Wilhelm boy

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Boy at the State Party Council of the Greens in Mülheim (2014)

Wilhelm Erich Knabe (born October 8, 1923 in Arnsdorf , Amtshauptmannschaft Bautzen ; † January 30, 2021 in Mülheim an der Ruhr ) was a German forest scientist and politician . He was a co-founder of the party Die Grünen and its federal spokesman from November 1982 to December 1984, as well as the first spokesman (state chairman) of the state party in North Rhine-Westphalia . From 1987 to 1990 he was a member of the German Bundestag . As a forest scientist, Knabe stood out primarily in forest damage research .

Life

Youth and war years

Wilhelm Knabe was the seventh of nine children. Even in his childhood and adolescence, he enjoyed spending time in the forest and developed his love for nature. When he was 16 years old, he lost his father, Erich Knabe . He was the head of an institution with difficult to educate and epileptics , had resisted the evacuation of the sick during the National Socialism and died two days after an interrogation by the SS . Wilhelm Knabe attended an elementary school and the Nikolaischule in Leipzig . He passed his Abitur in 1942 at the Princely School in Meissen . Then he did his military service in the Air Force . Knabe returned from war and captivity in 1945 as a staunch pacifist . Because of his Christian convictions, he joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany in the spring of 1946 .

Forest degree and scientific career

From 1946 to 1950 he studied forestry at the forestry faculty of the Technical University of Dresden in Tharandt . During these years he was involved in the Protestant student community and in the working group "Forest and People" founded by forest students, which primarily wanted to encourage teachers to understand the forest. Knabe completed his forest studies with a degree in forestry. For ideological reasons, the members of his senior year received their certificates only after they had committed to take the forestry skilled worker examination.

Wilhelm Knabe then worked from 1951 to 1959 as a research assistant at the Institute for Garden Art and Landscape Design at the Humboldt University in Berlin . In 1957 he was at the Agriculture and Horticultural Faculty in the subjects of land conservation , soil science and agricultural geography to Dr. agr. PhD . His dissertation was entitled studies on the conditions of the restoration of tilting in lignite mining . There was to reclamation in lignite mining. General presentation of the problem of reclamation and special investigations in Lusatian lignite mining (1959).

Under political pressure from the SED rulers, he was supposed to join the National People's Army as a reserve officer , which Knabe refused. Nor did he go to any election, which also made him suspicious. Finally, the young family decided to flee the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany . Wilhelm Knabe began a new career there in 1959 as managing director of the German Poplar Association and Ligniculture in Bonn and Düsseldorf , but was appointed by Professor Johannes Weck to the Institute for World Forestry at the Federal Research Center for Forestry and Wood Management (BFH) in Reinbek in 1961 . There he dealt worldwide with questions of the recultivation of industrial wasteland and supported the recultivation in coal mining at the invitation of environmental associations in the United States , whereby he brought the German experience.

Then Knabe returned to Germany . The State Institute for Immission and Land Use Protection in Essen was looking for a forester on the subject of air pollution control , and so he worked at this facility from 1966 to 1976 as senior government councilor and government director. In 1976, the environmental researcher moved to the State Institute for Ecology, Landscape Development and Forest Planning (LÖLF) in Düsseldorf and Recklinghausen as government director , where he stayed until 1987. During this time, Knabe was primarily concerned with forest damage research and was involved in the immission ecological forest condition assessment in North Rhine-Westphalia (IWE 1979). From the beginning of the 1980s, the problem was also discussed in the general public under the catchphrase “ forest dieback ”.

From 1963 to 1987 Wilhelm Knabe held various teaching positions at universities in Berlin , Hamburg , Düsseldorf, Saarbrücken , Vienna and Dortmund . Since 1991 he has given block lectures on ecology at the Technical University of Dresden . He also dealt with the contemporary historical research project “GDR and Greens”, organized environmental seminars, was chairman of the Mülheim district group of the German Forest Protection Association , employee of the Gaia Society , Oxford , and a supporting member of the Heinrich Böll Foundation , whose archive he “Green Memory” also left part of his scientific and political legacy.

Wilhelm Knabe was married and the father of four grown children. His son is the historian Hubertus Knabe .

Political career

Wilhelm Knabe was a member of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) in the GDR from 1946 to 1959 and of the CDU in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1959 to 1966 . When the first citizens' initiatives emerged in the early and mid-1970s to improve the environment, Knabe wrote to the established parties CDU, SPD and FDP in 1976 with the tenor: “We have an active environmental group in Essen. We want to do something and we can advise you on these questions. ” Although he received polite replies to his letters, none of the parties showed any interest.

Wilhelm Knabe (second from right next to Otto Schily ) at a press conference on the 1983 federal election

As a result, in 1978 the rather conservative was one of the founders of the short-lived Green List Environmental Protection (GLU) and was later its spokesman. In 1979/1980 he co-founded the party Die Grünen at local as well as state and federal level and was spokesman for the federal party from 1982 to 1984. Increasingly, he got into conflict with his political activities and his obligation as a state official. This went so far that his department at the LÖLF, which had been dealing with forest damage research for 15 years, missed out on the increase in staff at the LÖLF in this area caused by the “forest dieback” debate in 1982/83. According to Knabe, the then LÖLF President Albert Schmidt later “justified” this to him with the sentence “I cannot allow you to appear on television every day” .

Elected from the state list in North Rhine-Westphalia, Knabe was a member of the German Bundestag from 1987 to 1990 . There he was a member of the Inner German Committee and had to do with the GDR again. He also looked intensively for contact with environmental groups or peace groups. He smuggled a printing machine to the environmental library in the Prenzlauer Berg district , the headquarters of the environmental groups in the GDR. The state security of the GDR learned of the action from a spy in the group . On the night of November 24th to 25th, 1987, the Ministry for State Security (MfS) started the "Aktionfallen", in which the library was searched and several employees were arrested. In the course of this raid, the state security seized devices, whereby the printing press was also confiscated as a stumbling block and never reappeared.

During his time as a member of the 11th German Bundestag , Knabe was also a member of the Enquête Commission “Prevention to protect the Earth's atmosphere”. Later he was the second mayor of Mülheim an der Ruhr from 1994 to 1999 . He was a member of the association of former members of the Bundestag and European Parliament as well as the Green senior citizens' organization " Green Old ". Since May 2011 he was a member of the state council of the Federal Green Party as a delegate of the state association of North Rhine-Westphalia.

After the death of Hanns Theis on December 22, 2020, Knabe was the oldest living former member of the Bundestag. He died on January 30, 2021 at the age of 97 as a result of a COVID-19 infection.

Audio

Fonts

  • Investigations into the requirements for the recultivation of dumps in lignite mining Dissertation. Berlin 1957.
  • For reclamation in lignite mining. General presentation of the problem of reclamation and special investigations in Lusatian lignite mining. Berlin 1959.
  • as co-author: dump greening in the Ruhr area . No. 22 of the series of publications Siedlungsverband Ruhrkohlen district. Essen 1968.
  • Environmental ecological forest condition assessment in North Rhine-Westphalia (IWE 1979). Spruce and lichens as indicators of the forest endangerment by air pollution . Issue 37 of the research and advice series. Series C, Scientific Reports and Discussions. Münster 1983.
  • with Gerd Cousen et al .: Regional distribution of some nutrients and pollutants in spruce needles . Estimates based on analyzes of three-year needles from the nationwide "Immission Ecological Forest Condition Assessment 1983". Issue 360 ​​of the series of publications by the Federal Minister for Food, Agriculture and Forests. Series A, Applied Science. Münster-Hiltrup 1988, ISBN 3-7843-0360-9 .
  • Memories - A German-German Life . Mülheim an der Ruhr 2019, ISBN 978-3981380736 .

Awards

Wilhelm Knabe was honorary chairman of the Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen district association in Mülheim an der Ruhr.

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Knabe  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i A dark green - Wilhelm Knabe, pioneer of the eco-party ( Memento from December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), WDR 5 radio broadcast from October 5, 2003 (transcript); Retrieved July 18, 2009
  2. ^ Biography ( memento from July 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) in the "Green Archive" of the Heinrich Böll Foundation
  3. ↑ a b Short portrait ( memento from October 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) at the Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen Mülheim an der Ruhr district association
  4. ^ "Green Archive" ( memento from July 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) of the Heinrich Böll Foundation
  5. ^ MfS campaign against the environmental library. In: Youth opposition in the GDR. Federal Agency for Civic Education and the Robert Havemann Society, December 2019, accessed on November 29, 2020 .
  6. ^ Resolutions of the NRW state party conference of the Greens in May 2011
  7. ↑ Thomas Emons: Obituary for Dr. Wilhelm Knabe: A German-German life came to an end in Mülheim. In: lokalkompass.de. January 30, 2021, accessed January 30, 2021 .
  8. ↑ Memories. In: Reading Jury. Accessed January 2, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Order of Merit of the Country. The state government of North Rhine-Westphalia, accessed on January 30, 2021 .
personal data
SURNAME Boy, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Knabe, Wilhelm Erich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German forest scientist and politician (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen), Member of the Bundestag
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Arnsdorf
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 2021
Place of death Mülheim an der Ruhr