Manfred Stock (horticultural scientist)

Manfred Stock (born November 23, 1932 in Duisburg ) is a German horticulturist and environmentalist .

Life

After completing elementary school, he completed an apprenticeship in horticulture and attended evening grammar school, which he graduated with the “one-year- old ” (corresponds to the secondary school leaving certificate today). Then he went to the horticultural college in Weihenstephan, today's Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University , where he graduated in 1961. It was here that he met his wife. She comes from Heidenheim near Giengen an der Brenz , the first place of work of Lina Hähnle , who founded the Federation for Bird Protection in Stuttgart in 1899 , today's NABU.

Stock started his first job in 1965 as a horticultural consultant at what was then the Rhineland Chamber of Agriculture . When his office was relocated to Bergheim , he moved from Brühl to Fliesteden in 1970 . He stayed here until his retirement in October 1995. In the same year he moved to Norken .

Act

In 1971 he and about ten other people decided to found the DBV district group Fliesteden, which joined the DBV regional association at the end of 1971. Manfred Stock became the chairman, his wife the cashier.

In the period that followed, Stock and the association saw the problems of the changing landscape due to lignite mining in the northern Rhenish lignite mining area , which went beyond bird protection, and committed themselves accordingly. Since the communal relations were completely restructured in 1975 by the Cologne Act (Fliesteden came to the city of Bergheim and the Erftkreis), the association was renamed the Naturschutzbund Erftkreis in the DBV (NBE). In the early 1980s the association had around 500 members, and in 1982 a youth group was founded. In the 1980s, proposals were made for a better nature design in the mining areas to be recultivated , for example for Lake Kaster at the Garzweiler opencast mine . At the end of 1986 came the Hambach ideas for recultivation . For this, the NBE received the European Environment Prize in 1990 . A similar concept was also developed for the smaller Bergheim opencast mine .

Honors

In 1986, Stock received the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon for his commitment. In 1993 he received the Golden Badge of Honor from NABU.