Fritz Isidore van Emden was born in
Amsterdam on 3 October 1898. Van Emden's parents were textile dealer Abraham van Emden (1873-1939) and Konstanze Irma Lippman (1875-1949), who had married at
Leipzig on 23 March 1897. In 1900, the van Emden family moved from the Netherlands to Germany after Abraham's textile business went into bankruptcy, as the law in the Netherlands at that time meant that a person who was declared bankrupt could not begin a new business. Fritz van Emden later recalled to his son
Helmut that seeing insects attacking his father's stock had sparked his interest in Entomology. He studied Natural Sciences at the
University of Leipzig and received his doctorate in 1921. Van Emden became a
Carabidae specialist and from 1927 worked at the
Staatliches Museum für Tierkunde und Völkerkunde in Dresden, In 1932 van Emden attended the 5th International Congress of Entomology at Paris as a German representative. Because Van Emden's mother was Jewish, he faced persecution when the Nazis came to power in 1933 and he was barred from Civil Service employment. Van Emden was reported for his Jewish heritage by the Dresden Museum's director,
Arnold Jacobi, who let him continue his private research in the Museum library, though unpaid. Van Emden was interviewed and granted exemption from
Internment on 10 October 1939. Van Emden died of a brain tumour on 2 September 1958 shortly before he was due to retire, with his research project of a monograph on British beetle larvae unfinished. His specimens and paperwork were passed on to the
Natural History Museum, London by
Helmut Fritz van Emden (who himself became a notable entomologist) with the hope that his father's work could be continued. Van Emden's research topic of beetle larvae identification was revisited by the Museum's Coleopterists and written up into a new guide published by the
Royal Entomological Society in 2019,
British Coleoptera Larvae. A guide to the families and major subfamilies, edited by
Max Barclay and
Beulah Garner. ==Selected publications==