In Memoriam: Coleopterist Dipl. Ing. Walter Heinz (1925–2023)

© Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart Walter Heinz was born on August 8, 1925 in Ludwigs­ hafen. He spent his childhood in Frankfurt am Main, where he went to the Holzhausenschule primary school from 1931 and to the Kaiser­Wilhelm­Gymnasium from 1935, obtaining his final diploma (Abitur) in 1942. Already in these younger years he was fascinated by entomology, started collecting Lepidoptera and Coleoptera, and reg­ ularly visited the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt. In his leisure time he joined a civil gliding group, receiving his pilot’s license. From 1943, during the Second World War, Walter was a transport pilot in the air force. His first entomological collections, kept in the home of his parents, were destroyed during that time. From November 1945 he studied at the Technical Uni­ versity of Darmstadt, with a focus on construction and statics, and received his engineering diploma in 1950. After that, he joined an engineering company in Mainz and later managed its branch in Mannheim. Walter mar­ ried Ortrud Göpelt (*June 1935) in 1953. Together they built a house in Wilhelmsfeld, near Heidelberg, and about ten years later they built a larger one in Wald­Michel­ bach (Odenwald). They had six children: ulricH (*1955), ursula (*1957), HannelOre (*1959), dietricH (*1961), Gisela (*1964) and Gudrun (*1972). Walter loved classi­ cal music and learned the piano already during his school years; all of his children received an education with musi­ cal instruments, and the sounds of a flute, violin, guitar or piano could always be heard from the various rooms of the house. In 1994, once their children had all left home, the couple decided to move into a smaller house in Schwan­ feld, near Schweinfurt. Walter Heinz collected beetles outside of Europe for the first time in 1971, when he drove to Turkey with the whole family. In the following years they reached also Iran by car, with a focus on Carabus Linnaeus. In 1979 came his first travels by plane, to the Himalayas of northern Pakistan, with his indestructible wife, and from 1990 to Mexico, to collect Calosoma Weber. In the win­ ter of 1996/1997 they travelled for the first time to Africa (Kenya, South Africa) to hunt species of Anthia Weber. The first visit by the Heinz couple to Argentina and Chile, in search of Ceroglossus Solier, was conducted in 1998. On all these travels, Walter drove rental cars over long distances and on difficult routes, whereas Ortrud has no driver’s license. The last travels led Walter and Ortrud to Georgia in the Caucasus, in the summers of 2018 and 2019, where they travelled with local driver and guide nika (known also to other entomologists). By that time, Walter was already 94 years old, Ortrud 84, and they had collected beetles for almost 70 years. In several pub­ lications, Ortrud offered vivid recollections of their joint travel adventures (see Publications of Ortrud Heinz, below). Walter’s favourite collecting method was to set ground traps with a mixture of red wine and vinegar, always with the indefatigable support of his wife. Unfortunately, the pair did not practise sifting. They collected not only Cara­ bidae but also several other insect and arachnid groups, for example Opiliones. He presented them to other scientists, not only in the hope of getting carabids in exchange, but to generously support other colleagues. So the present author regularly received the collected Tenebrionidae. Walter had never studied biology, but he attended some zoology lectures at university in Frankfurt. He had an extensive knowledge of biological relations and ecologi­ cal features. Before every travel he searched on maps and in other files for isolated forest remnants and other inter­ esting habitats, for example in Turkey as well as in Chile, where he hoped to find particular taxa. He also tried to collect at the type localities of particular carabids. And he bought a strong and large vehicle (a modified Unimog) at the beginning of his collecting activities, to reach remote and off­road habitats together with his fami ly. After per­ sistent and courageous fighting with local authorities, Walter even reached restricted areas in northern Paki­ stan or in Nagorny Karabach in the Caucasus. We once spoke about a visit to St. Helena, a remote island in the southern Atlantic Ocean with a highly endemic fauna and flora. The island can be reached by ship from South Africa, but the connection is quite insecure and depend­ ent on weather conditions. In the end, Walter renounced this plan, because the risk of staying stuck for weeks on St. Helena was too high. The author first met Walter Heinz and his wife Ortrud in 1978 during the German Coleoptera Meet­ ing in Ludwigsburg and then regularly at these annual meetings, now held in Beutelsbach. Their last presence at the Beutelsbach meeting was in 2019. The meeting was OBITUARY