Paul Robien

Paul Robien (born September 2, 1882 in Bublitz , † probably November 1945 in Stettin ; actually Paul Ruthke ) was a German ornithologist , left-wing conservationist and environmental activist , who described himself as a "nature revolutionary". His criticism of militarism , industrialization and especially the destruction of nature during the Weimar Republic made him a pioneer of the eco-socialists and radical ecologists in the “green” movement in Germany.

family

He was the son of the unmarried Wilhelmine Ruthke. With his wife Emma Wendland Robien had a son, Paul Ruthke (jun.) In 1908. He spent the last years of his life with his partner Eva Windhorn.

Life

After Paul Robien finished primary school in Szczecin, he spent his youth in poor conditions. He became a ship heater and seaman and visited the USA, Central America, India and several European countries. As a marine he fought against the Herero uprising in German South West Africa . The First World War polarized his political views and made him a pacifist . His interest in nature awoke early on. Autodidactically he taught himself scientific knowledge and then systematically practiced ornithology . After several mental crises during the war and unemployment, he found a job at the Szczecin Nature Museum. At the beginning of the 1920s Robien became politically active: At first he asked the trade unions for support for the "settlement campaign". He then tried to win over the settlers and other life reform movements as well as the workers' movement for his "natural revolution". He lived out his ideals and set up a nature observatory with some like-minded comrades on the Mönne, a swampy island in the Oder estuary and the Dammschen lake between Stettin and Altdamm , today's Polish Stettin district of Dabie. After he found for his "natural revolution" no support and in view of the takeover of the Nazis in 1933, he devoted himself mainly in the seclusion of his nature waiting to nature conservation . Paul Robien and his partner Eva Windhorn refused to give up the nature observatory despite the approaching eastern front . They were presumably murdered by Soviet soldiers at the end of 1945 on the island of Mönne, in the immediate vicinity of which the Red Army captured the unfinished aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin and declared the surrounding area a special zone. The remains of the two were never found. The building of his nature conservation station including an extensive ornithological collection was destroyed. Today a plaque in Polish commemorates him and his station, which was unveiled in 1995 on the foundations of his natural observatory.

Act

The beginnings

His political activity began in 1919 with anti-militarist letters of protest to the Reichswehr Minister, the Chief of Army Command and the representatives of the Entente . He accused the failure of German disarmament, which was agreed in the Versailles Peace Treaty . Robien's anti-militarism brought him close to the Weimar anarchist labor movement, in whose paper “ The Free Worker ” he published his political convictions in essays from 1920 to 1925. In the face of hunger and inflation that followed World War I, he became an advocate of land grabbing and workers' self-sufficiency . In this context he met the garden architect Leberecht Migge , with whom he organized the first “German settlement conference” in Worpswede in January 1921 with the aim of discussing an action plan for “ensuring and feeding all productive workers”. A “green” revolution in the country was sought. Since Robien's opinion, in Migges' concept of a “green settlement”, did not advocate nature conservation radically enough, he put his concept of nature conservation settlement as a counterpart.

Advertise a red-green alliance for the "natural revolution"

The Marxism threw Robien blindness to the concerns of nature, and propagated the left radical nature of the labor movement . He put before the class struggle an ecological struggle: “We only know one war, a war of the cosmos man against the civilized man who blindly disturbs the balance in nature, regardless of what mask he hides under, a war of the pure, upright, against the well poisoners, who only pollute the air, torture us with diabolical noises, torture us at every turn to despair. All other ideals: Liberation of the working class, of the material masses that spoil nature down to the last remnant appear to us, because false and short-sighted, void. " The unions reacted with incomprehension or rejection to Robien's fundamental" green "criticism of consumerism and belief in growth , Technology and industry. In addition, his collaboration with “Der Freie Arbeiter” was terminated after he repeatedly wrote anti-Semitic articles in which he blamed the Jews for the failure of the “natural revolution”, be it in their supposed role as industrial capitalists or naturally blind class fighters. However, it was said that during the Second World War he hid Polish Jews on the Mönne and eventually helped them escape.

Soliciting support from alternative social movements

He also fought unsuccessfully for support for the realization of his “green” ideas on the part of the diverse life reform movements, whose representatives he invited to a nature conservation congress in Berlin in 1922. In front of 200 people in attendance, he gave a lecture on his vision of a network of nature observatories and nature reserves . So “every district should release a protected area. On the outskirts of the areas, nature reserves and settlements are to be built as a food base for the observers and protectors, leaders and students ”; “The nature observatories are supposed to be scientific observation stations, the head of the observatory must be a scientist himself surrounded by a few students whom he trains for the same task. [...] The capitalist system is switched off insofar as the guards do not receive a salary, but gain a piece of garden land for their livelihood through their own hands, and the waiting areas are not acquired through purchase or lease, but are made available by the state as public property. The nature watchdogs are therefore not only places of refuge for the oppressed animal and plant world, but they also offer the part of humanity that is retreating towards recovery, towards unity with nature, the only way to keep clean from the physical and moral poisons of culture, those lords and Servants, exploiters as well as exploited, can no longer renounce nor want to. ” His lecture was received with restrained reception. The idea of ​​nature conservation from a left-wing political position was too foreign to the participants. A group of settlers in the Cologne area tried to realize the idea of ​​the nature observatory, and it was also taken up by the French neo-naturists .

Realization of the ideals

The only visible result of the conference was the establishment of a first nature observatory by Robien himself in May 1922 on the Mönne. The swampy island belonged to the city of Stettin, but there was no land occupation: Local government officials provided him with a barge and twelve acres of garden land . In 1926, a permanent station house was built with government aid, which became one of the most popular excursion destinations for the population from the Szczecin area. Robien fell into the role of an ecological educator for city dwellers. The establishment of further planned permanent stations along the Pomeranian coast as well as the international networking of nature conservation stations and areas that he suggested failed due to the resistance of the authorities hostile to nature conservation and the political change in 1933. His plans to write a comprehensive representation of the birds of Pomerania together with his son, put an end to the invasion of the Red Army in Pomerania in 1945.

heritage

Paul-Robien-Strasse in Szczecin (Sławociesze district)

Paul Robien, who as early as 1929 pointed out the dangers of the loss of biodiversity , the oil contamination of the seas, the poisoning of forests and the impending end of the world through nuclear war , was far ahead of his time. To this day, many of his views and premonitions are up to date and read like the Greens' party program. Parts of his natural history records, which were rescued in 1947 by Polish naturalists from the ruins of the Mönne Nature Observatory, are now in the museum of the Institute of Zoology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw . In today's Pomerania he is revered as a pioneer of the environmental movement by Polish environmental and nature conservationists.

In September 1995 a German-Polish symposium was held in Stettin on the 50th anniversary of Paul Robien's death. A memorial stone was set on the still-preserved stairs to his destroyed nature reserve on the island of Mönne (Polish: Sadlińskie Łąki).

Fonts

There are numerous articles by Robiens in Der Syndikalist (1921) and in "Der Freie Arbeiter" (1920–1925), in which he publishes his political views and reports on the Mönne nature reserve. Also:

• Article in Feathered World 1913 :
  • P. 70–71: Wintering migratory birds and other oddities . [Observations from Stettin's surroundings. Wintering: robin, meadow pipit, skylark, woodlark, reed bunting, white wagtail; strange: mistletoe, gray wagtail, merlin.]
  • P. 199: Victims of snow storms and overland control centers
  • Pp. 333-334; Pp. 350–351: The Ornis in and around Stettin [about 125 species; including siskins as breeding birds, bullfinches in the Buchheide breeding bird, giraffe at the end of February a small troop, wood sandpipers on the meadows, hazel grouse (1).]
• The victims of the overland control center , 1913 [longer article, also a list of the birds found dead.]

• Paul Robien: “Settlement Action”, “On to Action!”, “Enjoyment of Work” . In: New building for a free earth . R. Cerny, Vienna 1921.
• Paul Robien: The bird world of the Stettin district . Saunier / Stettiner Volkshochschule, Stettin 1923.
• Paul Robien: Among feathered friends . Fischer & Schmidt, Stettin 1926.

literature

• Heinz Gelinski: Szczecin. A major German city in the 1930s: A major German city in the 1930s . Rautenberg, Leer (Ostfriesland) 1984, ISBN 3-7921-0294-3 , p. 200-201 .
• Ulrich Linse : Ökopax and anarchy. A history of ecological movements in Germany . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag , Munich 1986, ISBN 3-423-10550-X .
• Paul Robien. Retrieved January 5, 2012 (Polish). 

Web links

• Literature by and about Paul Robien in the catalog of the German National Library