Wolfgang Klausewitz

Wolfgang Georg Maximilian Klausewitz (* July 20, 1922 in Berlin ; † August 31, 2018 in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe ) was a German marine zoologist , museologist and historian of science . From 1975 to 1983 he was chairman of the German Museum Association .

Life

Born as the son of the university professor couple Wilhelm and Anna Klausewitz, it was clear to Wolfgang Klausewitz early on that he wanted to become a zoologist, because a lecture by Hans Hass about his diving explorations in the Caribbean made a lasting impression on him. His plans fell behind when he was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1941. He served as a lieutenant during World War II , was deployed in North Africa, France and Italy, and eventually had to surrender to the Americans. By the time he was released from captivity in 1946 , he had lost five precious years of his life and doubted that his dream of becoming a zoologist could still be achieved. With the help of a friend, he received a residence permit for Frankfurt am Main, where he found the magazine Natur und Volk with his landlady . This magazine was published by the Senckenberg Naturmuseum , and Klausewitz decided to visit its director at the time, Robert Mertens . In these difficult times, he urgently advised him not to study zoology. Disaffected, he turned back to his work. A young colleague named Margarita Willmann warned, however, that missed opportunities can mean lifelong unhappiness; she later became his wife.

So he enrolled at Frankfurt University in 1946 and began studying zoology, botany , geology , anthropology and psychology in 1947 . The university buildings were largely destroyed in the war, which is why the students had to help rebuild their institutes and spent a lot of time there. Klausewitz was recognized by Mertens and invited to a public lecture in the Senckenberg Natural History Museum and Research Institute, which was located next to the Zoological Institute. In 1949 this developed into a voluntary assistant in the herpetology department of the museum, where he received his doctorate three years later . His dissertation is titled cytodiagnostic investigations on living blood and lymph cells of some amphibian species using the time-lapse film and phase contrast optics . He worked in herpetology for two more years until he was permanently employed as head of the ichthyological section in 1954 . The following years were marked by research expeditions. In 1957/58 Klausewitz took part on board the schooner “ Xarifa ” in an expedition to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean organized and led by Hans Hass . The ichthyology research that followed was based on the fish collections and biological data from this extraordinary cruise. Following Merten's theorems, Klausewitz recognized the importance of supplementing comparative morphological studies of preserved specimens with observations of live fish in their natural environment. He introduced new research methods, such as documenting the distribution of fish along the reef formations , which has become the common method for studying the population dynamics of reef fish.

In the 1960s Klausewitz spent many months in research institutions abroad and on the high seas. During his scientific career, his research focused on taxonomy , systematics and biogeography related to fish native to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. He described around 40 new fish species. A new genus (Klausewitzia) and its subspecies were named after him. In 1961 he became head of the public education department. From 1963 he supplemented his ichthyological research with academic teaching and gave lessons in the southern Hessian area. He was instrumental in shaping the European Ichthyological Union and served it as General Secretary for many years . In 1966 he joined the Deutsches Museumsbund e. V. (DMB).

He produced science programs for television, such as expedition reports with underwater footage that had never been shown before. In 1968 he hosted a half-hour series on the ZDF afternoon program entitled Small animals very large . From 1971 he headed the zoology department with a focus on " vertebrates ". During this time of increasing water pollution , he began to take care of ecological aspects, in particular the situation of freshwater fish in the Rhine and Main .

From 1975 to 1983 he was chairman of the German Association of Museums and thus the first scientist to hold this position, which until then had been reserved for art historians . He took a leading role in redesigning the DMB. He also dealt with the history of the DMB and wrote several articles on institutional history, which were published in a book and in the in-house specialist journal Museumskunde (along with other articles with different accents).

In 1979 Klausewitz was promoted to deputy director of the Senckenberg Museum. He held this position until his retirement in 1987. With this he began his voluntary research work in the museum, for which he could now spend as much time as he wanted and needed. Among other things, he devoted himself to the history of ichthyology. Due to his diverse and partly pioneering achievements, he was offered honorary memberships in natural science institutions in Germany and abroad. As a speaker he gave many lectures. In 2010 his topic was 300 years of Senckenberg , where he shed light on the history of the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research from the founding father (the doctor Johann Christian Senckenberg ) to the growth of the Frankfurt headquarters and the new locations that have been added .

Wolfgang Klausewitz died on August 31, 2018 after a short hospital stay in Bad Homburg. He was buried on September 11, 2018 in the main cemetery in Oberursel.

Awards

• 1975: Honorary award for water protection from the Association of German Sport Fishermen
• 1977: Gold Medal of Honor for fish studies

Publications

• Fish (= Dolphin Natural Library ; No. 3). Delphin-Verlag, Stuttgart / Zurich 1969.
• Small marine aquaristics. A brief introduction to marine aquaristics with the assistance of Peter Chlupaty . Philler, Minden 1969.
• (As editor :) Museum education. Museums as educational institutions . Waldemar Kramer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1975. ISBN 3-7829-1060-5 .
• Manual of marine aquaristics . 3 volumes. Pfriem-Verlag, Wuppertal-Elberfeld 1975–1979.
• Slide library on German studies. Part D. Geographical regional studies / 12.3 Museums worth seeing in the Federal Republic of Germany (excluding art collections) . Institute for Foreign Relations, Stuttgart 1984. (24 slides and 23 text pages.)
• 66 years of the German Museum Association . Rheinland-Verlag, Cologne 1984. ISBN 3-7927-0789-6 .
• (Together with Wilhelm Schäfer, Wolfgang Tobias :) Environment 2000. Texts (= Kleine Senckenberg series ; No. 3). Waldemar Kramer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986. ISBN 3-7829-1102-4 .
• (As editor :) Contributions to the Knowledge of the Cichlid Fishes of the Genus Aulonocara of Lake Malawi (East-Africa) (= Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg ; Volume 94). Senckenbergische Naturforschende Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main 1987. ISBN 3-924500-32-0 .
• Water balance, water cycle and fish. Additional information on the screen text of the fish exhibition at the Senckenberg Museum (= Kleine Senckenberg series ; No. 17). Waldemar Kramer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988. ISBN 3-7829-1110-5 .
• As well as several hundred book forewords, accompanying texts and specialist journal publications.

Exhibition curation (selection)

• 1959: animals in flight
• 1965: 75 years of Pithecanthropus
• 1970: Animals in Ancient Egypt
• 1986: Environment 2000
• 1987: Permanent presentation of fish exhibits in the Senckenberg Museum

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b Paths of} Life. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Klausewitz: Obituary notice. Published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on September 1, 2018. In: faz.net. September 1, 2018, accessed December 16, 2018 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p} Friedhelm Krupp: In Memoriam Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Klausewitz (1922-2018). In: aqua-aquapress.com. Heiko Bleher, November 2, 2018, accessed on December 16, 2018 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Redaktionsbüro Harenberg: Knaurs Prominentenlexikon 1980. The personal data of celebrities from politics, economy, culture and society . With over 400 photos. Droemer Knaur, Munich / Zurich 1979, ISBN 3-426-07604-7 , Klausewitz, Wolfgang (Georg, Maximilian), p. 229 .
4. ↑ Alina Strmljan: 100 years German Museums Association in retrospect. In: arthist.net. Technische Universität Berlin, July 7, 2017, accessed December 16, 2018 . 
5. ↑ Senckenberg. World of Biodiversity. Ichthyology. History. In: senckenberg.de. Retrieved December 16, 2018 . 
6. ↑ Why the Görlitz Natural History Museum is called Senckenberg. In: goerlitzer-anzeiger.de. 2010, accessed December 16, 2018 . 

Web links

• Literature by and about Wolfgang Klausewitz in the bibliographic database WorldCat
• Wolfgang Klausewitz at fernsehserien.de