Hermann Hähnle

Hermann Hähnle (born June 5, 1879 in Giengen ; † October 25, 1965 in Göppingen ) was a German inventor, nature filmmaker and conservationist. He was the first post-war president of the German Federation for Bird Protection, today's NABU . His mother Lina Hähnle founded this union in 1899.

Life

Hermann Hähnle was born on June 5, 1879 in Giengen an der Brenz as the son of Hans and Lina Hähnle . He grew up in a cosmopolitan and wealthy industrial family. His father founded the Württemberg wool felt factory in Giengen in 1858 , which developed into an important employer in the region. Hans Hähnle was a liberal politician and was a member of the Reichstag and the Württemberg Landtag . Hermann Hähnle's mother Lina Hähnle founded the Federation for Bird Protection in 1899 , the predecessor of today's Naturschutzbund Deutschland .

Hermann Hähnle completed his engineering studies at the Technical University in Stuttgart. The economic basis of his family's business enabled Hermann Hähnle to buy a professional film camera as early as the turn of the century. At the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900, Hähnle acquired various devices to use the medium of film for natural history and nature conservation. In 1902 the first motion pictures of wild animals were created.

After studying in Stuttgart, he returned to Giengen in 1906. In the same year Hähnle traveled with his films of wild birds to screenings and lectures at schools and at conferences throughout Germany and promoted the work of the Federation for Bird Protection. After completing his studies, he worked as an engineer in his father's felt factories and built the Gerschweiler Elektro Centrale himself . This supplied the entire Ostalb with electricity. During this time he made many inventions and filed almost 240 patents.

In 1914 Hähnle made the first animal color photographs using the Lumière autochrome process . In 1923 he handed the films over to the Naturfilm Hubert Schonger company for paid distribution to schools.

Between 1939 and 1960 Hähnle was chairman of the supervisory board of the United Filzwerke . From 1946 to 1960 he was the first post-war president of the Federation for Bird Protection. In 1965 Hermann Hähnle died in the Göppingen district hospital.

Animal films

In 1902 Hähnle took first film recordings of shy animals living in the wild with self-made long-distance lenses. The film equipment at the time was extremely unsuitable for taking pictures of animals: unwieldy film cameras with slow shutter speeds, heavy and low-light lenses and insufficiently light-sensitive material made outdoor photography an incalculable adventure. In the following decades, Hähnle captured private matters as well as events from contemporary history. In the early days of the moving image, he advocated quality cultural films. But he was best known for his nature and animal films.

He achieved the first film sequences of distant, small and moving animals that no filmmaker had succeeded in doing before. In 1906, at a meeting of the Association of Doctors and Naturalists in Stuttgart, Hähnle presented astonishing photographs of birds in the wild. He even criticized the poor depth of field in his photos, as the lenses had a shallow depth of field. Hermann Hähnle later continued the time-consuming animal filming as a hobby alongside his job as an engineer. B. practically supported in his work by Hugo Wolter and Karl Tautwein. He himself supported and animated many German nature filmmakers to record rare animal species in nature reserves as "nature certificates".

From around 1908 Hähnle filmed avocets , terns , seals and beavers on "bird islands" on the German North and Baltic Sea coasts and in protected areas on lakes and rivers. The areas had been bought or leased by the Bird Protection Association. Hähnle cut these recordings together, added still images and presented them at the lecture events of the Federation for Bird Protection . During the screening of the film about animal species that are dying out, birds of paradise and great egrets were shown, whose feathers were often worn as costume jewelry at the time. When the text "German woman, do without such hat jewelry" or "German woman, disdain the heron feather on her hat" was faded in, according to documents from Hähne's estate, the women affected spontaneously removed their feather headdresses.

Hähnle always kept in contact with the most important nature photographers of his time, influenced many animal filmmakers and financed expeditions to Europe , the Arctic Ocean and Africa for the Federation for Bird Protection .

Hermann Hähnle was fascinated by the idea of ​​the "film certificate" and bought many film copies. Many of these copies were destroyed during and after World War II. Only a fraction of his collection has been preserved and is now archived, among other things, in the Baden-Württemberg State Film Collection in the Stuttgart House of Documentary Films . Many of Hähne's film strips are now valuable documents on rare animal species and documents from the early days of nature conservation in Europe, which are shown at documentary film festivals.

Movies

• Hermann Hähnle: Always on the move ... DVD, House of Documentary Films - European Media Forum Stuttgart eV

Individual evidence

1. ^ From the estate of Hermann Hähnle at the 16th International Documentary Film Festival Munich 2001
2. ↑ A film trip into the past  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ^ Hermann Hähnle: From the running animal to the running picture at the 16th International Documentary Film Festival Munich 2001