Michael Evenari (hebr.: מיכאל אבן-ארי, even-ari meaning ''lion's stone''; born as Walter Schwarz 9/10/1904 in

Metz Metz ( , , lat, Divodurum Mediomatricorum, then ) is a city in northeast France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers. Metz is the prefecture of the Moselle department and the seat of the parliament of the Grand ...

- 15/4/1989 in

Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...

) was an Israeli botanist originally from Germany.

Life and career

Early life and education in Germany

Evenari was born as Walter Schwarz to parents who identified as German Jews. They lived as merchants in

Lorraine Lorraine , also , , ; Lorrain: ''Louréne''; Lorraine Franconian: ''Lottringe''; german: Lothringen ; lb, Loutrengen; nl, Lotharingen is a cultural and historical region in Northeastern France, now located in the administrative region of Gra ...

, a province that changed hands repeatedly between France and Germany. After

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

Metz became French again, and the Schwarz family opted for Germany, being forced to emigrate. Evenari was a brother-in-law of writer Gerson Stern. Evenari grew up close to

Marburg Marburg ( or ) is a university town in the German federal state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district (''Landkreis''). The town area spreads along the valley of the river Lahn and has a population of approximat ...

and Buchenau in

Hesse Hesse (, , ) or Hessia (, ; german: Hessen ), officially the State of Hessen (german: links=no, Land Hessen), is a state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt. Two other major historic cities are ...

. He studied botany at Darmstadt University of Technology and received his doctorate 1927 under the auspices of Martin Möbius. Ulrich Lüttge
''Geschichte der Botanik in Darmstadt''
(PDF; 11,6 MB)

British Mandate and Israel

Evenari fled Nazi Germany on 1 April 1933 and was active in

as professor at the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...

. Evenari joined Hagana and fought in the

1948 Palestine war The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. It is known in Israel as the War of Independence ( he, מלחמת העצמאות, ''Milkhemet Ha'Atzma'ut'') and ...

.Geniale Nomaden
Die Spuren der Nabatäer Jürgen Voigt, Spiegel 2001 His works on the

Nabataeans The Nabataeans or Nabateans (; Nabataean Aramaic: , , vocalized as ; Arabic language, Arabic: , , singular , ; compare grc, Ναβαταῖος, translit=Nabataîos; la, Nabataeus) were an ancient Arab people who inhabited northern Arabian Pe ...

runoff Runoff, run-off or RUNOFF may refer to: * RUNOFF, the first computer text-formatting program * Runoff or run-off, another name for bleed, printing that lies beyond the edges to which a printed sheet is trimmed * Runoff or run-off, a stock marke ...

rainwater management was crucial for modern Israeli agriculture and explained as well how the Nabataean culture was able to supply thousands of inhabitants in a similar arid climate. Evenari showed that the runoff rainwater collection systems concentrate water from larger areas and in so far allow to grow plants with higher water needs in the given arid environment. The mechanism explained a variety of ancient agricultural features, terraced wadis, channels for collecting runoff rainwater, and the phenomenon of "Tuleilat el-Anab", grape mounds. Evenari himself cared about the cultural heritage of the Bedouin and saw them more as 'fathers' than 'sons of the desert'. He worked as well on

algae fuel Algae fuel, algal biofuel, or algal oil is an alternative to liquid fossil fuels that uses algae as its source of energy-rich oils. Also, algae fuels are an alternative to commonly known biofuel sources, such as corn and sugarcane. When made fr ...

, a special sort of

renewable resource A renewable resource, also known as a flow resource, is a natural resource which will replenish to replace the portion depleted by usage and consumption, either through natural reproduction or other recurring processes in a finite amount of ti ...

and

biofuel Biofuel is a fuel that is produced over a short time span from biomass, rather than by the very slow natural processes involved in the formation of fossil fuels, such as oil. According to the United States Energy Information Administration ...

Awards and honours

In 1966, Evenari was appointed member of the Leopoldina, the German

national academy A national academy is an organizational body, usually operating with state financial support and approval, that co-ordinates scholarly research activities and standards for academic disciplines, most frequently in the sciences but also the hu ...

of sciences, and in 1977 his '' alma mater'', the Darmstadt University of Technology, provided him with an

honorary doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...

. Evenari received the

Israel Prize The Israel Prize ( he, פרס ישראל; ''pras israél'') is an award bestowed by the State of Israel, and regarded as the state's highest cultural honor. History The Israel Prize is awarded annually, on Israeli Independence Day, in a state cer ...

in 1986 and in 1988, together with

Otto Ludwig Lange Otto Ludwig Lange (21 August 1927 – 14 August 2017 in Würzburg) was a German botanist and lichenologist. The focus of his scientific work was on the ecophysiology of wild and cultivated plants as well as lichens. He investigated heat, frost ...

, the

Balzan Prize The International Balzan Prize Foundation awards four annual monetary prizes to people or organizations who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of humanities, natural sciences, culture, as well as for endeavours for peace and the br ...

. In 2001, the ''Evenarí Forum'', a Darmstadt-based centre for German-Jewish studies in the fields of technology, nature sciences, history and cultural studies, was named in his honour, and in 2010 a

Stolperstein A (; plural ; literally 'stumbling stone', metaphorically a 'stumbling block') is a sett-size, concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution. The project, initia ...

bearing his name was laid in the Darmstadt university campus.''"Stolpersteine" für im Nationalsozialismus entlassene Wissenschaftler''
in: Informationsdienst Wissenschaft 2010

Published books, a selection

* together with Leslie Shanan and Naphtali Tadmor: ''The Negev. The Challenge of a Desert.'' Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 1971; 1982, * ''Ökologisch-landwirtschaftliche Forschungen im Negev. Analyse eines Wüsten-Ökosystems.'' Technische Hochschule, Darmstadt 1982, * ''Und die Wüste trage Frucht. Ein Lebensbericht.'' Bleicher, Gerlingen 1990, , autobiography

Links

Michael Evenarí at TU Darmstadt

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Evenari, Michael 1904 births 1989 deaths 20th-century Israeli botanists Technische Universität Darmstadt alumni Jewish biologists Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to Mandatory Palestine