Richard Meinertzhagen - Background and Youth

Background and Youth

Meinertzhagen was born into a socially connected, wealthy British family. Richard's father, Daniel Meinertzhagen VI, was head of a merchant-bank dynasty with an international reputation, second in importance to the Rothschilds. His mother was Georgina Potter, sister of Beatrice Webb, a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Meinertzhagen's surname derives from the town Meinerzhagen in Germany, the home of an ancestor. On his mother's side (the wealthy Potters), he was of English descent. Among his relations, in large numbers, were “many of Britain’s titled, rich and influential personages.” Although he had his doubts, he was a distant descendant of Philip III of Spain.

Young Richard was sent as a boarding student to Aysgarth in the north of England, then was enrolled at Fonthill in Sussex and finally at Harrow School where his time overlapped with Winston Churchill. In 1895 at age eighteen, with reluctance, he obeyed his father and joined the family bank as a clerk. He was assigned to offices in Cologne and Bremen. He picked up the German language but remained uninterested in banking. After he returned to England in 1897 to the bank’s home office he received his father’s approval to join a territorial militia of weekend soldiers called the Hampshire Yeomanry.

As a child his passion for birdwatching began; he was encouraged by a family friend, the philosopher Herbert Spencer, who, like another family friend, Charles Darwin, was an ardent empiricist. Spencer would take young Richard on walks, urging him to study the natural world: "Observe, record, explain!"