Ernst Röhrig (forest scientist)

Ernst Hermann Friedrich Wilhelm Röhrig (born April 21, 1921 in Potsdam ; † April 22, 2020 ) was a German forest scientist . He taught silviculture at the Georg-August University in Göttingen .

Life

Ernst Röhrig was born in 1921 as the elder of two children of the forestry council and chief forestry officer in the Hermann Röhrig government (1874–1955). The father later became head forest master in the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture, Domains and Forests in Berlin , but resigned from civil service in 1934 and took on a new job in the wood industry in Breslau . There Ernst Röhrig graduated from high school in 1939 and was drafted into the Wehrmacht after completing the Reich Labor Service . He was seriously injured in World War II , an arm had to be amputated and he was discharged from the military in March 1945. In the meantime, Röhrig's parents had fled from Breslau to the Schaumburger Land , where the father ran the Princely Landwehr Forestry Office in Bückeburg until 1949 . They took in the war-disabled son who soon after was studying forestry at the Hann. Münden began, which was affiliated with the Georg-August University of Göttingen as the forestry faculty . In 1949 Ernst Röhrig passed the diploma examination and after his legal traineeship, the state examination followed in 1951. In the same year he received his doctorate with a forest zoological dissertation for Dr. forest. and then worked until 1961 as a research assistant at the Institute for Silviculture Technology in Hann. Münden, which was managed by Adolf Olberg until 1957 and by Alfred Bonnemann after his death . In 1957 Röhrig completed his habilitation, in 1961 he was transferred to the Lauenau am Deister forestry office as a district assistant .

As part of his work at the Institute for Silviculture Technology in Hann. Münden, Röhrig went on numerous excursions with his students and maintained close connections to the forestry faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin in Eberswalde . At the beginning of December 1961, Röhrig traveled with his wife to his in-laws in West Berlin and agreed to meet with Dr. Kilias, an assistant from Eberswalde, in a café on Frankfurter Allee in East Berlin . On December 9, 1961 , the Ministry for State Security (MfS) arrested Röhrig and Kilias at the meeting location for espionage against scientific research results and human trafficking. Röhrig was sentenced to eight years in prison and, after numerous protests by international scientists, was released on March 17, 1963 as part of a prisoner exchange to the Federal Republic of Germany.

From 1964 to 1973 Röhrig headed the Lower Saxony Forestry Office in Reinhausen and from 1973 until his retirement in 1991 he was head of the forestry department of the temperate zones at the Georg-August University in Göttingen. His main research interests were the recording of ecological conditions and their effects on regeneration and growth of important forest trees as well as various silvicultural topics in cooperation with forestry practice. Together with Norbert Bartsch , Ernst Röhrig published numerous articles in specialist journals and worked on a textbook for forest ecology in Central Europe, which was published in 2016, until his 90th birthday.

Röhrig died in April 2020, one day after his 99th birthday.

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst Röhrig in the catalog of the German National Library
• Walter Habel: Who is who ?: The German who's who , Schmidt-Römhild, 2004.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Obituary notice , Göttinger Tageblatt of May 9, 2020.
2. ^ Hessian biography: Bonnemann, Alfred
3. ^ M. & H. Schaper: Forest and wood . Volume 46, 1991, pp. 188 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
4. ↑ The case of Dr. Röhrig from January 19, 1962 ( online ) in DIE ZEIT , accessed on April 9, 2017.
5. ^ Anja Mihr: Amnesty International in the GDR . Ch.links, Berlin, 2002, p. 179–180 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
6. ↑ Prof. Dr. Ernst Röhrig 90 , accessed on May 14, 2017