Herbert Hesmer

Herbert Hesmer (born August 21, 1904 in Plettenberg ; † June 13, 1982 in Lüneburg ) was a German forest scientist . He has come to the fore in particular with studies on agroforestry in the tropics and on forest history and forestry in North Rhine-Westphalia .

Life

Herbert Hesmer was born on August 21, 1904 in Plettenberg, Westphalia. After graduating from high school, he studied from 1923 to 1928 at the forestry colleges in Eberswalde and Hannoversch Münden as well as at the University of Kiel . During this time he went on independent study trips to the jungle areas of Bulgaria and Turkey . In 1928 he was investigating the forest history of the post-ice age of the north-west German mountainous region on the basis of pollen-analytical moor investigations in Hann. Münden received his doctorate in forest sciences . This was followed by his legal clerkship , which he completed in 1930 as a forest assessor . Since he had decided to follow research careers, Hesmer started a job as an assistant at the Institute of Forestry in the same year Forest University Eberswalde , where he was in 1933 for the subjects " silviculture " and " plant geography " habilitated . In November 1933 he signed the professors' declaration of Adolf Hitler at German universities and colleges . He stayed as a private lecturer at this university, was appointed head of the newly established Institute for Forest Studies in 1936, in 1937 as a non-civil servant and in 1938 as a civil servant extraordinary professor. As the successor to Professor Dr. Alfred Denglers then headed the so-called Möller Institute for Silviculture and Forest Science in Eberswalde from 1939 and in 1941 finally became a full professor for forestry (silviculture) at the Forestry University.

During the Second World War , Hesmer worked in the war forest management service, for example in 1944/1945 as head of the military forest management in Italy . In 1945 he was taken prisoner of war, from which he was released in 1946. Hesmer then went to the future federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia , where between 1947 and 1949 he was initially entrusted with research assignments from the new state forest administration, for example for reforestation planning. From 1949 to 1959 he then managed the Kottenforst teaching and experimental forest office near Bonn . In 1950 he was appointed head of the Forest Research Institute of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Institute for Silviculture in Bonn, which was set up on the initiative of the then Agriculture Minister Heinrich Lübke . He held these functions until 1968. From 1948 onwards, Hesmer was also a visiting professor, and from 1959 onwards he was a full professor of forestry at the University of Bonn . From 1968, Professor Hesmer headed the research center for forestry in developing countries at the University of Bonn. Numerous trips to almost all forest areas on earth had already taken him. In 1963, Hesmer held a six-month visiting professorship at Waseda University in Tokyo .

Hesmer summarized his research results in six books and numerous papers for professional journals . In addition, he published standard works such as Die Technik der Kiefernkultur , Die Technik der Fichtenkultur and Das Pappelbuch, and from 1935 to 1968 also the specialist journal Forstarchiv . Hesmer also advised the German Poplar Association for around a decade and a half . He was a member of the Academy of German Forest Science and a corresponding member of the Finnish Forest Science Society. Herbert Hesmer died on June 13, 1982 in Lüneburg.

Services

During his research years in Eberswalde, Herbert Hesmer dealt intensively with the different forest development at different locations and carried out a flawless determination of the tree species composition of the natural forest cover, the relationship of which was seen distorted by the prevailing plant-sociological direction at the time . Hesmer and his colleagues succeeded in clarifying the exact nature of the forest cover primarily with paleofloristic studies of dry peat formation . As a side effect of these analyzes, a number of plant and animal fossils were identified for the first time. In cooperation with Jürgen Meyer and Elisabeth Freiin von Gaisberg , Hesmer compiled the sweet and sour grasses , which are important for silviculture as location indicators, in the book Forest Grasses (1940) . The book was a standard work for a long time and had another three editions by 1969.

Hesmer was also significantly involved in the development of the map series Today's foresting of Germany (1937), which for the first time in history summarized the composition of the German forest according to tree and type of operation. Another work, The Natural Forest of Germany , was destroyed together with its extensive map material and many research results at the end of the war. In connection with the question of natural forest development without human intervention, Hesmer had already proposed in 1934 that parts of all forest communities between about five to 20 hectares in size as close to nature as possible should be separated as so-called " natural forest cells " that are excluded from any economic use and only should serve as research and demonstration objects. However, Hesmer's suggestion was only put into practice after the Second World War due to legal bases.

After the Second World War, Hesmer saw one of the most urgent tasks in pooling the knowledge of the cultivation technology for the cultivation of spruce and Scots pine for the necessary large-scale afforestation after the destruction of the forest by the acts of war and the reparations by the Allies and making it available for practical use. This is how the instructions, written jointly by several authors, Die Technik der Kiefernkultur (1949) and Die Technik der Fichtenkultur (1950) were created. In years of detailed scientific work, Hesmer researched the natural occurrence of an outstanding lowland pine in the eastern Münsterland and its history. In close cooperation with the forest entomologist Fritz Schwerdtfeger , Hesmer also took on the problems of the pedunculate oak industry, which suffered from the constant feeding of the oak moth . He intensively investigated so-called " late oak " deposits in Germany and Yugoslavia , whose ability to drive out later than their other conspecifics appeared to him to be the only way to rehabilitate the pedunculate oak industry and increase its yields. For this purpose, appropriate forest seeds were also imported from Yugoslavia.

In the Kottenforst Forestry Office , Hesmer devoted himself to the silvicultural problems on Pseudogley soils, had several hundred hectares of forest stands made up of foreign tree species, including the Douglas fir , and examined the biology, ecology and silvicultural behavior of the winter linden , which is the largest natural occurrence in the Kottenforst the then Federal Republic. There, Hesmer had the possible uses of motorized and portable brushcutters from the USA tested, which in turn influenced the development of corresponding German devices. As a passionate hunter , he also ensured the reintroduction of fallow deer into the Kottenforst in 1952 .

Finally, at the Ollesheim wind protection facility , the importance and effects of wind protection in the often tree-free areas of the Rhine were examined. Under Hesmer's direction, the forestry effects of the drought year 1959 for all of North Rhine-Westphalia were determined. For the emerging poplar economy, Hesmer published the standard work Das Pappelbuch (1951) and later brought back seeds and cuttings from America and Asia from poplar species, provenances and varieties that had not yet been grown and studied in Europe. In 1958 he published the monograph Forest and Forestry in North Rhine-Westphalia , which was also to remain a standard work for decades. In it Hesmer interwoven economic and historical developments and conditions. In 1963, the description of forest composition and forest treatment , written together with Fred-Günter Schroeder , followed in the Lower Saxony lowlands west of the Weser and in the Munster Bay until the end of the 18th century .

After Professor Hesmer relinquished the management of the Kottenforst Forestry Office in 1959, he increasingly devoted himself to questions relating to world forestry , especially agro- forestry . In doing so, he primarily concentrated on the destructive slash-and-burn agriculture practiced in the tropics . The aim was to replace this as a contribution to development aid with a combined agricultural and forestry cultivation with timber production. During his travels around the globe, Hesmer recorded the requirements, techniques and results of such sustainable forms of use in a total of 44 countries, which covered all tropical regions . In order to explore the often virtually inaccessible areas, Hesmer not only used forest flights, but also climbed many mountains from all over the tropics up to the alpine tree line until he was seven years old . He summarized his experiences from Africa and Asia in the two-volume work The combined agricultural and forestry cultivation (1966 and 1970). In addition, Hesmer always documented his travels with photographs, which resulted in one of the most extensive forest photography collections ever. In 1975 he also published a biography of the pioneer of tropical forestry and internationally best known German forester, Sir Dietrich Brandis .

Awards

• 1974 - Bernhard-Eduard-Fernow badge of the German Forest Association

Fonts

• The forest history of the post-ice age of the north-west German mountainous region on the basis of pollen-analytical moor investigations , dissertation, Berlin 1928
• Natural forest cells . Der Deutsche Forstwirt 16 (1934) 133-135 and 141-143.
• Today's forest cover in Germany. Shown on the basis of 17 maps of the individual wood types and types of operation , Berlin 1937 (2nd, revised edition Berlin 1938)
• together with Jürgen Meyer and Elisabeth Freiin von Gaisberg : Waldgräser , Hannover 1940 (4th edition Hannover 1969)
• The forest in the Vistula and Waiting areas , Hanover 1941
• as overall processor: The technique of the pine culture , (communications from the technical central office of the German economy, volume 8), Hanover 1949
• as overall processor: The technology of the spruce culture , (communications from the technical central office of the German economy, volume 9), Hanover 1950
• as overall processor : poplar farming. Announcements from the German Poplar Association , Bonn 1948–1952
  • Issue 1: Report on the conference at the Fortuna mine on July 8, 1948
  • Issue 2: Report on the conference in Bonn from 13.-15. July 1949
  • Booklet 3: On the conference of the German Forest Association in Bonn in 1952
• as co-author and editor: Das Pappelbuch , Bonn 1951
• Forest and forestry in North Rhine-Westphalia. Conditions, history, condition , Hanover 1958
• together with Fred-Günter Schroeder: Forest composition and forest treatment in the Lower Saxony lowlands west of the Weser and in the Munster Bay until the end of the 18th century. Forest history contribution to the clarification of the natural composition of wood species and their artificial changes up to the early silviculture period , ( Decheniana , Volume 11), Bonn 1963
• The combined agricultural and forestry cultivation
  • Part 1 .: Tropical Africa , (Scientific Series of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation, Volume 8), Stuttgart 1966
  • Part 2 .: Tropical and subtropical Asia , (Scientific series of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation, Volume 17), Stuttgart 1970
• Life and work of Dietrich Brandis. 1824 - 1907. Founder of tropical forestry, promoter of forest development in the USA, botanist and ecologist,: ([Scientific] treatises of the Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Volume 58), Opladen 1975, ISBN 3-531-0958-5
• Human impact on tropical forests. Forest formations - interventions - forestry in colonial times , (from the estate edited by Eberhard F. Brünig; research reports of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, issue 3202. Department of the humanities), Opladen 1986, ISBN 3-531-03202-X
• Human impacts on the forests of the boreal cool zones of the ancient world. Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Soviet Union , (from the estate edited by Eberhard F. Bruenig, edited by Jutta Poker; research reports of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, issue 3211. Section Humanities), Opladen 1986, ISBN 3-531-03211- 9

From 1935 to 1968, Hesmer also published the specialist journal Forstarchiv .

literature

• Hans Stübner: Herbert Hesmer , in Albrecht Milnik (ed.) Et al .: In the service of the forest - life paths and achievements of Brandenburg forest people. Brandenburg pictures of life . Verlag Kessel, Remagen-Oberwinter 2006, ISBN 3-935638-79-5 , pp. 378-382
• Anonymous .: Professor Hesmer 65 years old , in: Allgemeine Forstzeitschrift , Volume 24, Issue 37/1969, p. 728

Web links

• Literature by and about Herbert Hesmer in the catalog of the German National Library