Jochen Hasenmayer

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Jochen Hasenmayer in 2009

Jochen Hasenmayer (born October 28, 1941 in Pforzheim ) is a cave diver from Birkenfeld in Baden-Württemberg who has made headlines again and again with his spectacular dives.

Caving

From the 1960s he dived several karst springs in southern Germany , such as the Wimsener Höhle , the Aachtopf , the Blautopf and the Falkensteiner Höhle . He became known in 1985 primarily through the discovery of the first air-filled hall of the Blautopf, the Mörikedom, after about 1250 m (see also Blautopfhöhle ).

To do this, he had to develop the necessary diving technology in a process that took decades. Known as a security fanatic, the cave diver has also introduced solo diving for cave diving. This practice is perceived as safer by some cave divers, but it contradicts the basic rules of normal diving.

Due to a faulty depth gauge, he returned too quickly to the surface of the water in 1989 after a dive in the mountain lake Wolfgangsee ( Austria ). Due to a decompression that was too short , he suffered circulatory disorders, but his colleagues immediately placed him in a pressure chamber that was available and were initially able to reverse the paralysis. However, the emergency doctors in the hospitals in Graz and Cologne again lowered the pressure too quickly, so that Hasenmayer is now paraplegic . With the organ builder Konrad Gehringer he later developed a plexiglass cave submarine ( Speleonaut ). With this submersible he undertook further dives and thereby developed a theory on the karstification of southern Germany, which is controversial in the doctrinal opinion .

According to this theory, the Blautopfhöhle was created in the Cretaceous period and thus much earlier than is currently assumed. Therefore, the Blautopfhöhle could not have flowed to the original Danube valley, today's Blautal . From this it also follows that it must have drained much further south and that very deep karstification is to be expected in this area. Since these caves are deep enough to contain thermal water , they can be used to generate geothermal heat . As an indication, Hasenmayer stated the age of underwater stalactites in the back of the underwater cave to be several million years, while the scientific investigation of a stalactite showed an age of well under 10,000 years.

In 1986 Hasenmayer's theory was published. It met mostly with rejection in the professional world. In the public, however, the fascination for the charismatic personality of Hasenmayer is still unbroken, not least because of the reports in the media.

Jochen Hasenmayer was awarded the Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany .

Discoveries and Achievements

In 1973 Jochen Hasenmayer managed to emerge in the Rin spring , one of the largest karst springs in Europe ( Amden , canton St. Gallen , Switzerland ), after a diving distance of 930 m in a side passage. This made the Rin spring the longest known underwater cave at the time.

In 1981 Jochen Hasenmayer drove to Provence to the source of the Sorgue . Since diving in the spring has been forbidden since 1974, Hasenmayer undertook a secret dive with 170 kg of diving equipment on September 21 and reached a depth of 142 m. Three weeks later, the diving group of the Fédération francaise d'études et sports sous-marins beat Hasenmayer's record with a diving depth of 153 m. But Hasenmayer steadily improved his equipment and in September 1983 he managed to descend to the record level of 205 meters in over 9 hours through another unauthorized solo effort - with 400 kg of equipment and only accompanied by his wife. With this dive he set a cave deep diving world record at the time. Larger depths were later only reached with diving robots: In August 1985, the remote-controlled Modexa 350 diving device in the Fontaine de Vaucluse reached a diving depth of 315 m.

literature

  • Ulrich Schnabel: The man in the blue pot . In: Die Zeit , No. 10/1996
  • Jochen Hasenmayer: Getting to the bottom . In: FOCUS magazine . No. 13 , March 25, 1996, pp. 168–172 ( focus.de [accessed June 12, 2013]).

Web links

Commons : Jochen Hasenmayer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hasenmayer, Jochen. In: Personal database. State bibliography of Baden-Württemberg, accessed on June 12, 2013 .
  2. ↑ Hansmartin Decker-Hauff, Immo Eberl (ed.): Blaubeuren. The development of a settlement in southwest Germany. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1986, ISBN 3-7995-4082-2 , pp. 19-50
  3. ↑ Werner Pohl: The real adventures do not take place in the legs, but in the head . In: RehaTreff . No. 2 . AWS Medienverlag, Ettlingen 2007, p. 27–30 ( 268 kB PDF [accessed April 14, 2011]).
  4. ↑ rinquelle.ch (PDF)
  5. ↑ Folker Kraus-Weysser: Travel Guide Provence - Time for the best. Bruckmann Verlag, ISBN 978-3-7654-8860-3 , p. 124 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  6. ↑ Bernard Bayle and Didier Graillot, Fontaine de Vaucluse. Compte-rendu hydrogéologique de l'opération Spélénaute du 2 août 1985 , in: Karstologia 9, 1987, pp. 1–6 (online at www.persee.fr )
personal data
SURNAME Hasenmayer, Jochen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German cave diver
DATE OF BIRTH October 28, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Pforzheim , Germany