Fritz Jürgen Obst

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Fritz Jürgen Obst (born April 3, 1939 in Dresden ; † June 10, 2018 in Radebeul ) was a German herpetologist and museum director. His main interests were snakes and turtles .

Life

Obst lost his father at the age of four and grew up as a half-orphan in war-torn Dresden. After graduating from high school, he intended to study biology , but could not leave town because of his mother in need of care. Instead, he studied art education and history . Then he practiced the teaching profession. After his mother's death in 1964, he took the opportunity to study biology at the University of Leipzig , which he completed in 1968 with a diploma thesis on taxonomic studies on European tortoises (Reptilia: Testudinidae) using serological-immunological methods .

In 1964, Obst married his wife Ingeborg, who died in 2012. From this marriage a son was born. During his studies he already worked as a volunteer and from 1966 as a part-time employee at the Museum für Tierkunde Dresden . In 1968 he became curator of the herpetological collection, which was largely destroyed after the war. His numerous relationships with museums and institutes at home and abroad were very helpful in rebuilding the collection, and his contacts with the University of Leipzig made it possible for the Dresden Museum to take over the dissolved collection of the Leipzig Zoological Institute.

Obst undertook numerous study and collecting trips that took him to Eastern Europe , Mongolia , Tajikistan , Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan , among others . The herpetofauna of the former Soviet republics is now a focus of the Dresden Museum's collection. As a GDR scientist, Obst also had the opportunity to travel to non-socialist countries. He visited Austria , the Netherlands , Switzerland and, from the mid-1980s, the Federal Republic of Germany . In 1993 there was an incident in Madagascar in which, as a result of serious misunderstandings, Obst and his excursion companions were shot at by a Malagasy police patrol. Two of the excursion participants lost their lives and fruit largely went blind in the left eye.

At the end of the 1980s he became deputy director of the Dresden Zoo. In December 1994 he succeeded Gerhard Mathé (1938–1994) as acting director of the museum and in June 1995 as director. Under his direction, the Adolf Bernhard Meyer Building was built in the Klotzsche district of Dresden , a state-of-the-art research and collection depot for three state museums. In June 2000 the Tierkundemuseum Dresden, the Museum für Mineralogie und Geologie Dresden and the Naturhistorische Zentralbibliothek Dresden were merged to form the State Natural History Collections . In December of the same year, Obst was awarded the title of professor by the Saxon state government for his services. He was the museum's executive director until his retirement in 2001.

In 1958 Obst became a member of the Salamander organization, from which the German Society for Herpetology and Terrarium Science (DGHT) emerged in 1964 . In 1959 he co-founded the specialist group for herpetology and terrarium science in the Kulturbund der DDR , which, thanks to Obst's initiative, became the first DGHT urban group in eastern Germany after the fall of the Wall in 1990. Fruit was primarily about making the DGHT popular in the new federal states. In 1999/2000, under his leadership, the dice snake was reintroduced in the Elbe Valley near Meißen .

For the book Bergmannsleuchter - Sächsisches Zinn in a special form , he and his co-author Bernd Sparmann were awarded the Saxon State Prize for Local Research in 2015.

In 2018, Obst held his last exhibition Amphibios - The Miracle of Metamorphosis in the Museum of West Lusatia Kamenz , for which he also published a booklet. He died after a long and serious illness on June 10, 2018. The burial took place on July 10, 2018 at the Radebeul-West cemetery .

Dedication names

In 1998 Uwe Fritz , Britta Andreas and Edgar Lehr named the subspecies Cuora mouhotii obsti of the three- keeled hinge turtle in honor of fruit.

Fonts (selection)

  • with Walter Meusel : Die Landschildkroten Europa , 1963 (a total of 6 editions until 1978)
  • with Hans-Albert Pederzani (Ed.): Schildkröten , 1980
  • with Wolf-Eberhard Engelmann : With a forked tongue. From the biology and cultural history of snakes , 1981 (English edition: Snakes. Biology, Behavior and Relationship to Man , 1982)
  • Ear turtles. The genus Chrysemys , 1983
  • with Klaus Richter and Udo Jacob: Lexikon der Terraristik und Herpetologie , 1984 (English edition: The Completely Illustrated Atlas of Reptiles and Amphibians for the Terrarium , 1988)
  • The World of Turtles , 1985 (English edition: Turtles, Tortoises and Terrapins , 1986)
  • with Wolf-Eberhard Engelmann, Jürgen Fritsche, Rainer Günther: Lurche und Kriechtiere Europas , 1985 (2nd improved edition 1993)
  • The amphibians and reptiles of Germany , 1996
  • with Bernd Sparmann: Bergmannsleuchter - Saxon pewter in a special form , 2015
  • Amphibios - from the miracle of transformation , 2008

literature

  • Wolfgang Bischoff: Fritz Jürgen Obst (1939-2018). In: Wolfgang Bischoff (ed.): The history of herpetology and terrarium science in the German-speaking area - II , Mertensiella. Supplement to SALAMANDRA, No. 27, August 2018, pp. 383–388
  • Wolfgang Bischoff, Uwe Prokoph, Wolf-Eberhard Engelmann & Wolfgang Böhme : Personalia: In memory of Prof. Fritz Jürgen Obst (1939–2018). In: Secretary: Contributions to the literature and history of herpetology and terrarium science, working group Literature and history of herpetology and terrarium science in the German Society for Herpetology and Terrarium Science (Ed.), No. 19, 2019, pp. 59–72

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Fruit, Fritz Jürgen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German herpetologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH June 10, 2018
Place of death Radebeul