Gerd Diesselhorst

Gerd Diesselhorst (born October 28, 1911 , † July 11, 2008 in Tutzing ) was a German ornithologist . For many years he was a curator in the ornithological department of the Zoological State Collection in Munich .

Life

Diesselhorst was the son of the physics professor Hermann Dießelhorst (1870–1961). He grew up with his two brothers, who died in World War II, in Braunschweig and developed a great fascination for nature as a schoolboy. He was particularly interested in the avifauna in the Riddagshäuser Teiche nature reserve near Braunschweig- Gliesmarode and in the Lüneburg Heath . After completing his Abitur in 1930, he completed a degree in zoology, first in Greifswald and finally at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , where he received his doctorate in 1938 with his dissertation “Listening tests on fish without Weber's apparatus” by the later Nobel Prize winner Karl von Frisch . In 1939 Diesselhorst became a member of the German Ornithological Society , where he held the office of secretary from 1949 to 1951. At the beginning of the Second World War , Diesselhorst took part in the French and Russian campaigns as a Wehrmacht soldier . After being seriously wounded in 1942, he spent a long time in a Belgian hospital. After the war, Diesselhorst continued his ornithological work. A first research assignment from the German Research Foundation took him to the Amperauen , where he made field observations of color-ringed golden hammer and reed warbler . In his study, Diesselhorst found that the bathers on the Amperufer were a major problem because they destroyed the nests of the goldenhammer and blackcap . In 1951 he took over from Alfred Louis Laubmann (1886–1965) the management of the ornithological department of the Zoological State Collection in Munich, an office which he held until his retirement in 1973. From 1955 to 1965 he was editor of the magazine Die Vogelwarte . In 1961 he accompanied the herpetologist Walter Hellmich on the Munich Himalayan expedition, where he studied the bird life of central and eastern Nepal under difficult conditions. About this he published in 1968 the work "Contributions to the ecology of the birds of Central and Eastern Nepal" from the book series "Khumbu Himal". A total of 41 ornithological publications by Diesselhorst are known, including adaptations in the “Handbuch der Biologie, Vol. VI / 2”, in the two-volume “Knaurs Tierleben von A – Z” as well as in Eugen Schuhmacher's books on the films The Last Paradises and Europe's Paradises , where he was involved in the zoological-lexigraphic sections alongside Theodor Haltorth , Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt , Walter Hellmich and Thomas Schultze-Westrum .

literature

• Görge Hohlt: Obituary: Gerd Diesselhorst (1911–2008) In: Vogelwarte 47 (2009), p. 261