About the Department

The current Department for Remote Sensing and Land Information Systems in the Faculty of Forest Science is closely connected to the professional and private career of Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. G. Hildebrandt.

In 1957 Hildebrandt, at that time lecturer in geodesy and aerial forest photography in the Faculty of Forest Science at the Humboldt University in Berlin, was forced to flee with his family from the former German Democratic Republic to the West because of the threat of political persecution. He was accepted quickly and unbureaucratically in Freiburg and was able to continue his teaching and research at the Institute of Forest Management and Economy under Prof. K. Abetz. Within the framework of the lectures on Forest Economy, Hildebrandt was then dealing with the application of aerial photographs, which, over the course of several years, he developed into a separate lecture series, which was first offered in the summer term of 1962. In 1965 Prof. G. Speidel took the chair in Forest Management and Economy which led to a separation in the Institute due to space limitations. Provisionally a Section for Aerial Photogrammetry and Interpretation was created within the Institute and this became official in 1969 when Hildebrandt was appointed professor, and in the 1980s the department received the name of Department for Aerial Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. With minimal staff and finances, the department developed into an internationally renowned and respected centre for remote sensing under his leadership. Prof. Hildebrandt retired in March 1989 and is now professor emeritus. The department's business and tasks were taken up by the assistants Dr. S. Kuntz and Dr. C.P. Gross until the chair could be filled again in 1994 by Prof. Dr. Barbara Koch as the new head of the department. The name of the department was changed to reflect the new areas of emphasis and became the Department for Remote Sensing and Landscape Information Systems.