Soil Scientist, 1981: First Big Forests 'Will Die in the Next Five Years.' The Big Forests Stayed Put

A Göttingen professor told DER SPIEGEL's 1981 acid-rain series that the first big forests could no longer be saved. Germany later counted over a million more hectares of forest.

What was said

“Die ersten großen Wälder werden schon in den nächsten fünf Jahren sterben. Sie sind nicht mehr zu retten.” Our translation: “The first big forests will die within the next five years. They can no longer be saved.”

— Prof. Bernhard Ulrich (soil scientist, University of Göttingen), quoted in DER SPIEGEL · said Nov 15, 1981 · due By November 1986 (five years from November 1981)

Some high-ridge stands in the Harz and the Ore Mountains did die back. The first big forests did not: DER SPIEGEL found the feared large-scale Waldsterben never arrived.

The fine print

Our translation of the quote: 'The first big forests will die within the next five years. They can no longer be saved.' Printed in DER SPIEGEL 47/1981 (online archive date November 15, 1981), the opening part of the magazine's three-part acid-rain series 'Da liegt was in der Luft', which set off the national Waldsterben debate: „Die ersten großen Wälder“, sagt der Göttinger Bodenkundler Professor Bernhard Ulrich, „werden schon in den nächsten fünf Jahren sterben. Sie sind nicht mehr zu retten.“ The quote field runs his two sentences together without the attribution, as DER SPIEGEL's 2015 look-back quotes it. Some later accounts date the line to an interview with the Hamburger Abendblatt on October 10, 1981; that archive wasn't reachable, so date_made follows the SPIEGEL issue and the deadline is five years on. He blamed air pollution, chiefly sulphur dioxide. No hedge in the quoted words. Outcome, per DER SPIEGEL (2015): in some areas, such as parts of the Fichtel and Ore Mountains and the Harz, forest stands died, but the feared large-scale Waldsterben across Germany did not happen; the latest national forest inventory counted 11.4 million hectares of forest, more than a million hectares more than in the early 1980s.

Later spin

In a 1995 review in Environmental Reviews, Ulrich wrote: 'The hypothesis, however, of large-scale forest dieback in the near future is not backed by data and can be discarded.' In 1999 he stressed to the taz that individual forests had died as he predicted, above all on high ridges in the Black Forest, Upper Harz and Ore Mountains (taz's paraphrase). In 2015 he told SPIEGEL ONLINE that politicians had acted in time: „Sonst wären große Teile des Waldes schwer geschädigt worden, wie in den Mittelgebirgen.“ (Our translation: 'Otherwise large parts of the forest would have been badly damaged, as in the low mountain ranges.')

Sources

As of Oct 9, 2026

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