The Rossitten Bird Observatory (Vogelwarte Rossitten in German) was the world's first ornithological observatory. It was sited at Rossitten, East Prussia (now Rybachy, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia), on the Curonian Spit on the south-eastern coast of the Baltic Sea. It was established by German ornithologist Johannes Thienemann and operated until 1944. In 1945 East Prussia was divided between Poland, Russia and Lithuania, and most ethnic Germans expelled.
The 98 km long Curonian Spit is a thin sand peninsula, ranging from about 400 m to 4 km in width, that separates the Baltic Sea from the shallow Curonian Lagoon. It has several settlements along its length. It lies on a major migration route for birds following the coastline of the eastern Baltic. The richness of birdlife was first noticed by Friedrich Lindner who was a close friend of Johannes Thienemann. Thienemann first visited the fishing village of Rossitten there in 1896 where he experienced “a bird migration proceeding in a regular manner but more massive than had ever before been observed in Germany” and he “could not stop wondering whether something of permanent value might somehow be achieved here”.
At the German Ornithological Society's 50th anniversary celebration in Leipzig in 1900 he gave a lecture that persuaded the Society to establish a bird observatory at Rossitten, as a cooperative project with the Prussian Government. Thienemann was given the job of setting it up, something accomplished when it opened on New Year's Day 1901, as well as serving as the founding director. [1] [2]
The observatory operated under the auspices of the German Ornithological Society until 1923. From then until its dissolution in 1946 the observatory came under the management of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, giving it a solid institutional framework. Its constitution was ambitious and broad, including nine main areas of bird research: migration, behaviour, moult, economic value, protection, the establishment of a bird collection, the procurement of research material for scientific state institutes, the expansion of research relevance to other kinds of animals, and public education.
Heinrich Himmler sought to use storks bred in the Rossiten observatory to distribute German propaganda in 1943, an idea that was rejected successfully by Ernst Schüz. [3]
It was at first a one-man operation with Thienemann attempting to cover all areas of research. As it grew it focussed increasingly on the study of migration through banding, with roughly a million birds being banded during the 45 years of the observatory's existence. [4] Its success stimulated the establishment of similar organisations such as the Hungarian Ornithological Centre in 1908, Heligoland Bird Observatory in 1910, Sempach Bird Observatory in 1924 and Hiddensee Ornithological Centre in 1936. Thienemann's successor as head of the observatory was Ernst Schüz. [4]
Following Germany's loss of East Prussia at the end of the Second World War, the institutional inheritor of Rossitten's ornithological research program was the establishment by the Max Planck Society (the renamed Kaiser Wilhelm Society) of the “Vogelwarte Radolfzell”, with the staff from the Rossitten observatory, at the town of Radolfzell am Bodensee at the western end of Lake Constance in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany, under the auspices of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology. In 1998 it became the Max Planck Research Centre for Ornithology. [4]
Meanwhile, at Rossiten, now the renamed Russian settlement of Rybachy, the Rybachy Biological Station was founded in 1956, at the instigation of Russian ornithologist Lev Belopolsky, as a branch of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg. The station was set up following a special decision of the Board of the Academy of Sciences with the aim of studying bird migration, and of reestablishing the research tradition started by German ornithologists, after the ten-year hiatus. Viktor Dolnik was its director for 22 years, from 1967 until 1989.
The station receives support from the Sielmann Foundation and works closely with western partners, including the Vogelwarte Radolfzell with which it operates a joint trapping and banding station. [4]
A Heligoland trap is a large, building-sized, funnel-shaped, rigid structure of wire mesh or netting used to trap birds, so that they can be banded or otherwise studied by ornithologists.
The Curonian (Courish) Spit is a 98-kilometre (61 mi) long, thin, curved sand-dune spit that separates the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea. Its southern portion lies within Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, and its northern within southwestern Klaipėda County, Lithuania. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site shared by Lithuania and Russia.
The Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science was a German scientific institution established in the German Empire in 1911. Its functions were taken over by the Max Planck Society. The Kaiser Wilhelm Society was an umbrella organisation for many institutes, testing stations, and research units created under its authority.
Rybachy is a rural settlement in Zelenogradsky District of Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, located on the Curonian Spit. As of 2010 it has about 839 residents. It was formerly known for the Rossitten Bird Observatory and the Rossitten gliding school.
Viktor Rafaelyevich Dolnik was a Russian ornithologist who administered the Rybachy Biological Station for 22 years. Haemoproteus dolniki is named after him.
Heinrich Gätke was a German ornithologist and artist.
The Heligoland Bird Observatory, one of the world's first ornithological observatories, is operated by the Ornithologische Arbeitsgemeinschaft Helgoland e.V., a non-profit organization which was founded in 1891 to support research on the fauna of Heligoland, a small German archipelago, comprising the islands of Heligoland and Düne, in the Heligoland Bight of the North Sea. The principal research focus is on bird migration through banding studies. Over 400 species have been recorded. OAG Helgoland produces an annual bird report.
Johannes Thienemann was a German ornithologist and pastor who established the Rossitten Bird Observatory, the world's first dedicated bird ringing station where he conducted research and popularized bird study.
Kurt Ehrenreich Floericke was a German naturalist and author of numerous popular science books. He also edited the Kosmos magazine in Stuttgart from 1907. An early advocate of bird protection, he sought the establishment of a bird sanctuary on Lake Constance.
Events relating to birding and ornithology that occurred in 1901 include:
Walther Bacmeister was a German jurist and ornithologist.
Rudolf Karl Theodor Drost was a German ornithologist best known for his studies on bird migration conducted at the Heligoland observatory.
Lev Osipovich Belopolsky was a Soviet ornithologist and marine biologist who founded the Biological Station of the Zoological Institute in Rybachiy. He worked extensively on polar ecology, especially in the Barents Sea and the Curonian Spit, and produced works on the biology of the birds of the region.
Friedrich Tischler was a German lawyer and ornithologist who studied the birds of East Prussia and published a two volume work on them. He was working on another major work which was destroyed during the Second World War. He committed suicide along with his wife when Soviet troops marched into Germany.
Ernst Paul Theodor Schüz was a German ornithologist and a curator at the natural history museum in Stuttgart. He was known for his extensive work at the Rossiten bird observatory, particularly for his studies on white storks.
Baron Johann Nikolaus von Bodman was a German nobleman, ornithologist and bird conservationist who helped establish the Radolfzell bird observatory at his castle in Möggingen. It was incorporated into the Max Planck Society in 1949 and added to the Max Planck Institute for Behavioural Physiology in 1959.
The Max Planck Institute for Ornithology was a non-university research institution under the sponsorship of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (MPG). As of January 1st 2023, it merged with the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology to form the new Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence. The institute is located in Seewiesen, which belongs to the municipality of Pöcking in Upper Bavaria. The institute’s focus was on basic scientific research in the fields of organismic biology, zoology, ornithology, neurobiology, behavioural ecology, evolutionary biology and evolutionary genetics. The institute is managed on a collegial basis, i.e. one of the two directors of the institute takes over the management for a certain time period. The last managing director was Manfred Gahr.
Eberhard Gwinner was a German ornithologist and founding director of the Max-Planck Institute for ornithology. He specialized in the study of annual rhythms, their endocrine control, and biological clocks in birds.
Johann Friedrich Lindner was a German pastor and ornithologist. He was among the first to notice the intensity of migratory birds over the Curonian Spit and particulary Rossiten which was later developed into a bird observatory by his school friend Johannes Thienemann.
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