Reflections on Konrad Lorenz

Abstract

In this issue of Ethology, Wolfgang Schleidt (*1927), the former Director of the Konrad Lorenz Institut für Vergleichende Verhaltensforschung in Vienna, remembers the work of Helga Fischer-Mamblona, who died earlier this year. Schleidt's obituary is an appreciation of the life and work of Fischer-Mamblona, who trained as a behavioural biologist and then transferred her ethological skills to become a psychologist. Furthermore, Schleidt's article is also a historical account of ethology in the early Federal Republic of Germany and Austria, written by one of the few remaining protagonists and first-hand witnesses of that era. In doing so, the text is (of course) looking back on Konrad Lorenz, one of the eminent founders of ethology and co-founder of the Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, now Ethology. To me, and probably many others, Konrad Lorenz's career is a mixed blessing, though. As a 15-year-old, I devoured Lorenz's books and for sure he was one of the reasons why I turned my fascination for animal behaviour into a profession. At the same time, neither me nor our research field can or should deny that Lorenz was an ambiguous person. In a thoughtful essay on Lorenz's persistent views on human degeneration and social decline Theodora Kalikow reminds us that Lorenz was born into a period “where thinking of superior and inferior races, and of the need to eliminate those who were genetically impure or defective, was part of the normal scientific milieu of the time” (Kalikow, 2020). During the National Socialist regime in Germany, Lorenz was a member of the Nazi Party, he worked for the Nazi Party Office of Racial Policy, and he supported Nazi ideology with his publications (see e.g. Burkhardt (2005) for a detailed account). After World War II, Lorenz—together with Niko Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch—was vital for re-establishing behavioural biology as a scientific discipline in Europe. The obituary of Helga Fischer-Mamblona partially highlights the latter part of Lorenz's career, but with this editorial, I wanted to remind us not to forget about the role Lorenz assumed during the darkest part of German history and that he never seemed to have reflected his views on human degeneration and social decline (Kalikow, 2020). The article does not contain data.

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