Heinz Sielmann

Heinz Sielmann (2 June 1917 in Rheydt [now Mönchengladbach], Germany – 6 October 2006 in Munich) was a world-renowned wildlife photographer, biologist, zoologist and documentary filmmaker.

His first film, in 1938, was a silent movie on birdlife in East Prussia and the Klaipėda Region. Further work was interrupted by the war. He was initially stationed in occupied Poznań (then "Posen"), as an instructor at a radio-communications training unit of the Luftwaffe. He was later stationed on Crete, where he already undertook wildlife film work. Following time as a prisoner of war in Kairo and London he started editing the material from Crete in London for a three-part documentary.

Sielmann gained a degree in Biology and specialized in Zoology, in 1940, at the Imperial Posen University (Poland).[2], at that time a Germanized University. Later, he was stationed in Crete where he was able to work cinematographically. After the war he began widely recognized work for the Educational Film Institute of the Federal Republic of Germany. His feature film about woodpeckers, "Carpenters of the forest" (Zimmerleute des Waldes, 1954; UK-title: Woodpecker) was a huge success in the United Kingdom when broadcast by the BBC at the behest of David Attenborough. It earned Sielmann the nickname "Mr. Woodpecker".

His work includes award-winning movies like Lords of the Forest (better known in the USA under its title Masters of the Congo Jungle (1959), the English version narrated by Orson Welles, Galapagos - Dream Island in the Pacific (1962), Vanishing Wilderness (1973), and The Mystery of Animal Behavior.

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