Juliane Koepcke

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Juliane Koepcke (2019)

Juliane Margaret Beate Koepcke (married Juliane Diller , in Peru Juliane Koepcke Von Mikulicz-Radecki de Diller ; born October 10, 1954 in Lima , Peru) is a German - Peruvian biologist . She was the head of the library and deputy director of the Munich State Zoological Collection . As a 17-year-old, she was the only one who survived the crash of LANSA flight 508 in the Peruvian rainforest in a largely free fall from a height of around 3000 m in 1971, killing 91 people.

Life

Juliane Köpcke parents, Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke and Maria Koepcke , both also biologists, emigrated after the Second World War from Germany to Peru to the Amazon rain forest for biodiversity to research. The family initially lived in Lima, but at the end of the 1960s they moved to a research station (" Panguana ") founded by Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke in the rainforest . During her time in Lima, Juliane Koepcke had already accompanied her parents on expeditions into the jungle, which made her familiar with this habitat.

Juliane Koepcke became known through a dramatic event on Christmas Eve 1971: On December 24th, the then 17-year-old wanted to fly with her mother from Lima, where she had attended a school prom, to Pucallpa , from there to Panguana and her father hold true. This one-hour flight was about noon with a turboprop machine of the type Lockheed L-188 Electra Peruvian airline Líneas Aéreas Nacionales SA performed (LANSA). Juliane Koepcke was sitting on a three-seater bench by the window, her mother next to her. After the first part of the flight was normal, a heavy storm front drew in. Instead of avoiding it, the pilot stayed on the planned route. The plane got into severe turbulence, was eventually struck by lightning, fell into a dive, broke in midair and fell into the rainforest.

Juliane Koepcke, strapped to her seat, fell headfirst, with the bench above her, from a height of about 3000 m towards the surface of the earth. Presumably strong updrafts within the thunderstorm reduced the rate of fall of the bank; In addition, Juliane Koepcke's perception of the turning of the bench, analogous to the autorotation of a sinking maple seed , may have generated additional buoyancy. When it hit the canopy of the forest, the bench must have moved into a position under Juliane Koepcke and offered her protection - Juliane Koepcke explains that she did not suffer any very serious injuries. In addition, the trees at the crash site are said to have been full of lianas; this and the shock-reducing effect of the leaves of the jungle plants probably absorbed the impact. Juliane Koepcke survived the accident with a severe concussion, a compression of the cervical spine, a fracture of the collarbone, a torn cruciate ligament and a few wounds, including a deeply gaping cut on the leg that was later infected with fly maggots.

Juliane Koepcke did not remember how she got off the plane and even brief moments of her free fall. She suspects that she was at a break in the plane that crashed. She only woke up after about 20 hours in the morning of the following day, lying on the forest floor from her unconsciousness and looked for the plane wreck and other survivors, especially her mother, but without success.

She was familiar with the jungle, heard the splashing of a spring, followed the watercourse and finally came to a larger river where the likelihood of human settlements was highest. Despite her injuries, Juliane Koepcke hiked and swam through the rainforest for ten days until she discovered a boat and a shelter for forest workers on a river bank. They found the completely exhausted young woman on the evening of the following day, tended her wounds and took her to the nearest settlement called Tournavista, where she received medical attention. From here Juliane Koepcke was flown to an infirmary near Pucallpa, where she met her father again. All other passengers including their mother and all crew members of the LANSA plane were killed either in the crash itself or in the weeks after. Juliane Koepcke's father, who saw the (presumed) body of his wife and was familiar with decomposition processes in the tropical rainforest, assumed that his wife had survived until January 6th or 7th.

Koepcke's story generated a lot of media coverage in early 1972; in Germany, Stern magazine secured the exclusive rights. In 1972 Juliane Koepcke, who had never been to Germany before, flew to Frankfurt am Main at her father's request. From there she traveled to Kiel , where she lived in the house of her aunt and grandmother. In Kiel she attended the upper level of the grammar school, which she successfully completed with the Abitur examination. She then studied biology at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel and finally received her doctorate in 1987 with the dissertation Ecological niche of a bat species community in the tropical rainforest of Peru at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . For both her diploma and doctoral theses, she returned to the Peruvian rainforest to carry out research on the subject areas she had chosen. Currently (as of 2020) she flies to Peru at least once a year, where she has since taken over the management of the “ Panguana ” research station founded by her father , which has been recognized as a nature reserve since December 2011.

The director Werner Herzog shot the documentary "Wings Of Hope" (German title " Juliane's fall in the jungle ", alternatively "Swinging of Hope") in 1998 , for which he returned to the crash site with Juliane Koepcke and, among other things, scattered them in the jungle Wreckage of the Lockheed Electra faced. The American-Italian film “I miracoli accadono ancora” (literally translated “miracles still happen”, German title “A girl fights her way through the green hell”) by the Italian director Giuseppe Maria Scotese (1916–2002) 1974 is based on their experiences. Juliane Koepcke judged that the film was “not a masterpiece ... just boring for a long time”. Her book When I fell from heaven, published with Beate Rygiert in 2011 , was awarded the audience prize of the Corine Literature Prize in 2011 .

Honor

In April 2019, Juliane Koepcke was awarded the Grand Officer 's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Peru (Orden al Mérito por Servicios Distinguidos) and an honorary professorship from the University of Lima for her commitment to the Peruvian rainforest . In 2021 she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon.

factories

literature

Web links

Commons : Juliane Koepcke  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bruno Monteferri (cond.), Sociedad Peruana de Derecho Ambiental (ed.): Conservamos por Naturaleza. Issue 1 (July 2014), p. 79.
  2. ↑ a b Condecoran a Juliane Koepcke por su labor a favor de la Amazonía peruana. Andina , April 3, 2019, accessed May 2, 2020 (Spanish).
  3. ↑ anil: Juliane Diller. In: Panguana. March 24, 2018, accessed on January 23, 2021 (German).
  4. ↑ mdr.de: The girl who fell from heaven | MDR.DE. Retrieved January 23, 2021 .
  5. ↑ Obituaries: Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke (English; PDF; 169 kB)
  6. ↑ Juliane Koepcke: When I fell from the sky: How the jungle gave me back my life. Malik, Munich 2020, ISBN 978-3-492-27493-7 . Pp. 87, 104.
  7. ↑ Juliane Koepcke: When I fell from the sky: How the jungle gave me back my life. Malik, Munich 2020, ISBN 978-3-492-27493-7 . P. 84 f.
  8. ↑ Juliane Koepcke: When I fell from the sky: How the jungle gave me back my life. Malik, Munich 2020, ISBN 978-3-492-27493-7 . P. 87.
  9. ↑ Juliane Koepcke: When I fell from the sky: How the jungle gave me back my life. Malik, Munich 2020, ISBN 978-3-492-27493-7 . P. 88 f.
  10. ↑ Juliane Koepcke: When I fell from the sky: How the jungle gave me back my life. Malik, Munich 2020, ISBN 978-3-492-27493-7 . Pp. 94 f., 100, 126.
  11. ↑ Juliane Koepcke: When I fell from the sky: How the jungle gave me back my life. Malik, Munich 2020, ISBN 978-3-492-27493-7 . P. 88.
  12. ↑ Juliane Koepcke: When I fell from the sky: How the jungle gave me back my life. Malik, Munich 2020, ISBN 978-3-492-27493-7 . P. 102.
  13. ↑ Juliane Koepcke: When I fell from the sky: How the jungle gave me back my life. Malik, Munich 2020, ISBN 978-3-492-27493-7 . P. 178 ff., 225.
  14. ↑ Juliane Koepcke: When I fell from the sky: How the jungle gave me back my life. Malik, Munich 2020, ISBN 978-3-492-27493-7 . P. 282.
  15. ↑ Gunnar Henze: Paradise Panguana. In: Bild der Wissenschaft , issue 8/2011, p. 36 ( online ); https://www.conservamospornaturaleza.org/area/panguana ; https://panguana.de/ueber-uns/juliane-diller/
  16. ↑ A girl is fighting her way through the green hell. In: TV feature film . Retrieved December 22, 2021 .
  17. ↑ Juliane Koepcke: When I fell from the sky: How the jungle gave me back my life. Malik, Munich 2020, ISBN 978-3-492-27493-7 . P. 233.
  18. ↑ Corine.de
  19. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Savior of the Rainforest. Retrieved June 2, 2021 .
  20. ↑ Juliane Diller receives the Federal Cross of Merit. German Foundation Center, June 7, 2021, accessed on August 1, 2021 .
personal data
SURNAME Koepcke, Juliane
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Diller, Juliane; Koepcke By Mikulicz-Radecki de Diller, Juliane
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Peruvian biologist
BIRTH DATE October 10, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Lima , Peru