Helmut Schmidt-Vogt

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Helmut Schmidt-Vogt (born January 8, 1918 in Burggrub (Stockheim) , † November 2008 ) was a German forestry practitioner and forest scientist . The scientist taught and researched as a professor of silviculture at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau and was considered a specialist in the common spruce , on which he published an extensive standard work.

Live and act

After finishing school and graduating from high school in Augsburg in 1937 , Helmut Schmidt-Vogt first completed national labor and military service before he was drafted into the Wehrmacht in World War II . During his war missions he suffered four serious wounds. Therefore, from 1941 to 1945, as a severely disabled person, with interruptions , he was able to complete his degree in forestry at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . He married in 1945. His marriage to Hilde, nee Baumgärtner, had two children.

After graduating with a degree in forestry, in 1945 the traineeship in the Bavarian State Forestry Administration followed. During his legal traineeship, Helmut Schmidt-Vogt was already in charge of the Sachsenried and Denklingen forestry offices as "managing director" . In 1947 he passed the Great Forest State Examination ( Staatsexamen ).

He then worked for the Oberforstdirektion Augsburg until 1948 and then worked until 1955 in the department for silviculture and forest management of the ministerial forest department of the Bavarian State Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Forests in Munich. In 1950 he was also in Munich with Ernst Rohmeder with the dissertation The branching types of the spruce and their importance for forest plant breeding to the Dr. oec. publ. PhD . The spruce tree has kept him busy all his life.

In 1956, Schmidt-Vogt was given the management of the Upper Bavarian Forestry Office in Teisendorf , which he headed until 1964. At the same time he was also head of the State Klenge and the large plant garden in Laufen . Schmidt-Vogt used the experience he gained while looking after these facilities for his book The Quality Assessment of Forest Plants . The development of forest plants depending on genetic material and the environment and the possibilities of quality assessment (1961). With this subject he qualified as a private lecturer in 1962 with his doctoral supervisor Rohmeder at the University of Munich . At the same time, with this work he laid the basis for his later involvement in the development of the EEC standards for the external properties of forest reproductive material.

The high esteem Schmidt-Vogt enjoyed in forestry experts was also expressed in the fact that in 1964 he was appointed to the chair for silviculture at the Natural Science and Mathematics Faculty of the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. There he primarily dealt with the morphological and physiological quality of forest plants and natural regeneration in mixed mountain forests . He held the chair including the management of the associated silviculture institute until his retirement in 1986. Jürgen Huss was appointed his successor .

Helmut Schmidt-Vogt published a total of 180 articles in specialist journals . In addition, from the 1960s onwards, in collaboration with numerous other scientists, he wrote an extensive spruce monograph , the first volume of which was published in 1977. The second volume in three parts was published between 1986 and 1991. The monumental, 2,600-page presentation, for which 14,000 literature sources were evaluated, reflects the balance of the scientific life's work of its main author and has been the standard work on the subject of spruce ever since .

Helmut Schmidt-Vogt spoke out in favor of alternatives to pure spruce cultivation.

In addition, he published the treatise Natural Spruce Economy in 1991 . This was a reaction to the drastic alternating baths of appreciation that this tree species had experienced after violent storms and environmental disasters, especially in the last third of the 20th century. Particularly in nature conservation , but also in forestry circles, the spruce was downright ostracized and even publicly called for its "extermination". Schmidt-Vogt countered such radical calls for the zeitgeist with factual arguments by explaining classic mistakes in spruce farming and showing solutions for avoiding pure spruce cultivation and converting pure spruce stands .

Schmidt-Vogt regularly undertook research trips , primarily within the natural range of the spruce. The trips to the GDR , the Soviet Union , Poland , Czechoslovakia , Finland , Sweden , Hungary , Yugoslavia , Romania as well as Japan , Canada and the USA , however, also served for personal contact and exchange with the researchers there, which Schmidt-Vogt always made great Put value. That is why he also brought foreign scientists and scholarship holders to Freiburg for return visits and guest stays. In 1971 he turned down an honorable call to the chair of silviculture and forest management at the University of Munich.

Helmut Schmidt-Vogt has received numerous honors for his scientific work, including an honorary doctorate from the University of Helsinki (1984). The Argentine University of Santiago del Estero awarded him an honorary professorship in 1989.

In retirement he wrote the study Music and Forest (1996) and in 2002 presented his memoirs under the title Von Welten und Wäldern . Helmut Schmidt-Vogt lived in Merzhausen .

Quotes

“To regard the forest only as an object of forestry and forest science means to strip it of its greatest charm. Forces emanate from him that cannot be expressed either in economic formulas or in scientific laws. "

- Helmut Schmidt-Vogt 1950 in his study The forest theme in music

“I believe that the supra-economic services of the forest are increasingly coming to the fore over the economic services and that it is necessary to work ahead in research here. In the future, the water factor is likely to be one of the top priorities among the economic services of the forest. "

- Helmut Schmidt-Vogt in an interview with AFZ in 1964

Honors

  • 1976 - Appointment to the corresponding member of the Accademia Italiana die Scienze Forestali (Italian Academy of Forest Sciences in Florence)
  • 1976 - Awarded the "Universitas Helsingiensis" medal from the University of Helsinki
  • 1979 - Medal from the Forest Science Society of Finland
  • 1982 - Medal "For merits in the development of forest sciences" from the Institute for Forest Sciences Eberswalde (awarded during an information trip through the GDR)
  • 1984 - Honorary Doctorate from Helsinki University
  • 1988 - Appointment as honorary member of the Accademia Italiana die Scienze Forestali (Florence)
  • 1989 - Honorary Professorship at the University of Santiago del Estero (Argentina)

Fonts (selection)

  • The types of branching of the spruce and their importance for forest plant breeding , dissertation, Munich 1950
  • The quality assessment of forest plants. The development of forest plants depending on genetic material and environment and the possibilities of a quality assessment , Munich 1961 (2nd, extended edition under the title Growth and quality of forest plants. The development of forest plants depending on genetic material and the environment and the possibilities of a quality assessment , Munich including 1966)
  • as editor and editor: Forest seed extraction and plant cultivation for the high mountains. Festschrift on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Bavarian State Seed Cycles in Laufen. Contributions from the Alpine countries of France, Italy, Yugoslavia, Austria, Switzerland and the Federal Republic of Germany , Munich, Basel and Vienna 1964
  • as main author: The spruce
    • Volume 1: Taxonomy, Distribution, Morphology, Ecology, Forest Societies , Hamburg 1977 (2nd, reviewed edition, Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-490-09916-8 )
    • Volume 2, part 1: Growth, breeding, soil, environment, wood , Hamburg 1986 ( ISBN 3-490-08416-0 )
    • Volume 2, Part 2: Diseases, Damage, Spruce Dying , Hamburg 1989 ( ISBN 3-490-09516-2 )
    • Volume 2, Part 3: Silviculture - Ecosystems - Primeval forest - Commercial forest - Nutrition - Fertilization - Outlook , Hamburg 1991 ( ISBN 3-490-09716-5 )
  • Near-natural spruce farming. The spruce forest tree, mistakes in spruce management, conversion of pure spruce stands, avoiding pure spruce cultivation, striving for species-rich and near-natural mixed forest , contributions to quality of life, forest conservation and environmental protection, health, hiking and home care (Issue 31), Siegen 1991
  • Music and forest , Rombach science. Ecology series (Volume 3), Freiburg im Breisgau 1996 ( ISBN 3-7930-9107-4 )
  • Of worlds and forests. Memories 1918 to 1999 , series of memoirs (Volume 52), Hamburg 2002 ( ISBN 3-8300-0495-8 )

literature

  • P. Abetz: University Professor Dr. Helmut Schmidt-Vogt 60 years . In: Allgemeine Forst- und Jagdzeitung , Volume 149, Issue 3, 1978, p. 55, ISSN  0002-5852
  • D. Schölzke: University Professor Dr. Helmut Schmidt-Vogt 65 years . In Der Forst- und Holzwirt , Volume 38, Issue 1, 1983, p. 18, ISSN  0932-9315
  • G. Zimmermann: The AFZ introduces: Professor Dr. Helmut Schmidt-Vogt [interview]. In: Allgemeine Forst Zeitschrift (AFZ) . 19th year, issue 50, 1964, pp. 765–766, ISSN  1430-2713
  • Jürgen Huss : Prof. Dr. Helmut Schmidt-Vogt - 70 years . In: Silvae Genetica , Volume 37, Issue 2, 1988, p. 45, ISSN  0037-5349
  • Jürgen Huss : Professor Dr. Helmut Schmidt-Vogt on his 80th birthday . In: AFZ / Der Wald , 53rd volume, issue 8, 1998, p. 396, ISSN  1430-2713
  • Jürgen Huss: Prof. Helmut Schmidt-Vogt † . In: AFZ / DerWald , 64th volume, issue 2, 2009, p. 97, ISSN  1430-2713
  • Helmut Schmidt-Vogt . In: Kürschner's German Scholars Calendar . 19th edition. Saur, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-598-23607-7 , Vol. 3, p. 2959.
  • Klaus Loscher: Silviculture professor Helmut Schmidt-Vogt, born as a pastor's son in Burggrub. In: Local history yearbook of the district of Kronach. 26th year. Kronach 2013, ISBN 978-3-9803467-9-5 , p. 177 ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b G. Zimmermann: The AFZ presents: Professor Dr. Helmut Schmidt-Vogt . In: Allgemeine Forst Zeitschrift (AFZ) . 19th year, issue 50, 1964, p. 765.
  2. ↑ Jürgen Huss: Professor Dr. Helmut Schmidt-Vogt on his 80th birthday , in: AFZ / Der Wald , 53rd year, issue 8, 1998, p. 396.
  3. ↑ Helmut Schmidt-Vogt: The forest theme in music . In: Forstwissenschaftliches Centralblatt 1950; quoted from P. Abetz: University Professor Dr. Helmut Schmidt-Vogt 60 years . In: Allgemeine Forst- und Jagdzeitung , Volume 149, Issue 3, 3 1978, p. 55.
personal data
SURNAME Schmidt-Vogt, Helmut
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schmidt, Helmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German forest scientist
DATE OF BIRTH January 8, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Burggrub (Stockheim) , Upper Franconia
DATE OF DEATH November 2008