Lichenologist 28(2): 183–187 (1996) A TRIB U TE TO JOSEF P OELT (1924–1995) Josef Poelt died, suddenly and unexpectedly, of a heart attack on June 3 1995 at his home in G raz. With him, lichenology has lost one of its most prominent M asters, a scientist who left a durable mark on the history of twentieth century botany. T he lichenological family, at the same time, has lost a dear father and a true friend. M any lichenologists throughout the world have learnt not only from his almost incredible botanical knowledge, but also from his rich and warm human character; they will transmit a part of Josef’s spirit to young students who will never have the fortune to know him personally. Josef Poelt was born on October 17 1924 in Pöcking, a small village in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps, into an old Bavarian family running the local ‘ G asthof zur Post ’, as the third of four children. T he young Josef suffered from a severe form of bronchial asthma, a fact that will surprise those who knew his later extraordinary physical energy (. . . how many young students desperately tried to keep up with the old Professor climbing from one peak to 0024–2829/96/020183 + 05 $18.00/0 ? 1996 T he British Lichen Society 184 T H E LIC H EN OLOG IST Vol. 28 another?). T he local priest, sensing that Josef was not suitable for the hard work in the G asthof or on the farm, suggested the study of theology, and he actually started these studies at the H umanistic G ymnasium in M ünchenPasing. T he new priest of the village, D r V. H amp, a good botanist himself, however, soon discovered that the products of the C reation were more appealing for Josef than abstract studies on the C reator, and favoured instead his growing botanical interests. At the age of 19 Josef had to interrupt his studies and was sent to the Russian front; as he was good at mathematics, he was included in the intelligence unit. When he came back from the war in 1945, he often said that this was lucky for him, because ‘ I was not forced to shoot on fellow men ’. In 1944 the old botanist H . Paul lost his house in M ünchen after a bomb attack, and was temporarily hosted in Pöcking; he was one of the first to introduce Josef, who was inclined to study forestry, to the world of cryptogams. H is memory was always particularly dear to Poelt, who dedicated to him two species, Caloplaca paulii and Puccinia paulii . A student at the N atural Science Faculty in M ünchen in 1946, Poelt graduated in 1950, and soon became assistant at the local botanical garden. T his occupation left a mark in his botanical interests, and his many visitors know how proud he was of the several rare plants he was able to raise in his small private garden. H is research, however, was already oriented towards the study of cryptogams. T he presence in M ünchen of the famous lichen herbaria of Krempelhuber, and especially of Ferdinand Arnold (1828–1901), whom Poelt almost considered as one of his M asters, was a unique opportunity for getting acquainted with the fascinating, but so poorly known, world of lichens. A decisive turning point in Poelt’s life was a journey to Sweden, at that time a kind of isolated lichenological fortress, where he made a durable friendship with several famous lichenologists such as O. Almborn, G . D egelius, E. du Rietz, A. H . M agnusson and R. Santesson. D uring this journey he also learnt to speak Swedish, one of the several languages he mastered (English, French, Italian, Swedish, some Spanish and . . . Bavarian). H e was also good at writing Latin . . . and was often proud of finding grammatical errors in diagnoses written by Italian colleagues! Back at M ünchen in 1954, Poelt became curator of the cryptogamic herbaria, and started his real work on lichens. In 1959, after discussing a thesis on holarctic lobate Lecanora species, he started very intense teaching activity, which was to last until his death. In 1962 he took part in the first of many botanical trips that would eventually take him all over the world (Brazil, C hile, C olorado, C osta Rica, G reenland, T ierra del F uego, Pakistan, the M editerranean, etc.). T his was an expedition to N epal, at that time a real adventure; he came back with thousands of samples of both higher and lower plants, and throughout his life he always maintained a keen interest in the botanical exploration of this area. H e published many papers on the lichen flora of the H imalayas and of Afghanistan, and, incidentally, died 2 months before a long-planned further excursion to N epal. In 1965, Poelt accepted a chair at the Freie U niversität Berlin, where he taught for seven years during which, besides teaching and research work, he was deeply involved in the establishment of the new Institute. T his required 1996 T ribute to Josef Poelt 185 the creation of a good research team, including a laboratory for chemotaxonomy, but involved considerable bureaucracy, a task which Josef certainly did not like at all, but carried out with his usual dedication to good effect. T he amount of administrative work, however, became almost unbearable, and, furthermore, the atmosphere in Berlin was all but calm, due to the post-1968 student movement. T hus in 1972 Poelt decided that it was too much for him, and accepted a position at the much quieter U niversity of G raz, in Austria. M eanwhile, in 1959, he married C hrista M eilhamer, who he had known during his M ünchen years because of her interest in fungi; this was a happy, although all too short marriage. H is wife died in G raz in 1979, after a long illness, leaving two young daughters, Julia and D oris, whom he took care of alone with love and dedication. U nder Poelt’s leadership G raz became one of the main centres for cryptogamic botany in the world. M any foreign lichenologists began to visit the Institute to discuss their problems with Poelt and to consult the lichen collections. T hese rapidly grew to one of the most important modern cryptogamic herbaria of Europe, thanks also to the several excellent students whom Poelt was able to train. T he guest book of his private house in G raz is almost a short history of lichenology in recent decades; many of the present leading lichenologists spent some nights there, tasted the dark green Kernöl of which Josef was so fond, drank a glass of Schilfer wine while listening to folk music, and collected lichens with him on the hills surrounding G raz. Poelt was active in several scientific societies and always spent much time in revising and correcting papers, not only for the many journals of which he was an editor but also for many fellow colleagues who asked his advice on their material, with particular attention to the needs of lichenologists from Eastern European and M editerranean countries. H e was always ready to carry out identifications for others; the answer was generally quick, on letters typed by himself on an old typewriter (up to the end, he never could get acquainted with the use of computers). In 1991, Poelt became Professor Emeritus, but continued his research at the Institute with his usual energy. Very recently, he told one of us ‘ I am old now, but perhaps I still have some years left. T here is so much still to do, but I would like to finish, at least, my Catalogus Florae Austriae ’. T his was a monumental work devoted to the lichens and lichenicolous fungi of Austria. U nfortunately, he left us before completing this magnum opus. T he chapters he had already written contain so much interesting information that they would be well worth publishing posthumously. T he list of Poelt’s scientific papers, with more than 300 titles, is impressive. M ost articles were devoted to lichens, but several important contributions also concern fungi, bryophytes and higher plants. It is impossible here to provide an adequate summary of Poelt’s scientific achievements, but below we have tried to highlight the main lines of his fundamental contributions to lichenology. For a complete list of publications, as well as a list of eponyms dedicated to Poelt (eight genera and 33 species) we refer readers to a forthcoming obituary in Berichte der Bayerischen Botanischen Gesellschaft. T oday, lichenology has become one of the most dynamic branches of botany, thanks also to the work of Poelt. M any young lichenologists, however, have only a vague idea on the state of their discipline in the 1950s. T o 186 T H E LIC H EN OLOG IST Vol. 28 understand this, a brief historical digression is necessary. T he stormy period of the Italian-Slesian school in the mid-nineteenth century, striving towards a new system based on microscopical characters, was followed by a period in which many new lichens were being brought into Europe from the colonies. T hese had to be named rapidly and filed in a clear, albeit artificial, taxonomic system. W. N ylander, the leading lichenologist of that period, and one of the harshest enemies of the sporological school, favoured much more artificial, but much clearer generic concepts. T his process culminated in A. Zahlbruckner’s monumental ‘ Catalogus ’, and conspired to hold back the recognition of monophylogenetic units amongst lichens for almost a century. Furthermore, during the 1950s lichenologists had become a rare and endangered species. T he understanding of the European lichen flora, which would have required a critical revision of the innumerable taxa described in the previous century, was still very poor, and often the available keys and monographs were insufficient to permit proper identification. Poelt’s first paper in 1950 was a small floristic study on the lichens of Bavaria. H e soon realized how many obstacles were in his way, and in 1953, he started to address them with a series of articles, entitled ‘ M itteleuropäische F lechten ’, where many critical taxa belonging to widely different groups were clarified. Larger units, such as the Lecanora subfusca group, or lobate Caloplaca and Lecanora species, were treated in separate articles. Reading these papers now is the only way to understand the immense progress that they brought about in the knowledge of the European lichen flora. Poelt had already published more than 100 articles when he felt that time was ripe for a first synthesis on European lichens, including the results of his own activity, and showing the groups where further work was most necessary. In 1962 he had already published a first key to the lichens of Europe, with reference to more than 1000 infrageneric units belonging to 108 genera. T his was followed, in 1969, by the famous ‘ Bestimmungsschlüssel ’, a work that today is still indispensable for any lichenologist. Although Poelt’s main working instrument was the optical microscope, he well appreciated the importance of chemical characters, and carried out important chemotaxonomical studies with his Berlin friend C h. Leuckert. T he clarification of open taxonomic problems went on until his death, directly, or indirectly, thanks to some of his best disciples. T he groups he liked best were the Lecanoraceae, Teloschistaceae, Physciaceae and Umbilicariaceae, whereas he never showed a great interest in most pyrenocarpous lichens, or for genera such as Usnea and Ramalina. T he splitting of lichen genera into smaller, more natural units, is becoming almost a fashion today. Poelt was well aware of the unsatisfactory generic concepts accepted by Zahlbruckner, and was one of the first who opened the way to the present, almost stormy search for more natural generic concepts. Among more than 30 genera he described or resurrected are well-known taxa such as H eterodermia, Bryonora, Physconia, Squamarina and Vezdaea. H owever, the recent splitting of some genera, such as Parmelia, based on very few characters, did not convince him very much: he thought that, if both large and small genera do exist, this fact should be accepted and recognized nomenclaturally. 1996 T ribute to Josef Poelt 187 Poelt’s contributions to lichenology were not restricted to taxonomy. Indeed, all who joined him in the field know how much he was interested in the puzzling biology of lichens. ‘ Schau! Look here! T his should be studied! ’ he repeated while attached to a rock, exploring the Lilliputian world of lichens with his inseparable lens (he was never without his lens, even when wearing a tie in a congress). Several well known studies on the biology, morphology and ecology of lichens received the first stimulus from something strange he showed to somebody during an excursion. H e himself published 11 fundamental articles on parasitic lichens, a group that was very poorly known in the 1950s, containing not only the description of many new species, but also a detailed interpretation of their fascinating biology. T he phenomena of cyanotrophic lichens and the biology of muscicolous species were also described in detail. Other important papers by him on the reproductive biology of lichens included those on vegetative reproduction, with the description of schizidia, blastidia, lichenized bulbils, and thallospores in the Umbilicariaceae. Finally, his well known ‘ T heorie der Artenpaare ’ was an acute biological interpretation of the occurrence of sibling species pairs in lichens. By the sheer output of his research activity, Poelt clearly appears as a giant of twentieth century botany. T he book dedicated to him on the occasion of his 60th birthday was reviewed by W. L. C ulberson with the following words ‘ A splendid tribute to one of the greatest botanists of our days ’ ( The Bryologist (1986) 89: 86). H owever, what Poelt did for science was much more than publishing important papers: he was a true M aster. T here may be many reasons for this: his immense knowledge, not limited to botanical matters, his outstanding teaching capacities, his friendly personality, his open attitude, especially with young beginners, and his extraordinary observational power in the field. Perhaps, however, the most essential feature was his capacity to lead one almost by hand near the limits between known and unknown. Often one expected from him the solution of a trivial problem, as the identification of a specimen, and got instead two or three related, puzzling biological problems that awaited a solution. H is scientific activity had nothing to do with ambition or with the search for academic honours and authority. H e strove towards a true understanding of nature that was sincere, almost naive, something that had deep roots in his amicable, but profoundly serious, almost, in his own way, religious character. After a long excursion in the Alps, a very young lichenologist asked him one of those questions that can be posed to an old professor only after a glass of wine, and under a sky full of stars: ‘ Professor Poelt, what do you think we are for on this earth? ’. Josef thought a while and answered: ‘ We have to understand, at least we have to try to understand . . . this is the best thing we can try to do. And, you know, it is not easy, it is really not easy . . .’. N ow we can only say, as that student did: ‘ T hank you, Josef! T hank you for all you gave us. We shall not forget you ’. H. Hertel, P . L. Nim is and A. Vězda