1. Wilhelm Knabe was a German ecologist, pacifist, civil servant and politician, remembered as a founding member of the Green Party in Germany, and a pioneer of conservation of the environment who shaped the party for decades.
20 Facts About Wilhelm Knabe
1. 2.
Wilhelm Knabe left East Germany in 1959, settling in Mulheim, West Germany with his family, where he worked for a state agency for ecology.
3.
Wilhelm Knabe had been a member of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany from 1946, because it represented his Christian ethics, but left the party in 1966, unwilling to support its belief in economic growth and nuclear energy.
4.
Wilhelm Knabe was party speaker on a federal level, a member of the Bundestag from 1987 to 1990, and vice mayor of Mulheim from 1994 to 1999.
5.
Wilhelm Knabe was born in October 1923 in Arnsdorf, near Dresden, the seventh of nine children of a Protestant theologian.
6.
Wilhelm Knabe's father directed a facility for children with learning difficulties.
7.
Wilhelm Knabe died trying to protect these children from the Nazi euthanasia programs in 1940, when Wilhelm was age 16.
8.
Wilhelm Knabe studied forest management at the Forstliche Hochschule in Tharandt near Dresden, and completed his studies with a doctorate in agrarian science at the Humboldt University in Berlin.
9.
Wilhelm Knabe left East Germany in 1959, with his pregnant wife and three children.
10.
Wilhelm Knabe left the party in 1966 because he could no longer support its belief in unrestrained economic growth, building of highways, and support of nuclear energy.
11.
Wilhelm Knabe worked from the mid-1960s in a leading position for the Landesanstalt fur Okologie, a state agency for ecology, in Recklinghausen, moving to Mulheim in 1967.
12.
Wilhelm Knabe headed a project developing strategies to fight Waldsterben.
13.
Wilhelm Knabe was a co-founder of the Green Party in Germany in 1978.
14.
Wilhelm Knabe stood for conservation of the environment and world peace, and against nuclear deterrence and the arms race in the East and West.
15.
Wilhelm Knabe served as one of three speakers of the Greens at the federal level from November 1982 until December 1984.
16.
Wilhelm Knabe was a Member of the Bundestag from 1987 until 1990.
17.
Wilhelm Knabe was vice mayor of the city of Mulheim from 1994 to 1999, where he formed the first black-green coalition in Germany.
18.
Wilhelm Knabe focused there on projects of culture and education.
19.
Wilhelm Knabe read literature to children at the Kloster Saarn educational facility.
20.
Wilhelm Knabe died in Mulheim an der Ruhr, at age 97, from a COVID-19 infection during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany.