small town in what is now Saxony-Anhalt, which then belonged to the Kingdom of Prussia, his father was stationed with a squadron of Hussars Regiment No. 10 de:Magdeburgisches Husaren-Regiment Nr. 10 (German). Friedrich Robert followed his father's tradition, becoming an officer in the Hussars Regiment No. 1 de:1. Leib-Husaren-Regiment Nr. 1 (German). He was honored with the regimental ring, and became a close friend of August von Mackensen, later Field Marshal von Mackensen, who commanded the regiment from 17 June 1893 to 27 January 1898.

In 1894, von Beringe volunteered for the recently created (1891) German East Africa Protectorate Force Schutztruppe, and he was promoted to Captain in 1899.

Captain von Beringe, together with a physician, Dr. Engeland, a Corporal Ehrhardt, and twenty local troops with equipment and native porters left Usumbura in German East Africa on 19 August 1902. Their destination was the Sultan Msinga of Rwanda. They then headed north to the volcanic Virunga Mountains. On 17 October 1902 he shot two large apes that were unknown to science at the time. He sent them to the Natural History Museum Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, where they were examined and documented by Paul Matschie. The species was named Gorilla beringei in his honor, a gorilla species distinct from the previously discovered western gorilla ("Gorilla gorilla"). This new species, commonly called "eastern gorilla", was later determined to consist of two subspecies: the mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) and the eastern lowland gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri).

In 1906, Captain of Beringe moved back to Germany. Until the beginning of World War II, he lived with his family in Dresden. On 5 July 1940, he died in Szczecin after years of suffering from diabetes. A memorial plaque is dedicated to von Beringe at the entrance to the 400 square kilometer Virunga National Park Friedrich Robert von Beringe (German).