Background
He was born in a German-Brazilian family in Porto Alegre, the capital city of southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, as the only son of architect Joseph Franz Seraph Lutzenberger.
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Jose Lutzenberger
Edit ProfileEducation
He graduated in Agronomy at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in 1950.
Career
Foreign more than 15 years he worked in Germany, Venezuela and Morocco for a German chemical company, Badische Anilin- & Soda-Fabrik, selling the same products he would later campaign against. In 1971, Lutzenberger founded the Associação Gaúcha de Proteção ao Ambiente Natural (Agapan), an environmentalist organization. He was appointed to the Environment Ministry in the Fernando Collor de Mello federal government, in the early 1990s.
"He was Brazil"s first internationally known environmental activist, and the fact he was chosen environment minister in Brazil"s first democratically elected government in 30 years was just one indication of the tremendous mark he made in that area," said Stephan Schwartzman, senior scientist at Environmental Defense.
Lutzenberger"s time as the Secretary of the Environment came to an abrupt education In December 1991, "L. Summers, who at the time was chief economist and a vice-president of the World Bank, made an internal note (leaked to the environmental community) that asserted that the economically correct policy for the disposal of environmental poisons was to dump them in developing countries.
Lutzenberger wrote to Summers expressing very strong disapproval of these ideas (calling them "totally insane"), and was removed from his post immediately thereafter."
Lutzenberger died in 2002 at the age of 75. He was buried as he wished: naked, without a coffin, close to a tree in a farm he restored, the Rincão Gaia, in Pantano Grande, also in the Rio Grande do Sul state.
Like millions of others in southern Brazil, the Kroeff-Lutzenberger family was bilingual, speaking both Portuguese, the national and official language of the land, but also German, a strong regional language in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.
Achievements
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He became famous for defending the environment together with Magda Renner, Hilda Wrasse Zimmermann and others during the time of military government in Brazil. In 1987 Lutzenberger founded a group called Gaia, which focused on global issues, and a year later he won the Right Livelihood Award in recognition of his work. Lutzenberg also achieved a high level of fluency in English, Spanish and French.
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Quotations: "He was Brazil"s first internationally known environmental activist, and the fact he was chosen environment minister in Brazil"s first democratically elected government in 30 years was just one indication of the tremendous mark he made in that area,".
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Born
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Died
March 14, 2002 (aged 75) -
Nationality
Brazil