Maria Koepcke

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Maria Koepcke (born May 15, 1924 in Leipzig , † between December 24, 1971 and January 9, 1972 near Puerto Inca, Peru ; born Maria Emilia Anna von Mikulicz-Radecki , occasionally also written Maria Köpcke ) was a German-Peruvian ornithologist. She is one of the victims of the LANSA flight 508 plane crash .

Life

Maria von Mikulicz-Radecki grew up in Germany and received her doctorate in zoology at the University of Kiel in 1949 with the dissertation studies on the pattern and coloration of wild and domestic pigeons . She left Germany in 1950 and emigrated to Peru , where in the same year she married the zoologist Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke , with whom she had studied together in Kiel. At first, like her husband, she worked at the Museo de Historia Natural of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, where she was head of the birds and mammalogy department. She worked closely with her husband during her scientific research and published with him. Their joint publications included Las Aves de Importancia Económica del Perú , published by the Peruvian Ministry of Agriculture between 1963 and 1971. A daughter, Juliane Koepcke , emerged from the marriage. Together with her husband, Maria Koepcke founded the research station “ Panguana ” in the lowland rainforest of Peru in 1968 , which is named after a native bird species. What is unusual about Maria Koepcke is that she was able to make an international name for herself as an ornithologist at a time when ornithology in South America was very much dominated by men. Her specialty was the avifauna of the neotropics .

Maria Koepcke was the first to describe the rust-bellied thicket slip ( Synallaxis zimmeri ) in 1957 , which she named after the late ornithologist John Todd Zimmer , and in 1954 the white-eared kotinga ( Zaratornis stresemanni ), a name she dedicated to Erwin Stresemann . The cactus canastero ( Pseudasthenes cactorum ) was also described by her in 1959. They also described some new subspecies scientifically, so for the Brown Gimpelfink Tiaris obscurus pacificus ( Koepcke , 1963), the Kaktuscanastero Pseudasthenes cactorum lachayensis ( Koepcke , 1965) and Pseudasthenes cactorum monticola ( Koepcke , 1965), the rufous-collared sparrow Zonotrichia capensis illescasensis ( Koepcke , 1963 ), the morning Bunting zonotrichia capensis markli ( Koepcke , 1971), the Rostschwanzcanastero Asthenes pudibunda grisior ( Koepcke , 1961), the Ecuadorian Ground Dove Columbina buckleyi dorsti ( Koepcke , 1962), the Weißbrauen tree panties Cranioleuca Baroni zaratensis ( Koepcke , 1961), the Schwanzfleckenämmerling Rhopospina alaudina humboldti ( Koepcke , 1963), the Schwarzscheitelhemispingus Sphenopsis piurae macrophrys ( Koepcke , 1961), the Patagonienerdhacker Geositta cunicularia georgei ( Koepcke , 1965), the rust cap Meis panties Leptasthenura pileata latistriata ( Koepcke , 1965) and the Andensteißhuhn Nothoprocta pentlandii niethammeri ( Koepcke , 1968) .

Maria Koepcke became known to a wider public through the crash of LANSA flight 508 on December 24, 1971, which her 17-year-old daughter Juliane survived as the only one of 92 inmates and then hiked and swam through the Peruvian jungle for days. The unusual fate of Juliane Koepcke found wide media interest at the time. Juliane Koepcke's book “ When I fell from the sky ”, published in 2011, describes not only the crash, but also the pre- and post-history.

Despite the great efforts of her husband, the fate of Maria Koepcke was never determined with certainty. Presumably, like her daughter, she had survived the crash herself and did not die until about two weeks later, the cause of death was never investigated. She was officially buried in the cemetery in Aufkirchen am Starnberger See , where her father was also buried. However, there are indications that only her lower jaw, which was used for identification by comparing her teeth, was buried there along with a few bones from an unknown corpse, of which the sex is not even known. When her husband was first identified on January 12th, in a factory building in Pucallpa that had been converted into a morgue , the strikingly well-preserved body of a recently deceased person with this lower jaw was still in the coffin. This was also confirmed by the Peruvian doctor who prepared the body for the transfer flight. In Munich, where an autopsy should have taken place to clarify the cause of death, however, the doctors found only a few bones in the coffin, but together with the lower jaw, which according to dental records was unequivocally assigned to Maria Koepcke. They then released the remains for burial without any examination. Her husband's exhumation from Peru to clarify the identity of the bones was never carried out. After her daughter Juliane was adopted, her body was found among the bodies and body parts that were buried on January 24th in the Alas de Esperanza mausoleum in Pucallpa.

Three bird species are named in honor of Maria Koepcke:

Maria Koepcke Prize

In honor of Maria Koepcke, the project group "Ornithological Collections" of the German Ornithological Society has been awarding the Maria Koepcke Prize since 2007.

Prize winners were

Publications (selection)

  • Tsarist Stresemanni nov. gen. nov. spec., Un cotingido nuevo del Perú . In: Publicaciones del Museo de Historia Natural "Javier Prado" (=  Series A, Zoología ). No. 16 , 1954, pp. 1–9 (Spanish, museohn.unmsm.edu.pe [PDF; 735 kB ]).
  • Una nueva especie de Synallaxis (Furnariidae, aves) de la vertientes occidentales andinas del Perú central. In: Publicaciones del Museo de Historia Natural "Javier Prado" (=  Series A, Zoología ). No. 18 , 1957, p. 1–8 (Spanish, museohn.unmsm.edu.pe [PDF; 606 kB ]).
  • A new Asthenes (Aves, Furnariidae) from the coast and the western Andean slope of southern Peru . In: Contributions to the Neotropical Fauna . tape 1 , no. 3 , 1959, pp. 243-248 , doi : 10.1080 / 01650525909380616 .
  • Birds of the Western Slope of the Andes of Peru . In: American Museum Novitates . No. 2028 , 1961, pp. 1–31 (English, digitallibrary.amnh.org [PDF; 26.4 MB ]).
  • Las razas geográficas de Cranioleuca Antisiensis (Furnariidae, aves), con la descripción de una nueva subespecie . In: Publicaciones del Museo de Historia Natural "Javier Prado" (=  Series A, Zoología ). No. 20 , 1961, pp. 1–17 (Spanish, museohn.unmsm.edu.pe [PDF; 1,2 MB ]).
  • To the knowledge of the pigeons of the genus Columbigallina Boie living in Peru (with the description of a new subspecies) . In: Contributions to the Neotropical Fauna . tape 2 , no. 4 , 1962, pp. 295-301 , doi : 10.1080 / 01650526209380631 .
  • To the knowledge of some finches of the Peruvian coastal area (with descriptions of new subspecies) . In: Contributions to the Neotropical Fauna . tape 3 , no. 1 , 1963, p. 2-19 , doi : 10.1080 / 01650526309360363 .
  • To the knowledge of some Furnariids (Aves) of the coast and the western Andean slope of Peru (with descriptions of new subspecies) . In: Contributions to the Neotropical Fauna . tape 4 , no. 3 , 1965, p. 150-173 , doi : 10.1080 / 01650526509360385 .
  • The race division of Nothoprocta pentlandi (Tinamidae) in Peru with description of a new subspecies . In: Bonn zoological contributions . tape 19 , 1968, p. 225-234 ( biodiversitylibrary.org ).
  • Zonotrichia capensis markli nov. Subspec. (Fringillidae, Aves), una raza geográfica nueva del gorrión americano de la Costa Norte del Perú . In: Publicaciones del Museo de Historia Natural "Javier Prado" (=  Series A, Zoología ). No. 23 , 1971, p. 1–11 (Spanish, museohn.unmsm.edu.pe [PDF; 813 kB ]).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Orbituaries: Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke (PDF; 169 kB) on the website of the University Library of the University of New Mexico (English)
  2. ^ Panguana on the website of the Munich State Zoological Collection
  3. ↑ Koepcke, Juliane: When I fell from heaven: How the jungle gave me back my life. Piper, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-492-27493-7 , p. 177 ff.
  4. ↑ Winner 2011
  5. ↑ Maria Koepcke Prize 2012
  6. ^ Maria Koepcke Prize 2013
  7. ↑ Maria Koepcke Prize 2015
  8. ↑ Thu-G: Maria Koepcke Prize . Retrieved March 10, 2019.
  9. ↑ [1] . Retrieved June 26, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Koepcke, Maria
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mikulicz-Radecki, Maria von (name at birth); Köpcke, Maria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Peruvian ornithologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 15, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH December 24, 1971