Hans-Günther Däßler

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Hans-Günther Däßler (born April 1, 1925 in Benau, Lower Silesia ) is a German plant chemist and pollution researcher who mainly dealt with the effects of sulfur dioxide emissions on trees and forests. From 1968 to 1990 he was a full professor and full professor for plant chemistry at the Tharandt Forest Science Section of the Technical University of Dresden . In 1965, under Däßler's responsibility, the Tharandt Institute for Plant and Wood Chemistry introduced permanent measuring networks in the Ore Mountains and the Elbe Sandstone Mountains to record sulfur dioxide and dust .

education

Däßler was born on April 1st, 1925 in Benau / Lower Silesia. His father was a veterinarian, his mother a pharmacist. From 1931 to 1935 he attended the elementary school Freital, and from 1935 to 1943 the humanistic Vitzthum-Gymnasium in Dresden. After graduating from high school, Däßler did military service from 1943 to 1945. In 1945 he was taken prisoner by the Soviets and was released that same year.

From 1946 to 1951 Däßler studied chemistry at the University of Dresden. In 1951 he graduated from Heinrich Wienhaus with a thesis on the chemical investigation of the extracts of black alder wood and became a scientific assistant at the Institute for Plant Chemistry and Wood Research. From 1953 he completed additional studies in toxicology at the Medical Academy "Carl Gustav Carus" in Dresden. In 1954 he became a lecturer at the Faculty of Forestry. In the same year he began his dissertation on Mentofuran and its autoxidation with Heinrich Wienhaus, and was awarded a Dr. rer. nat doctorate. He then worked for a year and a half at the Gröditz pulp mill. In 1957 he became senior assistant at the Institute for Plant Chemistry and Wood Research. Also in 1957 he began his habilitation thesis at Heinrich Wienhaus: On the effect of sulfur dioxide on terpenes and plant waxes - a contribution to the chemistry of smoke damage .

Professional activity

In 1958 Heinrich Wienhaus suggested to his senior assistant "to bring smoke damage research back to life". This meant that Däßler should bring the smoke damage research, which was carried out between 1952 and 1961 by Erich Zieger and the Institute for Forest Protection, back to the Institute for Plant Chemistry and Wood Research. Erich Zieger died in 1960, five years before his expected retirement, and the faculty council then decided to set up a lectureship for the "chemistry of smoke damage and forest protection". In 1961 Däßler received his habilitation. On April 26, 1961, the faculty proposed to assign the lectureship for the "Chemistry of Smoke Damage" to the Institute for Plant and Wood Chemistry, and no longer to the Institute for Forest Use and Forest Protection, and suggested that Däßler be appointed to it. The German Academy for Agricultural Sciences and the faculty jointly commissioned Däßler with the coordination and management of smoke damage research from May 26, 1961. Däßler then transported the research documents from the Institute for Forest Use and Forest Protection to the Institute for Plant and Wood Chemistry. The third conference of forest smoke damage experts in Tharandt on July 24, 1961, was organized by the Institute for Forest Use and Forest Protection.

On December 1, 1961, at the instigation of the Ministry of Science and Technology, a smoke damage research department was set up at the Institute for Plant Chemistry and Wood Research , and Däßler was appointed to head it. From then on she published under the name “Arbeitsgemeinschaft Forstliche Rauchschadenforschung Tharandt.” The first publication was Däßler's essay: Problems of Forest Smoke Damage Research . In this Däßler explicitly linked to the work of Erich Zieger .

In 1962 and 1963 Däßler was responsible for the second and third phases of the construction of a smoke damage test field initiated by Erich Zieger near the Warnsdorf spring in the Tharandt forest . In 1963 he was appointed professor with a teaching position. In the same year he became a co-founder of the central commission “keeping the air clean”; from 1964 to 1970 he was a member of the board. He was also accepted into the group of international smoke damage experts established by Karl Friedrich Wentzel in 1957 , which met every two years for conferences. In 1963, new knowledge about causes, distribution routes and smoke damage in the Eastern Ore Mountains was available. The spa town of Seiffen located there was to be aggressively expanded into a tourist resort from 1960 onwards. But Seiffen was in the expected center of the new smoke damage area. Däßler took this as an opportunity to send a memorandum on the situation in the Eastern Ore Mountains to the Central Committee of the SED , the State Planning Commission and various ministries on February 12, 1964 . The memorandum met with interest. In 1964 the German Academy for Agriculture included the Ore Mountains in a large area diagnosis.

In 1965, the Institute for Plant and Wood Chemistry began to set up its own, continuously operated measuring network to record sulfur dioxide emissions. From 1966 Däßler took part in the meetings of the working group "Keeping the air clean" of the GDR / CSSR Economic Committee, which was formed on the initiative of the Secretary for Economic Affairs of the Central Committee of the GDR. The economic committee prevented solutions to lower emissions; Negotiations with the CSSR were therefore transferred to the Ministry for the Environment.

In 1968 Däßler became the chair for plant chemistry at the Technical University of Dresden. He was appointed head of the plant chemistry division of the forestry section, which replaced the faculty after the third university reform in the GDR. The forestry section became the main contractor for the complex state plan task “keeping the air clean”. Their goal was to summarize the fragmented research and avoid duplicate research approaches. Däßler became its head. He had about 20 subcontractors for the topics of keeping the air clean, exhaust gas desulphurisation, exhaust gas dedusting, catalytic post-combustion, vehicle exhaust gases, corrosion protection, meteorological aspects, measuring methods and devices, and coordinating forest and agricultural smoke damage research. However, from 1970 Däßler no longer received a permit for western travel; The reason for the rejection was that, as a non-member of the SED, Däßler would get too far-reaching insight into all economic policy measures that arise in connection with the smoke damage problem. Between 1970 and 1975, over 52 million million euros flowed into the state plan task. It was of course established that a decisive reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions could only be expected from 2020, when the Bohemian basin is charred because of the large-scale and economically viable methods of removing Sulfur dioxide from power plant exhaust gases were not available.

In 1972 the Technical University of Dresden was given the task of coordinating the research topic of the Council for Mutual Economic Aid "Influence of air pollution on forest communities and agrobiocenoses". Däßler became the coordinator of the project. Research institutes from the USSR, CSSR, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria were involved in the research topic. In addition, from 1974 to 1978 he was a member of the Scientific Council for the international research program "Protection of Nature" in Pressburg. The perspective plan of the Forest Sciences Section from 1975 provided that smoke damage research would have to deal with the following individual topics: resistance testing and increase in resistance of individual tree species, recording of damaged areas, development of management measures and recultivation of damaged areas together with resumption of wood production. Däßler and Herbert Lux attested remarkable successes to the fertilization of smoke-damaged pine trees.

In 1976 Däßler published a teaching and overview work entitled Influence of air pollution on vegetation. Causes - effects - countermeasures , on which Siegfried Börtitz, Eberhard Ewert, Eitel Liebold, Herbert Lux, Horst Ranft, Friedrich Reuter and Gebhard Rühle worked alongside him. The book was last published in its fourth edition in 1991. A Hungarian edition was published in 1979, a Russian edition in 1981, and an English edition in the Netherlands in 1988. Däßler was again not allowed to participate in the International Working Days of Forest Smoke Damage Experts in Graz in 1980 and in Oulu / Finland in 1982 .

Forest damage in 1995 near Reitzenhain

From 1981 Däßler headed constant research on the main topics of pollution damage in the ore and Elbe sandstone mountains and on new types of forest damage, as the damage caused by nitrogen oxides was described. According to a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the GDR on November 16, 1982, the research results could no longer be published. From 1983 the Institute for Plant and Wood Chemistry under the direction of Däßler set up a permanent measuring station in Oberbärenburg in the Eastern Ore Mountains to record sulfur dioxide emissions. Shortly after it was commissioned, the power supply went out for months. In the final report of the Forest Science Section from 1988, it was only possible to establish that the measuring network is absolutely out of date because there were no functioning measuring devices and the ozone and nitrogen oxide levels could not be recorded. In a three-part series on environmental pollution, SPIEGEL referred to Däßler's findings from 1978.

Däßler, a member of the National Democratic Party of Germany (NDPD) since 1950 , spoke in May 1987 as a delegate at the 13th NDPD party congress about the protection of the natural environment and the growing environmental awareness in the GDR. On September 1, 1991 Däßler retired. Otto Wienhaus was appointed as his successor. He took over the professorship for natural product chemistry and ecotoxicology and worked on the chemical fundamentals of forest damage research until his retirement in 2002.

Publications

  • Problems of forest smoke damage research. Biological Zentralblatt 82, 1963, 217 - 228.
  • On the informative value of experimental resistance tests. Forestry Archives 16, 1967, 781-785.
  • with G. Stein: Air analysis investigations in the ore and Elbe sandstone mountains with constantly operated SO 2 and dust measuring points. Air and refrigeration technology 7, 1968, 315 - 318.
  • with G. Stein: The forest damage diagnosis in the Ore and Elbe Sandstone Mountains 1964/64. Scientific journal of the Technical University of Dresden 5, 1968, 1397–1404.
  • On the current status of exhaust gas desulphurization. Socialist Forestry 20, 1970, 374-375.
  • with Siegfried Börtitz, Eberhard Ewert, Eitel Liebold, Herbert Lux, Horst Ranft, Friedrich Reuter, Gebhard Rühle: Influence of air pollution on vegetation. Causes - Effects - Countermeasures , 1st edition Jena 1976; 4th edition Jena 1991.
  • with F. Reuter: The influence of fluorocarbons on pome fruit trees; especially the apple fruit. Investigations into the resistance of the pome fruit trees to gaseous fluorine compounds. Archives for Horticulture 31, 6, 1983, 299 - 314.
  • with F. Reuter: The influence of fluorocarbons on pome fruit trees; especially on the apple fruit - Part II. The influence of fluorocarbons on the growth and yield of various apple varieties. Archives for Horticulture 31, 7, 1983, 333 - 340.
  • with F. Reuter: The influence of fluorocarbons on pome fruit trees; especially on the apple fruit - Part III. Investigations on fluorine accumulation in the vegetative and generative organs of pome fruit trees. Archives for Horticulture 31, 7, 1983, 341 - 353.

literature

  • Heiner Hegewald: plant chemistry, wood chemistry, pollution research, agricultural chemistry. The Tharandt Chemical Institute - past and present. Dresden 2010.
  • Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-647-31717-5 , p. 108 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  • Hans-Günther Däßler: Problems of forest smoke damage research. Biological Zentralblatt 82, 217-228, 1963.
  • Peter Wensierski : We are afraid for our children . Der Spiegel, year 1985, issue 28, 29, 30.
  • Erich Zieger : smoke damage in the forest. Scientific journal of the Technical University of Dresden 3, 1953/1954, 271 - 280.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Heiner Hegewald: Plant chemistry, wood chemistry, pollution research, agricultural chemistry. The Tharandt Chemical Institute - past and present. Dresden 2010, p. 56.
  2. ↑ a b Heiner Hegewald: plant chemistry, wood chemistry, pollution research, agricultural chemistry. The Tharandt Chemical Institute - past and present. Dresden 2010 p. 100.
  3. ↑ Erich Zieger: Smoke damage in the forest. Scientific journal of the Technical University of Dresden 3, 1953/1954, 271 - 280.
  4. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 76.
  5. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 108.
  6. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 94.
  7. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 109.
  8. ↑ a b c d Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 110.
  9. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015 p. 148.
  10. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 114.
  11. ↑ Hans-Günther Däßler: Problems of forest smoke damage research. Biological Zentralblatt 82, 1963, 217 - 228 ,.
  12. ↑ Hans-Günther Däßler: Problems of forest smoke damage research. Biological Zentralblatt 82, 1963, 217-228 [219 o., 228 u.].
  13. ↑ a. A. Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 114.
  14. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 122.
  15. ↑ Heiner Hegewald: Plant chemistry, wood chemistry, pollution research, agricultural chemistry. The Tharandt Chemical Institute - past and present. Dresden 2010, pp. 57, 100.
  16. ↑ a b Heiner Hegewald: plant chemistry, wood chemistry, pollution research, agricultural chemistry. The Tharandt Chemical Institute - past and present. Dresden 2010, p. 57.
  17. ↑ a b Heiner Hegewald: plant chemistry, wood chemistry, pollution research, agricultural chemistry. The Tharandt Chemical Institute - past and present. Dresden 2010, p. 101.
  18. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 121 f.
  19. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 126 f.
  20. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 131 f.
  21. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 131.
  22. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 132.
  23. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 226.
  24. ^ A b Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 228.
  25. ↑ Heiner Hegewald: Plant chemistry, wood chemistry, pollution research, agricultural chemistry. The Tharandt Chemical Institute - past and present. Dresden 2010, pp. 58, 101.
  26. ↑ a b Heiner Hegewald: plant chemistry, wood chemistry, pollution research, agricultural chemistry. The Tharandt Chemical Institute - past and present. Dresden 2010, p. 58.
  27. ^ A b Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 149.
  28. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 158.
  29. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 147.
  30. ^ A b Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 150.
  31. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 151.
  32. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 161
  33. ↑ a b c Heiner Hegewald: Plant chemistry, wood chemistry, pollution research, agricultural chemistry. The Tharandt Chemical Institute - past and present. Dresden 2010, p. 59.
  34. ^ A b c Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 298.
  35. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 242 f.
  36. ↑ Tobias Huff: Nature and Industry in Socialism. An environmental history of the GDR. Göttingen 2015, p. 298 f.
  37. ↑ Peter Wensierski: We are afraid for our children. Der Spiegel, born 1985, issue 28.
  38. ↑ NDPD members exchanging experiences . In: Neues Deutschland , May 9, 1987, p. 5.
  39. ↑ Heiner Hegewald: Plant chemistry, wood chemistry, pollution research, agricultural chemistry. The Tharandt Chemical Institute - past and present. Dresden 2010, p. 66.
personal data
SURNAME Däßler, Hans-Günther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German plant chemist and pollution researcher as well as university professor
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Benau, Lower Silesia