Biography

German artist and bryologist whose most important botanical work was on Javanese mosses. Known as Max, Fleischer was born in Lipine, Upper Silesia. From a young age he exhibited a talent for drawing and a lively interest in natural history. Pursuing a career as an artist, he attended Breslau Art School, where his first term was marred by the death of his father. He qualified as an art teacher in 1881 and continued his studies in Munich and Paris. Following an 1887 sojourn in the latter city studying Impressionism, he made studies of nature in Brittany. One of these, Enfants au bains, drew acclaim at the Paris Salon.

While residing in Paris, Fleischer's passion for natural sciences had grown. He decided to undertake formal studies in one of his favourite subjects, geology, moving to Zurich in 1892. He remained in the Swiss city for five years, towards the end of this period visiting Italy, where he made paintings and studied the flora. He published observations on Liguria and Sardinia and distributed herbarium specimens (mosses) under the title "Bryotheca europaeae meridionalis" (with C. Warnstorf). His reputation as an artist meanwhile grew as his paintings won him awards in London and Rome. In the late 1890s a welcome opportunity arose when he was invited to Java by the botanist Melchior Treub, in order to illustrate Treub's Flora of Buitenzorg. Fleischer thus travelled in 1898 to Java, where he was based until 1902. During these years he collected specimens in the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra as well as fulfilling his commission. He also studied the mosses of Java and made a number of paintings, which he exhibited back in Europe. In Batavia he made the acquaintance of a Dutch woman, Marie Wieman, whom he married in 1901 and took with him back to Germany, making a grand voyage via New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and South America.

Following his return Fleischer made a splash by popularising batik prints made with vegetable dyes, a technique he had learnt in Indonesia. He won more accolades for his batik works in the late 1900s, which he signed Fleischer-Wieman. He travelled again in the Malayan region in 1908-1913, during which time he collected mostly bryophytes but also fungi and orchids in Java. Returning to Europe he was employed at the Botanical Museum in Berlin in 1914 and three years later was appointed professor of botany at Berlin University. He was also made an honorary professor of fine art, and travelled in Turkey and Macedonia at the end of the First World War. At this time he was elected president of the Wirtschaftsverband Bildender Künstler (Association of Fine Artists), of which he remained an honorary member after he left Germany in 1926, when he settled in Holland at The Hague.

Fleischer's last decade was as productive as the preceding years. In 1923 the University of Utrecht conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa to mark the publication of the fourth volume of his Musci der Flora von Buitenzorg (Mosses of Java, 1900-1922). It was in this work that Fleischer outlined his new 'natural' system of moss classification, which was adopted by Viktor Brotherus in his second edition of "Musci" in Engler's Die Natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien (1924-1925). In 1925 he made his first trip to the Canary Islands to paint and study mosses. After marrying his second wife, P.G. Haigton, he returned to the Canaries at the start of 1927. They explored Fuerteventura and returned via France and Italy to The Hague, where he worked on determining his collections. Suffering much with illness since the start of 1930, however, Fleischer decided to repair to warmer climes in the south of France. The sunshine of the Cote d'Azur did not restore his health, though, and he died at Menton Garavan on 3 April 1930. After his death, Fleischer's private collections and library were bought by an antiquarian in Leipzig.

Sources:
I.H. Burkill, 1927, Gardens Bulletin Straits Settlements, 4: 4-5
A.G., 1930, Journal of Botany, 68: 182-183
R. Potier de la Varde, 1930, Annales de Cryptogamie Exotique, 3: 161-167.