Ernst Paul Theodor Schüz (24 October 1901 – 8 August 1991) 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 stork The white stork (''Ciconia ciconia'') is a large bird in the stork family, Ciconiidae. Its plumage is mainly white, with black on the bird's wings. Adults have long red legs and long pointed red beaks, and measure on average from beak tip to en ...

Life and work

Schüz was born in

Markgröningen Markgröningen () is a town in the district (Kreis) of Ludwigsburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is known for its fine historic buildings, many in the '' Fachwerk'' German architectural style, and its annual Shepherds' Run. Markgröningen is ...

where his namesake father was a pastor. His mother was Elise Weitbrecht. After schooling at the Charles Gymnasium in Stuttgart, he went on to study at the University of Tübingen. He went on to study at the University of Berlin under

Erwin Stresemann Erwin Friedrich Theodor Stresemann (22 November 1889, in Dresden – 20 November 1972, in East Berlin) was a German naturalist and ornithologist. Stresemann was an ornithologist of extensive breadth who compiled one of the first and most comprehe ...

, receiving a doctorate in 1927. His research was on powder down feathers. He worked at the natural history museums at Hanover and Dresden and worked at the

Rossitten bird observatory 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 ...

from 1929 under

Oskar Heinroth Oskar Heinroth (1 March 1871 – 31 May 1945) was a German biologist who was one of the first to apply the methods of comparative morphology to animal behavior, and was thus one of the founders of ethology. He worked, largely isolated from mos ...

. From 1936 he headed the Rossitten observatory and organized coordinated ringing studies on white storks and grey herons. He also conducted experiments on migration, orientation, and physiology in starlings along with Werner Rüppell and Paul Putzig. In 1943 he was drafted into the war. After the war he established the Radolfzell ornithological observatory along with Nikolaus von Bodman. Schüz helped integrate the observatory into the Max Planck Society. in 1959. From 1959 he served as director of the State Museum of Natural History at Stuttgart. He was an honorary professor at the

University of Stuttgart The University of Stuttgart () is a research university located in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1829 and is organized into 10 faculties. It is one of the oldest technical universities in Germany with programs in civil, mechanical, ind ...

. Schüz's early work was on migration and he published an atlas of bird migration in 1931 along with

Hugo Weigold Max Hugo Weigold (27 May 1886 – 9 July 1973) was a German zoologist and a pioneer bird bander who worked at the Heligoland Bird Observatory, one of the world's first bird-ringing sites. Weigold was born in Dresden. He studied natural sciences ...

. In 1942 he was asked to evaluate a proposal (''Storchbein Propaganda'' or "stork-leg propaganda") by

Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician and military leader who was the 4th of the (Protection Squadron; SS), a leading member of the Nazi Party, and one of the most powerful p ...

to use storks reared in Rossiten for German war propaganda. They were to carry propaganda to be delivered to the Boers in South Africa. Schüz pointed out that the recovery rate was less than 1% which meant that more than a 1000 storks would be needed to deliver about 10 leaflets which led the idea to be shelved. He later worked on demographics, physiology, and conservation. One of Schüz's important experimental studies was on white storks. Schüz's predecessor and founder of the Rossiten observatory,

Thienemann Thienemann is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: *August Thienemann (1882–1960), German limnologist, zoologist and ecologist *August Wilhelm Thienemann (1830–1884), German priest and ornithologist *Johannes Thienemann (1863–1 ...

, had found that birds that bred in eastern Prussia migrated southeast while those to the west migrated to the southwest. Schüz took young storks from the eastern part of this migratory divide and moved them to the western side and found that they took a southwesterly route and apparently followed the adults. He however conducted another experiment where the young were released only after all the adults had migrated and found that the eastern storks raised in the west chose an apparently innate southeasterly route. He married Tabitha Brenner in 1926 who died in 1941 shortly after the birth of their third child. He married Hanna Steinheil in 1944.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schuz, Ernst German ornithologists 1901 births 1991 deaths