Kurt Kretschmann

Kurt Kretschmann (2 March 1914 – 20 January 2007) was a German nature conservationist.

Most of his professional career took place in the German Democratic Republic where he is known as "Nestor des Naturschutzes in Ostdeutschland" (loosely "East Germany's original Nature Conservationist"). He also designed the long-eared owl silhouette, originally on a yellow background, which since 1989 has been adapted and become known across Germany as a symbol identifying conservation areas.

Life

Early years Kretschmann attended a local school in Berlin and undertook an apprenticeship in tailoring before getting a job as a cutter with a Berlin tayloring firm. However, Germany underwent significant regime change in January 1933 when the NDSDAP (Nazi Party) took power, and lost little time in imposing the country's first twentieth century one-party dictatorship. One side-effect of the new government's policy was a switch away from men's suits to production of uniforms by Kretschmann's employer. In April 1933 Kurt Kretschmann gave notice that he was a committed pacifist and went to live with a friend in a garden summer house in Rüdnitz near Bernau, just outside Berlin on its north-east side. He now became a vegetarian and embarked on a period of intense physical training which included a 10 km long-distance run each day. He also experimented with his diet and took the opportunity to expand his knowledge of world literature, the classics and philosophical scholars, while playing the violin recreationally. He now undertook a lengthy walking tour, reportedly of 12,000 km, across Germany, Switzerland and Northern Italy. Impressions accumulated during this time affected him deeply. He refused to work in a munitions factory and was forced to work on the recently constructed Königsberg military airfield. on the site where in 1960 he and his wife would build their home, and which is today designated the "House for the care of Nature" ("Haus der Naturpflege"), at Bad Freienwalde in eastern Brandenburg. During the years between 1945 and 1989, with few fresh vegetables available in the East German cities, the opportunity to grow vegetables afforded by even small domestic gardens was often much prized by city-dwellers with access to country cottages or relatives outside the cities. Public interest in vegetable growing was correspondingly more mainstream than it would become following reunification. Kretschmann masterminded and ran the "Haus der Naturpflege" for many years, although in 1982

The pacifist vegetarian Kurt Kretschmann's record as a strident free thinking pacifist-vegetarian and army deserter was not something that would have instantly endeared him to the authorities during the four decades when he lived in a country frequently identified by German journalists and historians as Germany's second one-party dictatorship. After the East German regime collapsed in 1989/90 he himself became more vociferous on some of the issues involved and on his own experiences both of war and of vegetarianism.

After his death the senior school in Bad Freienwalde was renamed as the "Erna and Kurt Kretschmann School" ("Erna-und-Kurt-Kretschmann-Schule").