Siegfried Seifert (zoologist)

Siegfried Seifert (born September 21, 1922 in Rodewisch ; † March 12, 1998 in Leipzig ) was a German biologist and longtime director of the Leipzig Zoo .

Life

Seifert was born in Rodewisch in the Vogtland. Shortly after the birth, his father got a job as mayor in Rützengrün , where Seifert lived until he was 5 years old. In 1927 Seifert's family moved to the Saxon state capital Dresden , where he also attended school. From 1941 he did military service, which was followed by a brief internment at the end of the war. Since the parents' apartment near the Great Garden was destroyed, the family found together again with Seifert's grandparents in Auerbach in Vogtland . In the Vogtland district town he started as a so-called new teacher and worked as a biology teacher and deputy school director until 1956. In 1947 he joined the CDU in the Soviet occupation zone. In parallel to his teaching activity, Seifert founded a zoo at his school in 1949, which was later expanded as a pet garden and in 1953 was moved to the Young Naturalist Station in Falkenstein . This was the foundation stone for today's Falkenstein Zoo . Seifert continued to head this facility there too. During this time, the committed biologist made his first contacts with the famous Leipzig zoologists Karl Max Schneider and Heinrich Dathe , who incidentally also came from the Vogtland. In addition, he worked as a lecturer in biology at the Medical School in Zwickau.

In 1956 Seifert was given a completely new task: he was appointed director of the zoological garden in Rostock , which was newly founded in January of the same year, by the zoo commission at the GDR Ministry of Culture . This year, the former zoo was also expanded from 9 to 16 hectares, so that Seifert, who was only 34 years old, had a big task ahead of him. Before he moved to Leipzig, the first Indian elephants were taken under Seifert's direction and the polar bear breeding that is still known today began.

In August 1964, Seifert was appointed to succeed Ludwig Zukowsky as director of the well-known Leipzig Zoo. With Wolfgang Ullrich in Dresden and Seifert in Leipzig, two directors of renowned zoological gardens in the GDR belonged to the CDU block party . As a result, Seifert shaped the development of the zoo in the trade fair city for almost 30 years until 1993. Formative buildings during his tenure were the zoo showcase, the ape house, the bird house and the enclosure for pygmy hippos. The reopening and expansion of the aquarium was also realized during Seifert's tenure. He also organized numerous scientific conferences with international participation at the Leipzig Zoo, such as a tiger symposium in 1978 and a symposium on the conservation and reintroduction of the Przewalski horse in 1990. Due to the successes in breeding Siberian tigers, the Leipzig Zoo was given the International Stud Book in 1973.

In 1975 Seifert was at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald with the dissertation Investigations on the reproductive biology of the big cats (Panthera, Oken, 1816 [eighteen hundred and sixteen]) kept in the Leipzig Zoological Garden with special consideration of the lion, Panthera leo (Linné, 1758 [seventeen hundred and fifty-eight ]) to the Dr. rer. nat. PhD. As a result, he worked as a lecturer from 1980, and from 1982 as honorary professor at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig . In terms of party politics, Seifert was already a member of the cultural policy working group of the main board of the CDU before 1982. At the 15th party congress of the CDU in Dresden in October 1982 he was elected to the main board of the party for the first time, where he remained a member until the political change in 1989.

In 1983 Seifert was elected to the Presidium of the International Association of Zoo Directors, of which he was 1st Secretary from 1986. Such positions were always of great importance for the GDR in the context of international recognition. In 1991 he was elected President of the International Association of Zoo Directors. In 1993 the now 71-year-old Seifert, who had led the zoo through the troubled times of political change, which was also accompanied by a massive decline in visitors, was replaced as zoo director by his deputy, Peter Müller.

Honors

• 1976 Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze
• 1982 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver
• 1987 Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold
• 1993 honorary membership of the German and International Zoo Association

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Neue Zeit of October 25, 1986 p. 9
2. ↑ Neues Deutschland, April 30, 1976, p. 5
3. ↑ Neue Zeit of October 6, 1982 p. 2
4. ↑ Neues Deutschland from October 6, 1977 p. 2