Kurt Bauer (ornithologist)

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Kurt Max Bauer (born November 18, 1926 in Kalwang ; † May 1, 2016 in Vienna ) was an Austrian ornithologist .

Live and act

Childhood and youth in Styria

Kurt Max Bauer was born on November 18, 1926 in the municipality of Kalwang in Liesingtal, the oldest of four children. When he was four years old, he and his family moved to Eisenerz , where his father worked as a mining worker. Due to the liberal intellectual climate of his family, he was able to cultivate his early biological inclinations undisturbed. Kurt Bauer mainly spent the summer holidays in Kalwang, where he lived with his maternal grandparents in the ponds belonging to Kalwang, in the midst of the most important Styrian big game area, in a professional hunter household. He was strongly encouraged by his grandfather and Jägermeister in the said big game area and acquired his profound knowledge of zoological, especially ornithological, and botanical forms in several successive phases. His grandfather encouraged his interest in distant countries and animals by bringing him mysterious memorabilia from a hunting expedition with his employer Rudolf von Gutmann , the owner of the Kalwang estate at the time, from the Bering Sea in 1909 . While he could be independent and free with his parents and grandparents, he found attending secondary school in Graz and, above all, boarding school operations as an annoying compulsion. However, it was in Graz that he first came into contact with academic literature in the form of visits to libraries, bookstores or antiquarian bookshops, which laid the foundation for Kurt Bauer's later exorbitant bibliophilia . At the age of twelve (against all library regulations) he was allowed to take Oskar Heinroth's Die Vögel Mitteleuropas , which was on permanent loan from the regional library in the Joanneum, to the home.

Even before he could finish secondary school, World War II broke out in the country and in 1943 he served as an air force helper in Linz and Graz. He also received military training in Dalmatia . The military drill, which seemed pointless to him, and the associated compulsion to submit, had a lasting impact on Bauer's character. In 1945, Bauer was already on a brief assignment east of the Rhine , which ended with a serious injury to his right leg. Subsequently, he was in a US field hospital near Cherbourg in Normandy in a pelvic cast for six months . Thanks to the penicillin that was just being used at the time and the excellent medical care provided by the US military doctors, his shot leg was saved. It was here that Bauer also learned the basics of the English language , the pronunciation of which, decades later, was still described by colleagues as uncopyable and completely wrong. After he was released from captivity at the beginning of 1945, he returned to Styria to complete secondary school in Graz with the Matura , which he succeeded in the winter of 1945/46.

Study time in Vienna

In the winter semester of 1946, Bauer began to study forest science at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna , since scientific biology seemed to be a jobless art in the first post-war period. His study forestry enriched Bauer in summer placements as a nature conservation organ of the Wildlife Protection Society of Austria on Lake Neusiedl , as well as in relation to logging altitudes mapping in Upper Austria and Styria. He completed his studies on May 29, 1953 with the graduation as a graduate engineer and made groundbreaking contacts during his studies. On the excursions of the Naturschutzbund he got to know the entomologist , ecologist and environmentalist Wilhelm Kühnelt , who later became his doctoral supervisor , who also encouraged him to start studying zoology on the basis of his first degree . The meeting there with the ornithologist Moriz Sassi , who was the head of the bird collection at the Natural History Museum in Vienna at the time, was equally groundbreaking . The latter offered him an unpaid job at his collection, which Bauer then accepted. The most important result of this familiarization with one of the future areas of work was the book Die Vögel Österreichs , which was published by Bauer in collaboration with Gerth Rokitansky in 1951 .

Since he worked at the Natural History Museum free of charge, as already mentioned, and thus had very modest financial resources, but still had a great interest in foreign specialist literature, he was forced to make various cuts in his life, among other things. For example, when he received the news that the book Handbook of British Birds he had ordered two and a half years earlier had finally arrived and that he had to take over and pay for it within 24 hours. Subsequently, he sold around 100 laboriously collected botanical , entomological and malacological works in second-hand bookshops in order to be able to pay for the Handbook of British Birds . Before graduating from the Natural History College, Kurt Bauer began collecting mice for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City . Since he was increasingly occupied with mousetraps and preparation tools during this time, the field ornithological activity was ranked backwards. The activity developed as a barter with the American Museum of Natural History - Bauer delivered mouse hides to New York and received bird books in return - did not last very long. Since knowledge of the Austrian small mammal fauna was still in its early stages, Bauer already received mammal books as counter strips for the second delivery of mouse hides . A third delivery did not come after that. The bellows provided for this purpose with improvised English label lettering then formed the basis for a separate collection and led to a dissertation on the small mammal fauna of the Neusiedlersee area. This dissertation with the title The mammals of the Neusiedlersee area became a classic and today represents the cornerstone for modern Austrian mammal research. At the time of publication, Bauer had already published 82 further ornithological and mammalogical articles.

Since June 1, 1953 Bauer was an employee of the Austrian Ornithological (later (until 1993): Austrian Society for Ornithology , today BirdLife Austria ) which he this year along with Hans Freundl and Rudolf Lugitsch had founded when bird warden on the first Biological station of Burgenland in a stilt house in Neusiedl am See active. In this respect, the choice of the research area for his dissertation was also very obvious. This is also where the bird ringing officially began in Austria, which was subsequently continued by Theodor Samwald . During this time, a life situation that was very characteristic of his later life began for him, as he has to fulfill several tasks and roles at the same time and that his main official task was usually not the focus of his current interest. His begun in winter 1953/54 zoology studies with a minor in paleontology , Bauer on 31 May 1958 with the doctorate and ended in the same year and his commitment to the ornithological station on Lake Neusiedl, when he was a on a research grant from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia supported offer received in the then provisional German capital Bonn at Günther Niethammer whose three-volume Handbook of German Ornithology edit new.

Century project Handbook of the Birds of Central Europe

At the same time, this grew into a life's work, as he did not follow the brief structure of the previous work and merely brought the content up to date, but rather defined a completely new concept with the first volume. So he created an excessive handbook of the entire known knowledge about the birds of Central Europe , whereby in many cases he meaningfully linked together previously incoherent details and thus created those solid species monographs for which the resulting handbook of the birds of Central Europe became famous in specialist areas worldwide. During his time in Bonn, the native of Styria produced 86 mammal and ornithological publications. Since Bauer left the city of Bonn in 1961, before the aforementioned first volume of the manual was completed, to take up a position as mammal curator at the Natural History Museum in Vienna, he was unable to edit the Manual of Birds in Central Europe , since he was unable to do so to deal with alone, dependent on the help of a co-author. Since he was unable to find someone at the beginning due to new interests and projects and due to a lack of organizational skills on his part, he soon saw the project doomed to failure. As a co-author, he finally found what he was looking for with the Swiss Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim from the Swiss Ornithological Institute in Sempach , who, in addition to high technical qualifications, also brought with him the largely lacking organizational skills. This collaboration resulted in a unique combination that lasted for decades. Bauer often spent between two and four months a year in Sempach to do his part in completing the work of the century. From the third volume from 1969, Urs N. Glutz von Blotzheim also took over the editing of Günther Niethammer, who died only a few years later.

Great achievements for the Natural History Museum

In 1961, when his museum career began, Kurt Bauer took over a collection that was still poorly organized after the war-related relocations, and which had to wait for years without its own curator. In addition, traces of earlier neglect were visible in many places, which Bauer repaired in a few years with the reorganization of the collection and library and a swift revision of the old collection as well as the collection of extensive new material at home and abroad. Within a few years he was able to celebrate great successes in terms of personnel and organization and received, among other things, in 1965 the approval to bring Friederike Spitzenberger, born in 1939 , into the mammal collection with a scholarship with adjutum , which was converted into a regular position only a short time later . From 1966 on, Spitzenberger acted as curator of the mammal collection and worked in this position for the museum until she retired in 2004. In 1973, Bauer founded the archaeological-zoological collection of the Natural History Museum Vienna and received a vacancy for an academic and a vacancy for a scientific-technical assistant. Five years later, in 1978, Bauer succeeded the then director of the museum's vertebrate department . As early as 1976 he started the research project “Mammal Fauna Austria” in collaboration with his colleague Spitzenberger, which was supported by the Fund for the Promotion of Scientific Research.

Due to his ongoing work on the manual , as well as other zoological interests and his sometimes unpleasant dealings with employees, he resigned as head of the department in 1982. Spitzberger once described him as "probably the last great" all-rounder "in vertebrate zoology, who is additionally equipped with a solid knowledge of vegetation and (forest) botanical knowledge and rightly does not allow himself to be squeezed into the specialized museum organizational scheme". As head of the archaeological-zoological collection , he spent countless hours of service and free time revising the old mammal collection material and became known as an ornithologist far beyond the borders of Austria. During his life he published countless publications; When Friederike Spitzenberger published the Festschrift for his 60th birthday in 1986, it was a 145-title catalog of scientific publications. Although Bauer's character was described as difficult and contradictory, and he was described as occasionally capricious and unreliable, he was considered extremely generous. During his lifetime - decades before his death - he donated his entire private library to the relevant collections of the Natural History Museum. At that time, his collection comprised around 6,000 individual works, around 1,300 journal volumes and around 20,000 separate books and covered all of his areas of interest, such as vertebrate classes with a focus on mammals and birds, archaeological zoology, ecology, biogeography , evolutionary research , systematics , geography , nature conservation, etc. .

In the Rechinger era , Bauer acted as a construction consultant and as such left lasting traces to this day. Under him, the zoological preparations were redesigned, the Ice Age collection and the depot of the prehistoric department were renovated, and the workshop wing and guest rooms were designed. In addition, he made long overdue renovations, such as the division of the huge zoological department into three different departments: vertebrates, insects and invertebrates (without insects). He was also involved in reorganizing the budget by introducing a distribution scheme that Bauer prepared and, in some cases, implemented. By intensifying the cooperation with the Austrian Society for Ornithology, as well as the cooperation with the Biospeläologische Arbeitsgemeinschaft at the mammal collection and by supervising doctoral students with topics from their own fields of work (in cooperation with Friedrich Schaller from the University of Vienna ), Bauer tried to find a essential revitalization of the museum's scientific work. In addition, he continued to belong to the Austrian Ornithological Institute for many years, later to the Austrian Society for Ornithology and today's BirdLife Austria, and held a wide variety of voluntary functions. Most recently he was, among other things, 1st chairman of the organization from 1986 to 1997 and was its honorary president until his death. As the first chairman, he was instrumental in the transition to BirdLife International .

Further activities in Austrian vertebrate research

His donation partially filled gaps in the collection's own libraries caused by the war. His far foresight of future developments, his competence in the most diverse disciplines combined with his aversion to diplomacy and patient approach made him an unpleasant contemporary for many. In addition, he always had technical help and financial support ready. The suggestion for the creation of an Austrian breeding bird mapping, which was carried out from 1981 to 1985 by the Austrian Society for Ornithology, also goes back to Kurt Bauer. In addition, he was responsible for the inclusion and expansion of mammal faunistics and taxonomy , which was previously carried out solely by Otto Wettstein . From 1960 onwards he was entrusted with the survey of bat populations, first in winter and later also in summer roosts, as well as the collection of sub- recent and recent animal bone materials , with the involvement of lay speleologists in the mammalian field work, the aforementioned biospelaeological working group on the mammal collection . This was the first time that fauna-historical research into Austrian mammals began.

Other activities in nature conservation

After recognizing the need for biologically sound nature conservation very early on, Bauer sacrificed a lot of time to convince representatives of established nature conservation organizations and politicians of the indispensability of scientific foundations for promising nature conservation. Even as a student in the 1950s, he was temporarily active on the board of the Austrian Nature Conservation Union, but due to his frustration at the often unobjective approach of nature conservation organizations and various confrontations with various representatives of them, he returned to basic scientific research for nature conservation. As early as 1965 he published one of the first Red Lists with the title Development and Existence of the Austrian Bird Fauna, a preliminary attempt at a quantitative assessment (nature and land) . He was also entrusted with the creation of nature conservation concepts for the Danube region and carried out this work from 1975 to 1977 together with Alois Herzig and Hans Winkler . Referring to this, one of the first speakers was for the saving of the last Central European riparian forests . Further examples in which he demonstrated significant achievements in nature conservation were, among other things, the endangerment of the free Danube route below Vienna, the construction of the motorway on the Parndorfer Platte or the protection of the Red Star Bluethroat in Salzburg .

Last years and death

Although he worked in various main functions for 35 years, he managed to work as the second main editor on the 14-volume handbook of birds of Central Europe . The handbook, which was first published in 1966 and has been reprinted several times since then, is considered the standard work of Central European ornithology. Bauer's contribution is still described as particularly extraordinary today. After he retired in 1991, the museum allowed him to continue working in his room, which was equipped with a private reference library. From then on he spent a lot of time here revising old collections, identifying newly arrived material and bone fragments collected in caves and excavations. His basic work, which was valuable for the collection, was not financially compensated by the museum. For years he financed his own assistants out of his own pocket. After a change in staff at the Natural History Museum, his activity was ended without thanks in 2012 and the now 86-year-old had to vacate his room at his almost 60-year-old place of work. The last few years until his death on May 1, 2016 are described as the most difficult period in his life. His death at the age of 90 went almost unnoticed even to friends and colleagues.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Kurt Bauer on his 85th birthday! , accessed October 1, 2017.
  2. ↑ a b Honorary President Dr. Kurt Bauer † , accessed October 1, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Bauer, Kurt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bauer, Kurt Max (full name); Bauer, Kurt M.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian ornithologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Kalwang , Austria
DATE OF DEATH May 1, 2016
Place of death Vienna , Austria