Max Hilzheimer

Otto Jacob Max Hilzheimer (* 15. November 1877 in Kehnert ; † 10. January 1946 in Berlin-Charlottenburg ) was a German zoologist in the field of Mammalogy (Mammalogy).

Life

Hilzheimer was born as the son of Alfred Hilzheimer, a manor owner, and attended high schools in Potsdam and Seehausen in the Altmark . After leaving school, Hilzheimer studied in Strasbourg and Munich . Thanks to his parents financially independent, he was able to include lectures in art history and literature in his study book in addition to his actual subject, zoology. In Munich , he completed his doctorate on December 18, 1903 under Richard von Hertwig (1850–1937) with a dissertation on insect anatomy: "Studies on the hypopharynx of the Hymenoptera". After a year of study in France, he returned to Germany and was in Strasbourg with Ludwig Döderlein (1855-1936) scientific assistant at the Zoological Museum. In 1907 he completed his habilitation at the Technical University in Stuttgart for the subject of zoology and then worked as a private lecturer in Stuttgart until 1913. Also in 1907 he married Walburga Münzhuber from Manching, whom he had already met as an art student during his time in Munich. In 1914 he was employed as a scientific assistant at the Märkisches Museum in Berlin and in 1923 director of the natural science department at the Märkisches Museum. At the beginning of his museum activity he moved into an apartment in Berlin-Charlottenburg, where he stayed until the end of his life.

Hilzheimer was the first official conservationist in Berlin . In 1926, together with Hermann Pohle (1892–1982) and Kurt Ohnesorge (1878–1961), he founded the German Society for Mammal Studies (DGS), of which he became an honorary member. The Berlin magistrate decided on March 23, 1927 to set up a Berlin agency for natural monument preservation . In the following year, representatives of municipal bodies and organizations interested in nature conservation became the Berlin Commission for the Preservation of Natural Monuments , of which Hilzheimer became the first Berlin commissioner for nature conservation. At the same time he was also director of the natural science department of the Märkisches Museum . In these functions he worked until January 1936, from the second half of 1935 as provincial representative for nature conservation and director of the commission. His field of work included the community of Greater Berlin , created in 1920 , the goods and forests of Berlin located in the Potsdam administrative district , including the protected area ordinances and, among other things, applications for

• the nature reserves Stölpchensee and Pohlesee , Schildhorn , Tegeler Fließ , Kameslandschaft and Ruhlebener See , Spandauer Forst and Pfaueninsel ,
• the landscape protection areas Pichelswerder and Krummes Venn ,
• the bird sanctuaries Rudow and Imchen ,
• the natural monuments in Zehlendorf and Spandau and
• Protective measures for the Grunewald moors and the banks of the Havel .

Hilzheimer was also a permanent member of the Brandenburg Provincial Commission for the Preservation of Natural Monuments . He was also in the federal management of the Volksbund Naturschutz e. V. was active, and under his direction in 1932 information offices for nature conservation were set up in the Berlin districts. In 1937 he and Prof. Richard N. Wagner studied Peruvian mummified domestic dogs and excavated dog skeletons and discovered certain similarities between the physique (especially the skull) of the now extinct Chincha Bulldogs and that of the French Bulldogs . Today it is believed that the Chincha Bulldogs were introduced to Europe.

Hilzheimer, who belonged to the German National People's Party during the Weimar Republic and was baptized Protestant as a child, was stripped of his German citizenship in 1935 on the basis of the Reich Citizenship Act due to the Jewish origin of his parents . In January 1936 he was retired as museum director on the basis of this law. By 1939 he lost all offices, honorary posts and opportunities to work at institutes, companies and publishers. Last at the Archaeological Institute of the German Empire . In 1936 he had to dismiss his domestic help, as Aryan girls were now forbidden to work in non-Aryan households. Hans Klose , head of the state agency for the preservation of natural monuments and chairman of the Volksbund Naturschutz, a nature conservation organization planned and founded by Hugo Conwentz and him, introduced the Aryan paragraph there in 1936 , as a result of which Hilzheimer, until then on the scientific advisory board of the Volksbund, “gratefully Words “dismissed. Despite this harassment and state repression, Hanns von Lengerken , then director of the Institute for Agricultural Zoology, took him on as an employee in 1936. As a result of the psychological and physical humiliation, Hilzheimer suffered the first of three severe strokes in August 1937 .

Because his wife Walburga, classified as " Aryan ", fought for him, Hilzheimer barely survived the terror of National Socialism , the harassing conditions and restrictions as well as the disregard of colleagues and club mates. His wife, for her part, had to fight a denouncer during the war, who used lies and reports to ensure that she was constantly involved with the Gestapo , the Reich Office for Family Research and, in some cases, malicious officials. Nevertheless, the family stayed in Berlin-Charlottenburg after 1945 and until his death in 1946.

Commemoration

After the war, Hilzheimer was ousted from nature conservation history by Klose and others in the course of the “ politics of remembrance ”, while otherwise there was extensive continuity in terms of personnel and content in German nature conservation. Unlike the DGS, whose co-founder and first post-war managing director Hermann Pohle Hilzheimer extensively praised Hilzheimer in speeches and articles, except for an exhibition in Potsdam in 2004, his services in the field of nature conservation remained without adequate consideration. Nature conservation historians speak of "environmental protection that concentrates entirely on the protection of nature and the landscape and systematically fades out general social references", which to this day could lead to a "disinterest in human rights, if not to a contemptuous attitude towards them".

Fonts (selection)

• Studies of the hypopharynx of the Hymenoptera. Fischer, Jena 1904.
• History of our pets. Thomas, Leipzig 1912/13.
• Handbook of vertebrate biology. Enke, Stuttgart 1913.
• The animal remains from Roman times kept in the Saalburg Museum. Berlin 1924.
• Natural race history of domestic mammals. De Gruyter, Berlin, Leipzig 1926.
• The wild cattle in ancient Mesopotamia. Pfeiffer, Leipzig 1926.
• The Schildow nature reserve. Neumann-Neudamm, Berlin 1931.

literature

• Theodor Haltorth :  Hilzheimer, Max, zoologist. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 168 ( digitized version ).
• Hermann Pohle : Max Hilzheimer, 1877–1946. In: Journal of Mammals . 19: 66-82 (1954).
• Bernd Schütze: The politics of remembrance in nature conservation - the example of Professor Dr. Max Hilzheimer. In: Institute for Environmental History and Regional Development eV at the University of Applied Sciences Neubrandenburg: Study archive environmental history. No. 9 (2004), pp. 42-51 ( online ).
• Bernd Schütze: Jews in the history of nature conservation? Questions from a reading conservationist. In: Uwe Schneider and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn (eds.): Gegen den Strom, Gert Gröning on his 60th birthday (= contributions to spatial planning. Vol. 76). Institute for Green Planning and Garden Architecture, Hannover 2004, pp. 267–293.

Web links

• Bernd Schütze: Repressed History - Jews in Nature Conservation , 2005
• Exhibition board of the Berlin Senate about Max Hilzheimer (with photo)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Frank Uekötter: The everyday life of nature conservation. Notes on current developments in the historiography of environmental movements. In: Social.History.Extra. August 30, 2006. Retrieved August 25, 2012.