Pater Dr.h.c. Josef Donner (28.2.1909–8.1.1989) in memoriam
- Publisher
- Springer
- Year
- 1989
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 127 KB
- Volume
- 186-187
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1573-5141
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Suddenly and unexpectedly the "father of the bdelloids" (in Claudia Ricci's words) died in January 1989 at the age of eighty years. His life was divided between religious vocation and scientific research. He was able to fulfill both tasks to a high degree without conscientious scruple.
Josef Donner spent his youth and school years in Northern Bohemia (at that time part of the Austrian monarchy) and after ordination as Redemptorist priest he taught biology at the school of his convent. During World War II he was transferred to a small parish in Southern Bohemia. During that time he became fascinated with the microscopical life in ponds and streams. He bought a microscope of his own, which he considered his most valuable worldly possession. The first publications dating from those years deal mainly with monogonont rotifers.
After the end of the war Pater Donner -being German and a priest -was evicted from his parish, now situated in Communist Czechoslovakia. Carrying a small rucksack and his microscope he arrived on foot at the Biological Station, Lunz to meet his friend and teacher, Prof. V. Brehm, who -also a refugee -had found a simple shelter here. That was the occasion when I met Pater Donner first; the story of his escape is still vividly in my mind.
A short stay at the monastery Admont (situated in a boggy region) initiated Josef Donner's interest in the fauna of humic soils, where bdelloid rotifers are particularly abundant, a group which was practically unknown so far; he specialized and published his first papers on bdelloids.
After the interlude in Admont Pater Donner settled for several years at an extension of his own order in Vienna, where he was again teaching and supervising schoolchildren. Even here, in the surroundings of a big city, he continued his investigations on bdelloids. The result was a book "Die Ordnung Bdelloidea" (Best. Biicher zur Bodenfauna Europas, 1965), which made him renowned worldwide.