Hans Georg Amsel

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Hans Georg Amsel (sometimes also Hans-Georg Amsel or Georg Amsel ; born March 29, 1905 , † October 20, 1999 ) was a German entomologist . He emerged as a specialist in small butterflies and headed the entomological department of the State Museum for Natural History in Karlsruhe from 1955 to 1973 .

Life and accomplishments

He was the son of the philologist Georg Amsel and was born in Berlin in 1933 with the dissertation The Lepidoptera Fauna of Palestine . A zoogeographical-ecological-faunistic study is doing his doctorate . In 1955 he became the first head of the newly created entomological department at the State Museum of Natural History in Karlsruhe . He held this position until his retirement in 1973 and was then a long-term volunteer at the museum. As a specialist in small butterflies (Microlepidoptera), Amsel laid the foundation for the internationally important microlepidoptera collection of the SMNK. In this context he was the initiator and, together with Reinhard Gaedike (* 1942), also the editor of the book series "Microlepidoptera palearctica", which has been published since 1965, a standard work of ten volumes on the small butterflies of the Palearctic fauna region . For his research he undertook two expeditions to Afghanistan in 1956 and 1966 .

The German Society for General and Applied Entomology (DGaaE) awarded him the Fabricius Medal in 1980 for his scientific life's work . In 1986 Amsel was the first recipient of the Ernst Jünger Prize for Entomology from the State of Baden-Württemberg for significant achievements in the field of entomology. Jünger and Amsel met in Berlin in 1928 and remained on friendly terms until the writer's death on February 17, 1998. A document of these decades-long friendship is the self-published text Encounters with Ernst Jünger , written by Amsel on the occasion of Jünger's 88th birthday in 1983 .

The ideological ideas that Amsel spread apart from his entomological work are controversial. In his book, for example, he represented money and crime. A Contribution to Institutional Thinking (1965) the view that the availability of cash , in particular, promotes crimes of all kinds. As a remedy, he suggested switching to completely cashless payment transactions, documented by the executing banks. At that time, he was quite right to see that it was only a technical question of how one could master the vast amounts of checks that would then arise with the help of electronic data processing systems . While reviewers were able to classify this book as “curious”, Amsel’s other journalistic activities are far less harmless in circles of the extreme right. He was the author of the revanchist magazine Die Bauernschaft published by Thies Christophersen between 1968 and 1997 and the right-wing extremist monthly Staatsbriefe published by Hans-Dietrich Sander from 1990 onwards . He was also a member of the scientific advisory board of the " Society for Biological Anthropology, Eugenics and Behavioral Research " (GBA) - whose chairman had been the well-known right-wing extremist Jürgen Rieger since it was founded in 1972 - and its publication organ, the journal Neue Anthropologie. Inheritance and responsibility .

Hans Georg Amsel lived in Waldbronn .

Fonts

  • The lepidopteran fauna of Palestine. A zoogeographical-ecological-faunistic study . Dissertation. Berlin 1933. Printed in: Zoogeographica , Volume 2, Issue 1. Jena 1933.
  • Small butterflies from Ethiopia . In: Stuttgart contributions to natural history from the State Museum for Natural History in Stuttgart , No. 121. Stuttgart 1963.
  • Money and crime. A contribution to institutional thinking . Stettenfels Castle near Heilbronn am Neckar, 1965.
  • as co-author and editor together with Reinhard Gaedike : Microlepidoptera palaearctica . Karlsruhe, Keltern and Vienna 1965ff (several volumes with different publishers).
  • To the knowledge of the microlepidoptera fauna of Karachi [Pakistan] . In: Stuttgart contributions to natural history from the State Museum for Natural History in Stuttgart , No. 191. Stuttgart 1968.
  • Downside of money. A contribution to institutional thinking . Wiesbaden 1976, ISBN 3-88027-711-7 .
  • Encounters with Ernst Jünger. Memories on the occasion of his 88th birthday on March 29, 1983 . Waldbronn near Karlsruhe 1983.

literature

  • Reinhard Gaedike : On the death of Hans Georg Amsel . In: Reinhard Gaedike (ed.): Microlepidoptera Palaearctica 10, Goecke & Evers, Keltern 2000, pp. 8-10.
  • Günter Ebert: Dr. Hans-Georg Amsel † 1905–1999 . In: carolinea , 59/2001, pp. 173-174.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Brief portrait of the SMNK , accessed on January 13, 2008.
  2. ^ Günter Ebert: Dr. Hans-Georg Amsel † 1905–1999 . In: carolinea , 59/2001, pp. 173-174.
  3. Hans Peter Bull : No cash, no crime? A curious suggestion from a private scholar to make the world more civilized . In: Die Zeit , No. 42/1967
  4. a b Future No. 9, June / July 1999 , accessed on January 13, 2008.
  5. ^ Anti-fascist press archive and education center Berlin e. V. (apabiz e.V.) , accessed on January 13, 2008.