Michael Grzimek

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Michael Grzimek, portrait drawing by Tereza Samková (2010)

Michael Grzimek [ ˈgʒɪmɛk ] (Michael Christian Maria Bernhard Grzimek; born April 12, 1934 in Berlin , † January 10, 1959 in the Salei plain, Serengeti in Tanganyika , today Tanzania ) was a German wildlife filmmaker . He studied zoology and science .

Live and act

family

Michael Grzimek was the second son of the veterinarian, behavioral scientist and then agricultural consultant Bernhard Grzimek from Neisse ( Upper Silesia ) and his wife Hildegard Prüfer from Katowice (Upper Silesia).

Michael Grzimek married Erika Schoof (* July 31, 1932) on May 26, 1955 and had two sons, Stephan Michael (* 1956) and Christian Bernhard (* 1959). The latter was only born after the death of his father and today, together with his mother, runs the Okapia KG picture archive founded by his father .

Michael's father Bernhard separated from his first wife Hildegard in 1973; after divorcing in 1977, he married the widow of his son Michael in 1978 and adopted their two sons Stephan Michael and Christian Bernhard (his grandchildren).

Career

Even as a young boy, Michael helped his father with experiments with wolves and dogs. During the last years of the Second World War , he lived with his mother and older brother Rochus in an old farmhouse in the Allgäu that his father had bought in the 1930s.

At the age of 16, Michael Grzimek accompanied his father, who had been the director of the Frankfurt Zoo since 1945 , to the Ivory Coast in 1951 . After the success of the book No Place for Wild Animals , which describes the impressions of the Congo expedition in 1954 , Michael persuaded his father to film the book in color. For the film of the same name, the Grzimeks had to be liable for more than DM 100,000  . Unexpectedly, No Space for Wild Animals won two Golden Bears at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1956 , was shown in 63 countries (including in the Eastern Bloc , the People's Republic of China and Japan ) and generated high revenues. Michael offered part of the proceeds from the film that fell on his father and him to the British colonial administration of Tanganyika to buy land and incorporate it into the conservation reserves. But Peter Molley, director of the national parks in Tanganyika, suggested that an inventory of migratory animals be carried out in order to redefine the borders of the Serengeti National Park .

Extensive investigations into the annual migrations of the last large herds of savannah animals in Africa, which were also preparation for Michael Grzimek's doctoral thesis, made it possible to trace the migration routes for the first time. The number of large animals living in the Serengeti was also determined from the air using a newly developed counting method: 367,000 - only a third of the originally assumed number.

The Dornier Do 27 , with which Michael Grzimek had an accident

For their research in the Serengeti, Michael and Bernhard Grzimek learned to fly in 1957 and bought a specially equipped Dornier Do 27 , which was painted with striking zebra stripes and was given the D-ENTE mark .

Death and afterlife

On January 10, 1959, Michael Grzimek collided with a vulture in his Dornier Do 27 . By damaging a wing , Grzimek lost control of his plane, crashed and died. On the same day he was buried on the edge of the Ngorongoro Crater ; later the government of Tanzania donated a stone pyramid as a memorial over his grave.

Michael Grzimek's research on animal migrations in the Serengeti, which was almost complete at the time of the crash, was posthumously summarized and published by Bernhard Grzimek. They made the Serengeti National Park bigger. In addition, father Bernhard completed the work on the film Serengeti must not die , which should shake people in Europe and America. The film became a global success: in 1960 it was the first German film to win an Oscar . Back in Germany, father Bernhard Grzimek also completed the book Serengeti must not die on the basis of a manuscript about the work and research in the Serengeti that Michael had begun while he was working in Africa. It has been translated into 23 languages ​​and has a print run of millions.

After his father's death in Frankfurt am Main in 1987, his urn was transferred to Tanzania and buried next to his son Michael at the Ngorongoro Crater.

In honor of Michael Grzimek, schools in Frankfurt am Main, Berlin and Nairobi were named after him.

Honors

Grave of Michael Grzimek and Bernhard Grzimek, on Ngorongoro
  • Michael Grzimek School (primary school in Frankfurt am Main )
  • Michael Grzimek Primary School (Primary School in Berlin )
  • Michael Grzimek Memorial Laboratory (main building of the Serengeti Research Institute )
  • Michael Grzimek School (German School Nairobi; German School Abroad )
  • On the edge of the Ngorongoro Crater , the Tanzanian government erected a stone pyramid over the grave of Michael Grzimek, with the inscription:
HE GAVE ALL HE POSSESSED
INCLUDING HIS LIFE
FOR THE WILD ANIMALS OF AFRICA
"He gave everything he had, even his life, for the wild animals of Africa"
The same inscription bears a nine-ton steel memorial located in the city of Cincinnati , Ohio , erected in October 1969.

Movies

Books

  • Serengeti Must Not Die (Completed by Bernhard Grzimek after his death) (1959)

literature

  • Bernhard Grzimek: We lived with the Baule: Flight into chimpanzee land . Berlin: Ullstein 1963
  • Ina Claus: Michael & Bernhard Grzimek . Two lives for the wilderness of Africa. VNL, Verlag Neue Literatur, Jena / Plauen / Quedlinburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-940085-20-7 .
  • Gerhard Grzimek, Rupprecht Grzimek: The Grzimek family from Oberglogau in Upper Silesia. In: Gerhard Geßner (Ed.): German Family Archives. A genealogical compilation. Volume 10. Verlag Degener & Co., Neustadt an der Aisch 1959, ISSN  0012-1266 ; 4th expanded and revised edition, Herder Institute, Reutlingen 2000.
  • Claudia Sewig: The man who loved animals. Bernhard Grzimek. Biography. Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2009, ISBN 978-3-7857-2367-8 .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Grzimek, Bernhard Grzimek: special issue: A study of the Game of the Serengeti Plains. In: Journal of Mammals. (now: Mammalian Biology. ) Volume 25, 1960, pp. 1-61
  2. ^ German School Nairobi / Michael Grzimek School. In: www.dsnairobi.de. Retrieved April 14, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Grzimek, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German zoologist and wildlife filmmaker
DATE OF BIRTH April 12, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH January 10, 1959
Place of death Serengeti , Tanganyika