Gerhard Thielcke

Gerhard Thielcke ( born February 14, 1931 in Köthen (Anhalt), † 22 July, 2007 Radolfzell - Möggingen ) was a German ornithologist and environmentalist.

Life

After graduation in 1950 he worked for six months on the Ornithological Scharhörn in the North Sea. After three years of training as a gardener, he completed in 1954 a study of zoology, botany and geology at the Universities of Tübingen and Freiburg. In 1962, he began his research assistant at the Radolfzell ornithological and at the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Möggingen where he lived with his family in 1962.

1970 Habilitation Thielcke at the University of Konstanz on the "Impact of learned signals on the speciation ", where he held a professorship in zoology from 1985. Through a variety of lectures at the University of Konstanz as well as articles in journals and trade magazines, he soon became one of the prominent German bird and conservationists.

In 1975, Thielcke with other like-minded Association for the Environment and Nature Conservation Germany eV ( BUND). First, he led the National Association of Baden- Württemberg from 1977 to 1983, he was National Chairman of the BUND. From 1976 he built with representatives of other environmental organizations, the German Environmental Aid Association as a common lobby organization of environmental policy on.

Besides Horst Stern, Frederic Vester and Rudolf L. Schreiber 1977 he was one of the initiators of the campaign "Save the birds - we need them ." With the support of the magazine Hörzu, the radio station Radio Luxembourg, the Time magazine and Lufthansa AG began in September 1977, the first nationally successful conservation campaign in the German media. Even the book of the same name was a huge success and stayed for weeks in the Spiegel bestseller list. 1983, it came under Thielckes participation a similar campaign for the protection of amphibians ( "Save the Frogs" ) instead.

From 1972 to 1981 Thielcke was chairman of the German Section of the International Council for Bird Preservation (International Council for Bird Preservation, ICBP ), an association founded in the UK association of European ornithologists and precursor organization of BirdLife International. In 1987 he was German partner of the worldwide ICBP campaign "Save the Birds - Save the bird world." Under the slogan " Think globally - act locally" was made aware of the global, dramatic threat to the bird world, then presented the rarest birds in the world and called for the conservation of their habitats. Also on this campaign, there was a successful book, in which Thielcke together with Horst Stern wrote the part about the endangered birds in Germany.

Thielcke 1987 was co-founder of the European Nature Heritage Foundation - Euro 1998 Nature and the Global Nature Fund (GNF ), headquartered in Radolfzell on Lake Constance.

Gerhard Thielcke died following a fall at his home in Möggingen, he was buried at the local cemetery.

Others

The secondary school in Radolfzell named Gerhard Thielckes. This decided the council Radolfzell on 26 February 2008.

For his 75th birthday, the BUND Baden-Württemberg created in 2007 to Gerhard- Thielcke Conservation price, formulated for the Thielcke the award criteria themselves.

Works (selection)

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