View source for Willi Hennig

===Early years and studies===
Hennig was born in [[Dürrhennersdorf]], [[Upper Lusatia]]. His mother Marie Emma, née Groß, worked as a maid and, later, factory worker. His father Karl Ernst Emil Hennig was a rail worker. Willi had two brothers, [[Fritz Rudolf Hennig]], who became a minister, and Karl Herbert, who went missing at the [[Battle of Stalingrad]] in 1943.

In the spring of 1919, Willi Hennig started school in Dürrhennersdorf, and subsequently was at school in Taubenheim an der Spree and Oppach. Rudolf Hennig described the family as calm; his father possessed an even temperament.

As of 1927, Willi Hennig continued his education at the Realgymnasium and boarding school in Klotzsche near [[Dresden]]. Here he met his first mentor M. Rost, a science teacher, whom he lived with in a house known as the "''Abteilung"''.<ref name=meier>Rudolf Meier. Role of Dipterology in Phylogenetic Systematics: The Insight of Willi Hennig  in David K. Yeates and Brian M.Wiegmann (Eds) 2005. The evolutionary biology of flies. Columbia University Press. {{ISBN|0-231-12700-6}}</ref> Rost had an interest in insects and introduced Hennig to [[Wilhelm Meise]], who worked as a scientist at the Dresdener Museum für Tierkunde ([[State Museum of Zoology, Dresden]]). In 1930, Hennig skipped a year, and graduated on 26 February 1932. As early as 1931, Willi Hennig composed an essay entitled ''Die Stellung der Systematik in der Zoologie'' ("The state of systematics in zoology") as part of his school work, published posthumously in 1978. It showed his interest as well as his deliberate treatment of systematic problems. Besides school, Hennig worked as a volunteer at the museum and, in collaboration with Meise, saw to the systematic and biogeographical investigation of the "flying" snakes of the genus ''[[Dendrelaphis|Dendrophis]]'' that became his first published work.

From the summer semester of 1932 onwards, Hennig read zoology, botany and geology at the University of Leipzig. He would continue to visit the Museum in Dresden. There, he met the curator of the entomological collection, the [[Fly|Dipteran]] expert [[Fritz_Isidore_van_Emden_(entomologist)|Fritz Isidor van Emden]]. Hennig saw him regularly until van Emden was expelled from National Socialist Germany for having a Jewish mother and wife.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9aW34_pTwrQC|title=From Taxonomy to Phylogenetics – Life and Work of Willi Hennig|last=Schmitt|first=Michael|date=11 April 2013|publisher=BRILL|isbn=978-9004219298|language=en}}</ref>

Hennig developed a deep friendship with Emden's successor, Klaus Günther. Hennig concluded his studies with a dissertation entitled, ''{{lang|de|Beiträge zur Kenntnis des Kopulationsapparates der cyclorrhaphen Dipteren}}''. By this time, Hennig had published eight scientific papers. Besides his 300-page revision of the ''Tylidae'' (now classed as [[Micropezidae]]), there were further papers on Diptera and the [[agamid]] genus ''[[Draco (genus)|Draco]]'' of gliding lizards. After his studies, Hennig was Volontär at the [[Staatliches Museum für Tierkunde Dresden|State Museum for Zoology in Dresden]]. On 1 January 1937, he obtained a scholarship from the [[Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft]] (DFG) to work at the German Entomological Institute of the [[Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft]] in [[Dahlem (Berlin)|Berlin-Dahlem]]. On 13 May 1939, Hennig married his former fellow student Irma Wehnert. By 1945, they had three sons, Wolfgang (born 1941), Bernd (born 1943) and Gerd (born 1945).