Hans Kramer (forester)

Hans Kramer

Hans Kramer (born July 13, 1896 in Voigtshof , Kr.Rößel , ( Warmia ); † January 11, 1982 in Lüneburg ) was a German forester. As a master moose hunter from 1938 to 1945, he was in charge of the Elk Forest Supreme Forestry Office with its more than 100,000 hectare state hunting ground on the Curonian Lagoon.

Life

Hans Kramer came from an old East Prussian family of Salzburg exiles . His maternal grandfather was Theodor Tolki, an honorary citizen of Neidenburg. His father, the domain tenant and bailiff Richard Kramer, awakened his love for nature in his early childhood and introduced him to hunting and fishing. After visiting the Collegium Fridericianum in Königsberg, he joined the 1st Masurian Field Artillery Regiment No. 73 at the beginning of the First World War .

After the war he studied forest science at the Eberswalde Forest Academy and the Kgl. Prussian Forest Academy Hannoversch Münden . He also spent a few semesters at the Albertus University in Königsberg . He finished his legal clerkship in the Prussian state forest administration in 1924 with the Great State Forest Examination. He then worked for a year as the rector's assistant at his former school in Eberswalde. In 1925 he took over the management of the Pfeil forestry in the district of Labiau in his East Prussian homeland . Kramer renovated this forest office situated on the northern edge of the Lithuanian Lehmreviere by with high pending in this area groundwater , the drainage ditch located spacious and brought the liberated from the water storage forests to stunning growth. He won the “Bey von Szerszantinnen and Skierniewice” with the Great Prophet .

Elk enclosure

Forest Office Arrow

→ Main article : Moose forest

In addition to his forestry work, Hans Kramer developed into an excellent expert on moose . The largest deer species in the world was still native to his forestry office and the surrounding region. Reichsjägermeister Hermann Göring therefore appointed him elk hunter master in 1937. In this position, which was not an authority, but rather an advisory task, Hans Kramer was responsible for the care of the entire German elk. The ordinance of a full three-year closed season for Elche, which the Chief President Ernst Siehr had enforced on his own initiative, was a blessing .

When the Oberforstamt Elchwald was newly created on April 1, 1938, Kramer took over its management in the rank of chief forest master . In his dual function as the head of the forestry office and master elk hunter, he made a significant contribution to increasing the elk population, which had previously been threatened with extinction several times in the region, to 1,400 by 1939. Kramer himself was an outstanding hunter - Oberstjägermeister Ulrich Scherping once called him a “master of the hunt”. Despite the hunting demands of German and foreign guests, a successful effort to synthesize hunting, nature conservation and forestry could be seen in the elk forest .

Nazi era

For Kramer, in his high forest management function, party membership was inevitable. As a helmet -member he was after the " seizure of power " Hitler automatically in the SA assumed was from 1933 to 1939 SA reservist and, from 1937, SA upper squad leader. On May 1, 1937, he also joined the NSDAP . However, this was seen as a purely protective measure: Kramer defended his officials from persecution by the party organs, never showed the “ German greeting ” and suffered greatly from various requests made by the National Socialists. Every time Göring visited him in his forestry office, he quickly put the best trophies in the attic and hung average antlers in their place so as not to provoke the Reichsjägermeister's well-known hunting envy. Gauleiter Erich Koch in particular did not agree with the chief forester. He not only prevented Kramer's prospect of further promotion to forest forester , but also actively pursued his recall, which he did not enforce. As a result, however, Göring distanced himself from Kramer.

post war period

The Second World War ended for Hans Kramer and his family in 1945 when they were expelled from their East Prussian homeland. The head forester came to the Lower Saxony forest administration, where he initially worked as a teacher at a forest school and head of the Neuhaus forestry office in Solling . In 1949 he took over the Hanoverian Forest Inspectorate Weserbergland and in 1954 the Forest Inspectorate Braunschweig -Land. In these functions, too, he dealt with the removal of unfavorable water conditions as well as with hunting issues. So he worked hard to ensure that the game population in the forests was kept low according to the availability of grazing. As a wood recycling advisor, Kramer worked with the Institute for Wood Research at the Technical University of Braunschweig to ensure that more hardwood is used.

After his retirement in 1961, Kramer and Hans Loeffke played a key role in setting up the East Prussian Hunting Museum, which became the East Prussian State Museum in Lüneburg. He also published under the title Elchwald. The elk forest as a source and refuge for East Prussian hunting his hunting and forest memories. The book was first published in 1963 as part of the so-called "East Prussia Trilogy" by BLV Verlag .

Kramer died in Lüneburg at the age of 85. His son Horst Kramer was a professor of forest science at the Georg-August University in Göttingen .

Honors

• Literature Prize of the German Hunting Protection Association (1963)

Fonts

• Moose forest. Land, people, hunting , 3rd edition. Jagd- und Kulturverlag, Sulzberg im Allgäu 1990, ISBN 3-925456-00-7

literature

• Andreas Gautschi : The Reichsjägermeister. Facts and legends about Hermann Göring (3rd edition). Nimrod, Hanstedt 2000, ISBN 3-927848-20-4 (also contains biographical details about Hans Kramer, especially pp. 70 and 177).
• Short biography in: Elchwald. Country - people - hunting. The elk forest as a source and refuge for East Prussian hunting . 2nd, improved edition. Jagd- und Kulturverlag, Sulzberg im Allgäu 1985, ISBN 3-925456-00-7 , p. 3 (photo on p. 2).
• NN: Forester Hans Kramer retired . In: Allgemeine Forstzeitschrift (AFZ), Volume 16, Issue 44/1961, p. 631 ISSN  0002-5860 .
• Andreas Gautschi , Horst Kramer , Jürgen Leiste : Elk hunter master Hans Kramer - pictures of a hunter's life. Edition Nimrod, Verlag J. Neumann-Neudamm, 2009, ISBN 978-3-7888-1283-6 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Kramer in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ NN: Senior Forester Hans Kramer in retirement . In: Allgemeine Forstzeitschrift (AFZ), Volume 16, Issue 44/1961, p. 631
2. ^ Andreas Gautschi: The Reichsjägermeister. Facts and legends about Hermann Göring . (3. Edition). Nimrod, Hanstedt 2000, ISBN 3-927848-20-4 , pp. 70, 112 and. 177