Prof. Dr. Em. Helmut Lieth: The man and his life for global ecology

Abstract

In response to the invitation by the editor of this volume I tried to compile the life work of Prof. Lieth as complete as possible. I worked for him andwith him during the last ten years as secretary and manager of his many projects. For the time between 1990 and 2001 I witnessed personally what he did under what circumstances. For the last 30 years I tried to gather information from his former secretaries and students and what I could get from citizens of Osnabrueck. Being so well known in that small city, there were ample stories told about him. I tried to sift the true events from the anecdotes and asked Prof. Lieth occasionally what had really happened, at least as he saw it. Starting with the official CV, which he used for a long time and is available through the internet address www.usf.uni-osnabrueck.de. I completed the event listing of his later years and then tried to add some explanations for some of the major topics hidden in the CV.