Preface
Prof. Dr. GERNOT BRETSCHKO passed away on March 28, 2002. As many of us know, GER-NOT would not have wanted extravagant praise of his scientific career and many merits in this obituary because he was a very modest man. Thus, we will give just a few details.
He studied zoology and physical chemistry in Graz (Austria) and received his first academic position there. At the time of his death, he was head of the Biological Station Lunz (a department of the Institute of Limnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences). He worked in many places in Europe, America, Africa and Asia on various ecological subjects in systems as diverse as open oceans, mangroves, reservoirs, high mountain lakes, small streams and large rivers. When he became head of the Station at Lunz in 1976, he began a long-term, ecological study of a small stream near the laboratory (RITRODAT-LUNZ project). Throughout this project, he faced a problem common to all those involved in long-term, ecological research: the dilemma of whether to write a synthesis of all the many data now or to add more years to the study. He opted for "more years" and left a treasure of long-term, ecological data on an alpine stream that awaits exploitation. It would be his greatest wish that younger colleagues could gain the support to fulfil this task.
Being director of the Biological Station Lunz, GERNOT cared a lot for his staff but also for visitors. According to the tradition of the Station, he maintained Lunz as a place where limnologists go to get a break, to read and think, to discuss, to write a paper without being disturbed by every-day business. For those who met him in Lunz, as well as for those who had the chance to meet him elsewhere, he was a master of combining experience, humanity and common sense with his great sense of humour to guide, encourage, criticize (often by criticizing his own ideas), comfort and entertain. As one of his friends coined it: he was a