Lunz Biological Station
The Lunz Biological Station is a former biological research facility in Lunz am See , Lower Austria , which was founded in 1905 and closed in 2003 , but has continued its teaching and research with the re-establishment of the Lunz Water Cluster .
General
A biological station was originally understood to be a facility in which primarily ecological research was to be carried out - that is, research on plants and animals in their relationships with the habitat and with one another. The research approach was therefore interdisciplinary from the start . The stations were built at a suitable location directly within the ecosystem to be examined. Today the term “biological station” is no longer used only for research stations, but also for various other facilities in the context of nature and species protection.
The researchers here are and were primarily academic staff from universities, including doctoral candidates and students in courses and internships, which are intended to provide an overall impression of the living space to be examined in block form during the semester break. These "field stations" were therefore mostly set up away from large cities, by the sea, by lakes or in the mountains. They put collecting equipment, microscopes, vehicles, z. B. boats, but also a specialist library and accommodation options were available and managed with little of their own staff.
prehistory
The end of the 19th century was marked by a spirit of optimism in the natural sciences, including in biology. The ecology as a science (inaugurated in 1866 by Ernst Haeckel ) began to take shape. In order to study the ecology of plants and animals, however, it soon turned out to be necessary to observe the living beings in their habitat, in the biotope , for a long time, i.e. not just to collect them and then to transport them to the museum . It was soon clear that the beings of an area widely depending are - so that the exploration of what is the beginning of the 20th century "communities" ( biological community should call it), would be very costly. Soon people began to deal with the biocenotic of stagnant waters because their biotopes were relatively isolated, i.e. H. "Manageable", appeared. This idea was first propagated in Austria by the well-known plant morphologist and systematist Richard Wettstein . He also rightly recommended the area around Lunz am See as a very suitable location for a first such “station” in Austria. Since Carolus Clusius ' visit to the Kartause Gaming (1574), the Ybbs and Erlauftal valleys have been a “dream destination” for all botanists - on the one hand still close enough to Vienna (as a university and museum city) and in one day with it to reach the Ybbstalbahn under construction , on the other hand still very "untouched". In addition, the area includes the only three natural lakes in Lower Austria as well as streams, moors and caves ( karst area - nearby the sources of the Second Vienna High Spring Aqueduct ). Alpine pastures and even (small) primeval forest areas in the area round off the picture of a natural landscape, which, however, had also been romantically transfigured by the Biedermeier period up to the middle of the 19th century. For centuries the forest had been cut down as a raw material for charcoal for smelting in the Eisenwurzen and later as fuel in the Viennese heating stoves. Only after the coal had been developed could the forest slowly grow back again.
founding
Wettstein's recommendation was heard by the new owner of the Seehof-Hirschtal estate south of Lunz, Carl Kupelwieser . He was the son of the well-known church painter and Schubert friend Leopold Kupelwieser , a lawyer like his four brothers and at that time already active on a supervisory board of the Bohemian iron industry. He could therefore afford to buy a "pleasure estate" of approx. 30 km² in size from Count Festetics de Tolna Gábor in 1896 for the purpose of big game hunting. His son Hans (1879–1939) studied zoology in Leipzig with Carl Chun . He encouraged his father in the plan to set up a station at Lake Lunz based on the model of the Plön Biological Station (founded by Emil Otto Zacharias in Holstein in 1891 - later Max Planck Institute for Limnology ). At that time, Gut Seehof had, apart from a hunting lodge near Obersee, only one rather run-down building complex, inhabited by four chaste families . The building dates back to a branch of the Gaming Charterhouse , from which monks and servants had been fishing in Lake Lunzer and several large ponds until Emperor Joseph II abolished the Charterhouse in 1782.
Carl Kupelwieser immediately initiated a generous expansion into a stately country residence ("Seehof Castle") - rooms in the basement were adapted for the station. In 1905 Kupelwieser, who from the beginning also pursued projects in the general interest, invited interested scholars from home and abroad to a Christmas presentation of what he had in mind. The most important thing was probably the appointment of a manager who was always on hand to coordinate and bring together the work of the most varied of specialist scientists such as botanists, zoologists, geologists, geologists, meteorologists, chemists, etc. Initially, the young plankton researcher Richard Woltereck (1877–1944) was envisaged, but he soon began an academic career in Leipzig. With his “deputy”, Franz Ruttner (1882–1961), a Prague microbiology student and student of Hans Molisch , the final choice was made: Ruttner (with his mother) moved (with his mother) after his doctorate in 1906 into what was offered to him as a “service flat” The gatekeeper's house in the castle park.
Franz Ruttner as head
From 1908 Ruttner was practically solely responsible for the development of the station - until his late retirement in 1957. At the same time, the expansion of the station building began, e.g. B. with two experimental glass houses (1910). The boathouse was expanded to become a “lake laboratory” for course operations. The hut at Obersee, which was built in 1878, now also belonged to the station. Ruttner met his future wife Katharina Bittner (1883–1979) at the first of the soon-to-be “traditional” Lunz hydrobiology courses (1908), and in 1911 they were able to move into their new house next to the station building. Unfortunately, the First World War put an end to all of this: Ruttner, like many of his Austrian and German colleagues, was called up to “fight epidemics”, the station was closed, and after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 1918, the family of the patron Kupelwieser was largely impoverished .
Interwar period
In 1920 the station was put back into operation, but under miserable circumstances: salaries could not be paid, equipment and literature could not be bought. Nevertheless, the Republic of Austria was interested in the continued existence of the institution that had started so promisingly. In a certainly dramatic conference called in 1924 in Lunz, the now aged founder Carl Kupelwieser succeeded in putting the financing of the Lunz Biological Station (BSL) on a new basis. Kupelwieser's old relationships with scientists from the German Empire were undoubtedly useful: The Kaiser Wilhelm Society , the forerunner of today's Max Planck Society, and its counterpart, the Austrian Academy of Sciences , agreed to jointly cover the costs in future through a BSL association to wear. Salary items at that time were only the manager Franz Ruttner and as a laboratory assistant Sepp Aigner (1895–1958; with wife Walburga, 1893–1990). The station building was able to be extended for the first time as early as 1926. A guest house on the nearby Rattnerfeld was planned, but never realized.
A wealth of scientific achievements were made at the biological station - after all, it resulted in more than 1250 scientific publications by the guests and the staff. Mention should be made of the first limnological research expedition to the tropics (Indonesia, 1928–1929) under the direction of Franz Ruttner. Since 1926, "Lunz" has also been a station of the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics in Vienna; weather data from this area have been available since 1898 . Under the meteorologist Wilhelm Schmidt (1883–1936), the “Central European Cold Pole” was discovered in a large sinkhole on a mountain pasture on the Hetzkogel in the early 1930s. In this sinkhole, due to a special air stratification, it can sometimes be below −50 ° C in late winter, which suddenly gave Lunz a further, but often misunderstood, meaning. Ten years later, for example, the German Wehrmacht nonsensically set up a test station for "Siberia-compatible" tank engines.
The following years brought a moderate upswing, a second laboratory assistant, Karl Herrmann, and in 1934 the hydrochemist Franz Berger (1903-2000) could be employed. Well-known guests from the interwar period included: Helmut Gams (mosses, lichens, algae, pollen, moors, plant communities, diluvium and alluvium ), Lothar Geitler (blue-green algae, diatoms, cytology), Edith Kann (ecology of blue-green algae ), Wilhelm Kühnelt (1905 –1988 - ecology: mollusks, insects; soil biology), Erwin Schimitschek (1898–1983 - silviculture, forest insects), Vincenz Brehm (1879–1971 - Copepoda ; animal geography: continental drift ), Franz Sauberer (light conditions under water). After the “ Anschluss ” the flow of visitors was of course largely limited to “ Reich Germans ”; the courses took place until 1944 and the station operations continued, thanks in part to those who had been bombed out and evacuated, such as Thienemann and Brehm. After the war, the latter even found his home in the station building after the war, chased from Cheb . Ruttner would soon have reached retirement age and a young successor was already being discussed, the limnologist Heinz von Mitis. But this fell in the war in 1942.
After the Second World War
After the end of the war, no suitable successor could be found for the head of the biological station. So Franz Ruttner was forced to continue. In 1948, the two Ruttner sons Friedrich (1915–1998) and Hans (1919–1979) created a “Bee Genetics” working group at the station, which was spun off as the “Institute for Apiculture” in 1957 and its own building in 1970, also in Lunz , received. In 1952 the station was generously expanded: a further floor was added to create a lecture hall, and the attic became a camp for students. During the course ( Wilhelm Marinelli wrote about the “climate” in 1952) Ruttner found support from Franz Berger, Vincenz Brehm and his daughter-in-law Agnes Ruttner-Kolisko (1911–1992), the wife of the geologist Anton Ruttner (1911–2006). Frequent guest researchers during these years were: Max Hartmann , Felix Mainx (1900–1983; fly geneticist - at that time Mainx, who fled Prague in 1946, was considered a remnant of Nazi science, whereas today he is seen more as “30 years too early” can) as well as Lothar Geitler, Edith Kann and Wilhelm Kühnelt. Courses came again from the FRG - in honor of Franz Ruttner, the great SIL congress (Societas internationalis limnologorum, International Society of Limnology ) took place in Vienna and Lunz in 1959 - Ruttner was already 78.
Problems and end
In 1957, on the occasion of Franz Ruttner's retirement, the Carinthian limnologist Ingo Findeegg was entrusted with the management of the ward. Like so many scholars of the time, including Brehm and Kann among those already mentioned, Findegg had previously worked as a high school teacher. He headed the station for ten years and, in particular, carried out primary production studies using the C14 method . Under him the staff was increased by a carpenter and a laboratory assistant. But soon he saw the “potential” of Lunz as a “research landscape” due to the small size of the area as quite exhausted - which made it easier for his successor, Heinz Löffler , to consider closing the biological station - in favor of a new limnological station Institute on Mondsee , where the Lunz Biological Station already owned a plot of land. Because such a plan had already surfaced in 1926 when the aim was to convert the Lunzer See into a storage facility for a power station on the Ybbs, which failed due to the resistance of the population, but probably also because of insufficient use. A replacement plot of land had already been purchased at that time. The fact that the relatively small Lunzer See (0.68 km²) still offered countless possibilities for research (e.g. its ciliate fauna has never been investigated) was exemplified by Otto Siebeck , PhD student from Ruttner, with his work on the bank escape of the plankton (1958). Siebeck could have been the ideal successor to Ruttner if the responsible ministry hadn't suddenly raised objections to the Munich resident (as a "foreigner").
Provisional continuation
Some of his employees opposed Heinz Löffler's plan to move the station entirely to the Mondsee, but above all Löffler's deputy on site, Prof. Agnes Ruttner-Kolisko. In the end, she even succeeded in getting a new station manager from the Minister of Science Hertha Firnberg for the period after her retirement in 1972. Löffler built the Limnological Institute at Mondsee (1980–1981), but the Lunz Biological Station was retained - with the new department head Gernot Bretschko from Graz ( Roland Pechlan's student at the University of Innsbruck) from 1977. An extension to the station building was built and the glass houses demolished as a result of the first oil crisis (1984) because heating it in winter was too expensive. Bretschko directed the focus of the research - quite contemporary - to flowing waters , the hydrology and ecology of which could also be well investigated in the Lunz area. He introduced methodologically important innovations in sampling, but soon neglected the relationships with guest researchers, without which the station's reputation suffered significantly. Finally, after Bretschko's early death in 2002, it was finally given up by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (the decision to do so had been in place since 1997).
closure
In 2003 the academy closed the traditional station in Lunz. The narrowing of the view to their personal “specialist areas” had made Findegg, Löffler and Bretschko lose sight of the overall ecological diversity of the region around Lunz. The view of nature as a whole, which had been the godfather of Kupelwieser's time, had been lost. Those responsible at the Austrian Academy of Sciences also pursued other goals, especially after the death of the ecologist Wilhelm Kühnelt in 1988. The change in the task of limnological research in 2006 led to the dissolution of the Max Planck Institute for Limnology in Plön and the closure of the Schlitz limnological river station .
Further use
The building of the Lunz Biological Station was unused until it was adapted and integrated into the Lunz water cluster in 2010. After the adaptation by the state of Lower Austria, the library can also be used again and is also integrated into the network of Austrian libraries. In the “Bootshaus” (lake laboratory), courses were held without interruption and even after the reopening in 2011, teaching activities in the lake laboratory continued. Research is being continued within the framework of the Wassercluster Lunz - Biologische Station GmbH , a cooperation between the University of Vienna , the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, and the Danube University Krems - in the spirit of the founders of the Biological Station Lunz as an interdisciplinary research facility. For this purpose, the state of Lower Austria (governor Erwin Pröll ) and the city of Vienna (mayor Michael Häupl ) have adapted the former "guest house" (state youth home) on the south bank of the lake, which thanks to its size offers more possibilities than the old "Kupelwiesersche Stiftung" which, after being adapted in 2011, will be used again for research and teaching as the second site of the Lunz water cluster.
Kupelwieser's descendant, Hans Kupelwieser, criticized the type of demolition of the listed building . An unnecessarily large amount is said to have been torn down.
literature
- Biological Station Lunz (Kupelwiesersche Foundation) in: Eckart Henning , Marion Kazemi : Handbook on the history of the institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm / Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science 1911–2011 - data and sources , Berlin 2016, 2 volumes, volume 1: Institutes and research centers A – L ( online, PDF, 75 MB ), pages 261–265 (chronology of the station at the time it was part of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Research Center WasserCluster Lunz
- ↑ F. Sauberer and F. Ruttner (1941): The light conditions of the inland waters.- Akad. Verl.-Ges. Lpz.
- ^ Wilhelm Marinelli: The biological station at Lunz am See and the zoology. East Zool. Line 4 (1952): 1-7.
- ^ Franz Ruttner: 50 Years Biological Station Lunz. Self-published, 1956
- ↑ Alois Herzig and Fritz Schiemer: In Memoriam Gernot Bretschko (1938–2002). Limnologica 32 (4), December 2002, pp. 289-292
- ↑ WasserCluster opened in Lunz am See , Research Center WasserCluster Lunz
- ^ Criticism of the demolition of the Lunz Biological Station on ORF Lower Austria from August 1, 2010, accessed on August 1, 2010
Web links
- Website of the former Biological Station Lunz ( Memento from September 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- Entry about Schloss Seehof in Lower Austria Burgen online - Institute for Reality Studies of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, University of Salzburg
Coordinates: 47 ° 51 '16.3 " N , 15 ° 4' 5.3" E