Juliane Koepcke
Juliane Margaret Beate Koepcke (married Juliane Diller, born October 10, 1954 in Lima, Peru ) is a German biologist, director of the library and Deputy Director of the Zoological State Collection Munich. She survived in 1971 as a 17 -year-old as the only crash of LANSA Flight 508 in the Peruvian rainforest with 91 fatalities.
Life
Her parents, Hans -Wilhelm and Maria Koepcke Koepcke, both biologists also migrated to the Second World War from Germany to Peru to do research in the Amazon rain forest biodiversity.
The family lived initially in Lima, but moved at the end of the 1960s in a company established by Hans -Wilhelm Koepcke in the rain forest research station ( " Panguana ") above. Even in their time in Lima Juliane Koepcke had accompanied their parents to expeditions into the jungle, which she was familiar with this habitat.
Juliane Koepcke was known by a dramatic event on Christmas Eve 1971: Now on this 24th of December, the then 17 -year-old wanted to fly with her mother from Lima, where she had visited a school prom, to Pucallpa to meet their father there. This one-hour flight should be carried out with a turbo-prop aircraft type Lockheed L -188 Electra Lineas Aéreas Nacionales of the Peruvian airline SA ( LANSA ). After the first part of the flight was running normally, pulled open a heavy storm front. Instead of avoiding this front was the pilot on the scheduled route. The plane ran into severe turbulence, was finally struck by lightning, broke up in the air and crashed into the rainforest. Juliane Koepcke fell, still strapped into the airplane seat, contrary from about 3000 meters above sea level the surface. Probably by strong updrafts within the storm and through the stoßmildernde effect of the leaves of the forest plants of the crash was the extent intercepted that Juliane Koepcke survived the accident with relatively minor injuries, a concussion, a broken collarbone, a torn ACL and a few wounds. After she awoke several hours later from her unconsciousness, she was looking after the plane wreck and other survivors, especially her mother, but without success.
Through their expeditions with their parents in the rainforest and their lives at the research station of her father she was the jungle not foreign, so they kept deliberately out for a watercourse to go from there to a larger river, where the probability of human to make settlements, was the highest. Despite their injuries wandered and swam Juliane Koepcke ten days through the rainforest until they a boat and a shelter of forest workers discovered on a river bank. These took the girl completely exhausted in the evening of the following day, served his wounds and brought it to the nearest settlement called Tournavista where it had required medical care. From here Juliane Koepcke was flown to the hospital in Pucallpa, where she reunited with her father. All other passengers, including her mother and the shipboard personnel of the LANSA machine came in the accident died.
Juliane Köpcke history produced in early 1972 extensive media coverage; in Germany, the magazine Stern had secured exclusive rights.
1972 flew Juliane Koepcke, which until then had never been to Germany, at the request of her father to Frankfurt. From there they traveled to Kiel, where she lived in her aunt and her grandmother's house. In Kiel, she visited the upper level of the Gymnasium, which she successfully graduated with the Abitur examination. She then studied at the Christian -Albrechts -University of Kiel biology and eventually became her doctorate in 1987 with a thesis on Ecological Studies on a bat - species community in the tropical rain forest of Peru at the Ludwig- Maximilians- University of Munich. Both for her diploma as well as for her thesis, she returned to the Peruvian rainforest back to make research on the topics of its choice. Even today it flies at least once a year to Peru, where she has now taken over the management of the research station founded by her father " Panguana ", which is recognized as a nature reserve since December 2011.
The director Werner Herzog turned the 1998 documentary "Wings Of Hope" ( German title " June's crash in the jungle ", alternatively " wings of hope" ), for which he returned with Juliane Koepcke to the crash site and they scattered among other things in the jungle wreckage of the Lockheed Electra confronted. Even the American- Italian film " I miracoli accadono ancora " ( literally translated " miracles still occur ", German title "A girl struggles through the Green Hell " ) by Italian director Giuseppe Maria Scotese ( 1916 to 2002 ) from 1974 is based on the experiences Juliane Köpcke.
Your Beate Rygiert 2011 published book When I was in 2011 awarded the Audience Award at the Literature Prize Corine fell from the sky.
Works
- Juliane Diller: Ecological studies on a bat - species community in the tropical rain forest of Peru. Thesis at the Ludwig- Maximilians- University of Munich in 1987.
- Juliane Koepcke and Beate Rygiert: When I fell from the sky. Malik, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-8902-9389-9.