The author Otto Schmeil (1860 - 1943) was a biologist and educator and is considered a reformer of biological education. In 1894, Schmeil took over the position of principal at the large Wilhelmstadt primary school in Magdeburg. Here, he began the reform of natural history education, which was expressed, for example, in the establishment of a school garden or in the publication of educational treatises such as the 1896 work "On Reform Efforts in the Field of Natural History Education." Schmeil's textbooks for natural science education moved away from the previous morphological perspective towards observing nature and discovering causal relationships. In particular, he modified the taxonomic arrangement and the listing of taxonomically significant characteristics of individual animal species that originated from university textbooks.