Benutzer:Florean Fortescue/Werkstatt 5

• 1987: The Volcano Watchers (Episode 6x7 der PBS-Serie Nature)
• 1989: Mountains of Fire (National Geographic-Film)
• 1995: Maurice et Katia Krafft au rythme de la terre (BBC- und Arte-Film)
• 1997: Volcano. Nature’s Inferno (National Geographic-Film)
• 2011: Face au volcan tueur
• 2022: Fire of Love

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• Maurice: „Nous vivons au rythme des colères de la planète et, en douze ans de carrière, nous sommes déjà centenaires, tant sont nombreuses les belles et fabuleuses éruptions volcaniques qui se bousculent dans nos mémoires de volcanologues. Katia, moi et les volcans, c’est une histoire d’amour. Notre passion est exclusive, dévorante, loin de hommes. J’aime les volcans parce qu’ils nous dépassent, qu’ils son indifférents à la vanité des choses humaines. Si nous avons encore le courage de vivre dans notre société moderne, c’est grâce aux volcans, aux joies qu’ils nous apportent par leur beauté, leur sérénité, leurs embrasements, leur violence qui, peut-être un jour, aura raison de notre témérité.“
• Maurice vor der Abreise nach Martinique zu André Demaison: „Nous allons faire nos mondanités, mon cher! Nous allons manger des petits fours et couper des rubans. Nous sommes invités à l’inauguration d’une salle d’exposition consacrée au volcanisme de la montagne Pelée.“
• Maurice über Risiko eingehen: Imaginez que vous soyez sur le quai d'une gare. Si vous dépassez la bande jaune de sécurité, tracée sur le sol, vous risquez de vous faire emporter par le train à grande vitesse qui va passer sans s'arrêter. Sur un volcan, il n'y a pas de ligne jaune tracée. C'est à vous de fixer mentalement ce point à ne pas franchir et, seules l'expérience et l'intuition vont vous obliger à refréner l'envie qui vous pousse à vous approcher toujours plus près, encore plus près...pour voir, papillons attirés par la lumière d'une lampe. [...] Le risque est le moteur même de la vie. Vous savez, si vous ne prenez pas de risques, c'est que vous êtes morts où que vous êtes passés à côté de votre propre vie.
• Maurice ob er Angst hat: Bien sûr que si. Là encore, il faut dépasser ce stade qui vous empêche de faire quoi que ce soit, apprivoiser la peur. Et, vous savez, ne plus avoir peur serait tout aussi dangereux et nous ne ferions pas de vieux os. Il faut intégrer cette notion de peur et vivre en intimité avec elle.
• Maurice: La vie est la seule aventure dont on ne ressort jamais vivant.

Anfänge und Treffen

„At fourteen years old, I decided to become volcanologist – mainly because we were learning in school geology. I said to my father ‚We need to go see volcanoes.‘ So unternahmen wir einen Familienausflug nach Italien, um Stromboli und Ätna anzuschauen. Und ich hatte auch Filme über die Vulkane gesehen. So fing alles an.“

– Katia

„I fell in love without seeing active volcanos. I have seen films and photos and was interested in geology and so I decided to be volcanologist. And only two years later I asked my parents to go to Italy to see really the volcano and I was all so impressed when I see for the first time what I wished to do.“

– Katia

„We met in fact at the university. I was in geology and Katia was in geochemistry. So, I was crazy about volcanoes, she was crazy about volcanoes and so we loved each other after. It’s an after-effect of loving volcanoes.“

– Über das Zusammenkommen mit Katia

„When we went to Vulcano in Italy we were a group of friends. We were students at this time in geology, in geochemistry and so on. So we stayed at the foot of the volcano when we were making a lot of research but with a very low amount of money. And I remember that we don’t had so much clothes at this time. But those gases are so acid that our clothes were completely burned with a lot of holes in it because of the gases. So after two or three days we were looking really like beggars.“

– Maurice

„Er hat sich auch für Vulkane interessiert und wir sagten dann ‚Komm, lass uns nach Sizilien gehen‘. Wir wollten aktive Vulkane sehen. Und dann habe ich Katia Conrad kennengelernt, die sich auch dafür interessierte. Und dann haben wir ein Team gebildet und sind nach Italien und Island gereist. Und da sind wir drei Monate geblieben. Es war ein schönes Abenteuer.“

– Maurice über die Beginne der Zusammenarbeit mit Roland Haas und Katia

„I fell in love with volcanos when I was seven years old. I saw my first volcano with my father, Stromboli in Italy. And this was really a discovery for me to see a mountain, a sort of cone, and at its top to have fire, to have explosions every minute was fantastic. And I have seen this eruption from very near. And I was really fascinated. So I decided to become geologist.“

– Maurice

„I became volanologist because my father showed me at Stromboli an eruption from near when I was seven or eight years old. And, if at this time, the authorities had said ‚Not possible. Don’t go. There is an eruption. You are not allowed to go‘, I would never had a chance to see an eruption from near and to be interested in volcanoes and become volcanologist.“

– Maurice

1971, Ijen

„There, near the crater, you have people that are digging the sulfur. There is a sulfur mine in fact, but a very very primitive sulfer mine, you know. Those people are fantastic people because they carry 60 kilos or so of sulfur on their back and they have to walk 30 kilometres with this on their back. The money they receive is really nothing. And you see children, twelve years old or ten years old, working there. It’s absolutely awful, you know. Those conditions are very bad.“

– Maurice

„We had an old rubber boat we bought in Paris, you know, in a second-hand-shop. [...] We bought it for really, I would say, this time, for 50 pounds, not more. Very old. So we inflated this rubber boat and we went on the lake. And it was really fantastic, you know. Just to be on this lake of acid. And so we had also a cable with a bottle to see how deep was the lake and to take samples of the acid of the lake at different depths.“

– Maurice

1973, Eldfell

„To see all those houses with light on, with curtains, with dishes on the tables and so – everything was ready but nobody’s there. It was like being in a sort of theatre with a big scenery ready for a show but nobody’s there for the show. Just the volcano behind.“

– Maurice

„We went in a hotel to put our things there and the owner of the hotel said „Oh, don’t pay for the room. My hotel will be destroyed tomorrow.“ And in the evening we went in the building through the main door and next morning we went out through the first floor, you know. During the night five meters of ashes fell on this building.“

– Maurice

1973, Nyiragongo

„The soil is trembling, you have all these noises around you – like if you are in the bowel of the earth. And you are nothing. And this is very nice to feel: you are just nothing when you are near a volcano.“

– Katia

„We were just ten metres above the lava lake. And so in the evening gingen wir nah heran, bis die Luft im stehen zu heiß war und wir uns auf den Boden kauern mussten. Viele Stunden beobachteten wir die Bewegung der Lava von einer Seite zur anderen. Manchmal senkte sie sich sehr schnell ab. Dann aber schwoll der See so stark an, dass wir dachten, er wird überschwappen. Wir waren so fasziniert, dass wir am Boden liegen blieben und warteten, was passierte. Immer wieder quoll der Lavasee auf, aber pendelte sich dann erneut auf seine vorherige Höhe ein.“

– Katia

„We went on Nyiragongo. So you have to climb the volcano. That’s not so long – three, four, five hours. And then it starts. Because you arrive at the mouth of the volcano and you have to go in the mouth of the volcano. So we were going down a cliff. Not so high – 300 metres – but very bad rock. All kind of fumaroles went through and so and it’s not strong. It’s terrible. So we went down and we stayed 15 days on the platform that was 300 metres lower than the rim. And we stayed on this platform for, yes, two weeks. And we put our tent there. And the lava lake was just working 200 metres under us. So it was like being on the lid of a pressure cooker, a very big one with magma inside. And this was a fantastic experience.“

– Maurice

„The magma went out from the flank – from the lower flank – of the volcano. And the lava flows were going very very fast, coming out from fissures, they were probably riding at 60 to 70 km/h. And this was in the morning when a lot of people were on the road going for the market, local market of Goma. And we think that around 100 people have been catched by the lava flow and were really, you know, overwhelmed by the lava flow and so on. And we even found elephant molds later. There was a group of small elephants and they had no time to escape. And so the lava went around those elephants and now you can see perfectly the elephant molds. Even the trunk, feet, everything is in the molds of the elephants. And this is probably one of the only basaltic activities with fluid lava that killed really quite a lot of people. Very unsusual eruption – but not long, just one hour. We arrived, I would say, two days after: everything was over.“

– Maurice über die Eruption des Nyiragongo am 10. Januar 1977

1982, Galunggung

„This activity was very spectacular because you had the big ash column going up every three, four, five days. And those ash columns were going at ten kilometers, 15 kilometers high. And each eruption, each explosion was three, four, five, six hours long. So this big ash column went up and then a cloud of ash – of black ash – came slowly on us and then in ten minutes everthing was completely dark. Everything was dark, really. When the sun is coming again and people are taking all those ashes away and the life is going again, it’s really incredible how they find this in some way normal, you know. They had it so often during these eruptions – it was more than nine month long – that it was quite something like a, you know, a shower of rain. Rain shower, here they have ash showers. ‚Ok, why not?‘“

– Maurice

1983, Ätna

„They take a lump of lava out and then they make ashtrays in lava and so on with „Souvenir of Etna“ and so, you know. They have molds and they put the melted lava in it and they make those crazy things. And those are sold to the tourists. This a very old habit. I mean, they have done this on Vesuvius for years, they have done this in the 18th century – taking some lava, then pushing it together, and with some molds making for instance a sign „This year and this eruption“. And even, if you ask, they can put your name specifically in the lava and so, in these melted things. And this is a big business. [...] We arrived just in time to see the lava coming behind this big building, this big school, and the whole building was really eaten by the lava flow. And then suddenly in, I would say, one or two seconds the whole building collapsed. And 50 minutes after, nothing was left, the whole thing was covered. And it was quite a big building. Very impressive. To see how a lava flow is eating something is very impressive. When you see a lion eating an animal, it’s nothing compared to a volcano that is eating a big building. [...] A lot of population is living around Etna. And the concentration of population in the lower slope of Etna is fantastic, because the soil is very fertile again. So when those lava flows are going down, of course they destroy a lot of things but they don’t kill people, you know. It’s a dangerous volcano, but not for people. [...] I remember, I have seen a lava flow coming on a building. The building was overwhelmed, completely destroyed. And the farmer was nearby on a hill, looking at his home [being] destroyed. And then, when I went back at the same place two years ago [1985] there was a new house on the lava flow that destroyed the house some years before. So people are living with this volcano and in fact, they respect the volcano. They like their volcano.“

– Maurice

1983, Colo

„It’s really something very dangerous. But it was so fascinating to look at it and to try to be close to see better what is happening, that we don’t worry about death or so – because it was so fantastic to see, that you just forget. Ok, can happen – but we’ll try.“

– Katia

1984, Mauna Loa

„What was wonderful was that we have seen really the beginning of a basaltic eruption. And this is fantastic because we had curtains of fire kilometers long and this was in the early morning with the best light you can have, you see. So it was really fantastic.“

– Katia

„This was my birthday. It was a fantastic present. I will never have a present like this again. The fault system was 15 kilometres long and you had curtains of fire all along this fault that formed and big lava flows coming down. It’s just the blood of the earth that is going down the mountain – but a lot of blood, really.“

– Maurice

1988, Ol Doinyo Lengai

„We were very surprised by the fluidity of this lava and with its low temperature because it’s only 500 degree Celsius and to take the samples – the fluid lava – with a spoon. And what was very exciting also – that in the night it was red like other lava.“

– Katia

„I think really, to see Lengai from near is something that is outside the earth. I have never seen such an unusual volcano than this one. And what is very peculiar for this volcano is that those lavas are black. It’s not mud, it’s lava. And once you see those black lava flows going here and there in this crater – 24 hours after emission, those black lavas became white.“

– Maurice

Piton de la Fournaise

„Réunion is an old friend of mine – one of my best friends. And I will never be disappointed because it’s a volcano that is active around once a year and very nice activities. And I know about those eruptions immediately. I would say, if an eruption starts, in less than five minutes I will know it here in France through telephone or telex and so. And then I rush there because there a flights every day. And I like this volcano, yes, very much. And we’ll even make a museum of this volcano. I fell in love with Piton de la Fournaise volcano, yeah. I am a volcano lover and I have many mistresses around the world and this is one of them.“

– Maurice

1991, Unzen

„Here you have a pyroclastic flow, yeah. [...] It doesn’t occur all the time. When you have lava flow – then it will happen all the time. It’s why this is so interesting: because you have very few.“

– Katia

„This is one of the smallest pyroclastic flows I have seen. I hope to see bigger ones than this one because this is very small, really, yes.“

– Maurice

„I am never afraid, because I have seen so many eruptions in 23 years, that – even if I die tomorrow I don’t care.“

– Maurice

„Hallo M’Toto, hier ist Maurice. [...] Wir fliegen nach Japan zu einem Ausbruch. Es ist Dienstagmittag. Wir sind schon am Flughafen. Es gibt eine Eruption am Unzen, die mich sehr interessiert. Wir sind gestern aus Martinique zurückgekommen und dachten, wir würden in Paris sein, aber wir fliegen gleich nach Japan weiter. Naja, wir umarmen euch. Tschüs.“

– Maurice

Angst und Risiko

„With all the risks we take, it would be a real shame to die in our beds.“

– Maurice

„You may say to me that I should be afraid of these volcanoes. Not at all. In the last fifteen years I’ve seen so many beautiful eruptions that I’ve been complete for a while now.“

– Maurice

„I think that the biggest risk is to go in a car because this is a very dangerous place, you see. But it depends. When you are near an explosive volcano the chance must be 50 percent. It’s easier to escape from a lava flow than from a glowing cloud. Lava flow is going 40 kilometers per hour – so maybe we can escape if it’s not too long and too fast. But with nuée ardente – glowing clouds – means 300 kilometers per hour, you can not escape. It will go too fast. It will kill you.“

– Katia

„For me the danger is not important. I am afraid, when I go in a car, but on volcanoes I forget everything and there is no more danger for me.“

– Katia

„Ein guter Vulkanologe hat viele Eruptionen gesehen und weiß, wie weit er gehen kann. Das ist der kritische Punkt. Denn oftmals gibt es kein sichtbares Anzeichen dafür, dass die Situation gefährlich wird – nur eine Art Gefühl, eine Verständigung zwischen Mensch und Berg lässt dich ahnen, wann es Zeit ist, zu fliehen. Dann aber nichts wie weg, ohne genau zu wissen, wann.“

– Maurice

„Ehrlich gesagt ist das letztlich nicht viel gefährlicher, als in irgendeinem modernen Land die Straße zu überqueren. In Belgien oder sonstwo. Es ist eigentlich ein kalkulierbares Risiko. Wenn du einem Vulkan nahe kommst, dann läufst du nicht einfach hinein. Das wäre uninteressant. Zunächst studiert man ihn, um sich gegen alles, was passieren könnte, zu schützen.“

– Maurice

„Irgendwann geht man auch mehr und mehr Risiken ein. Normalerweise ist ein guter Vulkanologe einer, der weiß, an welcher Stelle er aufhören muss oder stehen bleiben muss. Aber das kann manchmal trotzdem schwierig sein. Oft lernt man einen Vulkan erst nach und nach kennen und es gibt keine offensichtlichen Anzeichen, die dir sagen ‚Jetzt musst du abhauen!‘“

– Maurice

Faszination Vulkane

„Es ist eine Leidenschaft, die dich auffrisst. Sie frisst dich auf, diese Leidenschaft – das ist sicher.“

– Maurice

„Vulkane sind so etwas wie Türen ins Erdinnere. Sie sind einfach wunderschön, sehr ästhetisch, sehr kraftvoll, gewaltig. Wenn man einmal einen Vulkanausbruch miterlebt hat, kommt man davon nicht mehr los – so großartig, so stark. Es ist einfach faszinierend. Und ich bin glücklich, dass ich zumindest den Versuch unternehmen kann, sie zu verstehen.“

– Katia

„Very often on volcanoes we live like wild animals. That means you have to sleep on the ground on very spiny soil. What is nice when you sleep on the ground on an active volcano: you have just the vibrations of this big elephant. We’re just living on the back of this animal and so you have the feeling that you are on something alive.“

– Katia

„It’s beautiful, it’s aesthetic, it’s also powerful. Very very powerful. Like a sea when you have a storm or so, it’s the same. And it’s because you’re so small and no more something important, that it’s wonderful, too.“

– Katia

„Of course, you can not really jump on the lava and go down the lava flow. That’s my dream: I would like to make a canoe of titanium or something like that, you know. And to go down the lava flow in a canoe, that must be fantastic – taking temperatures and taking viscosity measurements and so on in the flow when going down. If we can find a company that will pay for the canoe, I will go in the canoe to go down the lava flow.“

– Maurice

„Schau, schau Oscar. Wie klein sind wir angesichts dieser Kraft? Der Mensch hat so viel Eitelkeit im Leben und wir sind nichts. Das Einzige, was von unserem Leben weiter überdauern kann, ist jenes, was wir geschrieben zurücklassen.“

– Maurice 1989 am Lonquimay zu Oscar González-Ferrán

„For me an active volcano – especially volcanos that I know very well, those are like friends. There is a sort of dialogue between the volcano and me. I don’t know exactly why.“

– Maurice

„In fact, a volcano is like a wild animal. It is blind, it doesn’t see you. And you are a sort of crazy doctor and you want to understand what is his stomach problem exactly at the moment. So first you have to stay far long time and to look at his habits, you know, his behaviour – where are the blocks falling and so on and so on. We are not Kamikaze, just jumping in a volcano. Not really.“

– Maurice

„Wir leben im Rhythmus des Zornes des Planeten und sind, in zwölf Jahren der Karriere, bereits Hundertjährige – so zahlreich sind die wunderschönen und fabelhaften Vulkanausbrüche, die sich in unseren vulkanologischen Erinnerungen drängeln. Katia, ich und die Vulkane – das ist eine Liebesgeschichte. Unsere Leidenschaft ist exklusiv, verzehrend, fernab der Menschen. Ich mag die Vulkane, weil sie uns übertreffen, [weil] sie gleichgültig sind gegenüber der Eitelkeit menschlicher Dinge. Wenn wir noch den Mut haben, in unserer modernen Gesellschaft zu leben, dann ist es dank der Vulkane [und] der Freuden, die sie uns durch ihre Schönheit bringen, [durch] ihre Ausgeglichenheit, ihre Gluten, ihre Gewalt, die vielleicht eines Tages die Oberhand über unsere Tollkühnheit gewinnen wird.“

– Maurice

„I think that the volcanoes are very powerful in our mind because it’s a fire. We are attracted by fire. It’s a sort of hell [in] the meantime. People are much more curious about hell than about paradise. So they want to see how hell is looking to know if it’s worth to go into paradise, maybe.“

– Maurice

Pyroklastische Ströme

„The last time I came, I presented the volcanoes of Africa, that is to say the nice ones, the beautiful ones. Today, I’ve got the hard ones. Like there is hard rock, there are hard volcanoes, killer volcanoes. By the way, of the 350 professional volcanologists, there are about 300 – and they are right – who specialize in the nice ones. In other words, red lava flows, fountains of molten lava, boiling lava lakes. It’s spectacular, it’s scary, but frankly, to get killed in that type of eruption you have to make a big mistake or have very bad luck. But there are some 50 other volcanologists, of which I am a part, who specialize in explosive volcanoes, which is more exciting to me. There is nothing red. Rather, there are 20-, 30-, 40-kilometer ash clouds that move at 1000 kilometers per hour and that sweep 20, 30 or 40 kilometers away from the volcano. It’s the bomb with a lit fuse, and we don’t know how long the fuse is. In five years, I’ve had five colleagues killed by eruptions – that’s ten percent. You may say that leaves a spot for youth, and that’s true, promotions are often rapid. I would say that if one truly specializes in explosive volcanoes then it’s not worth contributing towards retirement, and that if one makes it to retirement it’s a little suspicious. It means that he really didn’t do his job conscientiously.“

– Maurice

„To see a pyroclastic flow from 50 meters – that’s an experience you should have!“

– Maurice

Arbeit

„We have seen so much big eruptions that now we wanted to see bigger and bigger and bigger. And these don’t happen so often. So sometimes we have to wait one year or even two years to see something really enormous. And [the] more enormous it is, [the] better it is for me.“

– Maurice

„Wir folgen den Vulkanausbrüchen wie Kinder. Wir hatten Karten, auf denen alle Vulkanausbrüche eingetragen sind, die man erwartet. Leider gibt es nicht so viele Beobachtungsstationen, um alle Eruptionen vorhersagen zu können. Aber wenn ein für uns interessanter Vulkanausbruch bevorsteht, dann machen wir uns sofort auf den Weg.“

– Maurice

„Ich bin kein Filmemacher. Ich denke, Vulkane filmen kann ich gut – aber bittet mich nicht, eine Landschaft zu filmen, denn das kann ich nicht. Ich bin ein streunender Vulkanforscher, der Filme machen muss, um streunen zu können.“

– Maurice

„The sound on explosive volcanoes is generally terrible. It’s so strong that we cannot speak to each other anymore. Sometimes people tell us ‚Why don’t you put earplugs?‘ Never. It’s a good way to be killed because sometimes you have [a] very very small noise, whistling and so on, that means a lot – it means that you have to go.“

– Maurice

„Ja, für mich schon. Aber ob Mann oder Frau – der Job muss im Team erledigt werden.“

– Katia auf die Frage, ob das auch ein Leben für eine Frau sei

„Formerly, I was studying gases and taking samples but now not so much, because I prefer to observe – like Maurice – the eruptions going. And the other thing very important, I think, is to take pictures, the photos, and this is my job.“

– Katia

„When you hear about an eruption, you say „Ok, I will make gas analyses, take temperature and this and that.“ And when you arrive on the place – the show is completely different, you know. The volcano is making the show he wants to make. And it’s never the show you are waiting for. So, generally, the activity is so strong that you just drop your instruments and you look at the volcano and even… maybe you even fall in love with the eruption. And then sometimes – often – you forget to make the observations. But it’s really very fascinating here. You can forget to work on it. This happened often to me. And I like to forget to make the scientific work and just to look and the power of nature is really fantastic.“

– Maurice

„My work is different from all the volcanologists because when I see an eruption, sometimes it’s so nice, that I just drop my instruments and look. That is to say, I can not only study the eruption – I want also film volcanos to show it to other people. So I am as much interested in aesthetic than in science.“

– Maurice

„We are not always on one specific problem in volcanology with a microscope or with a seismograph. And in one year, I am a writer, a movie maker, a scientist and an adventurer and so on – and when you mix all this, it is fantastic.“

– Maurice

„Generally, volcanologists are wearing helmets, normal helmets. That’s not enough. Because if a big block is falling on your head your neck will be broken. You can identify the body of the guy but that’s all, he’ll be killed. So, this is why we have used – and we have done those helmets ourselves – very original helmets. You can receive ein fünf Kilogramm schweres Lavageschoss, das aus einhundert bis zweihundert Metern Höhe kommt. Beim Aufprall gibt es einen ordentlichen Knall. It’s very spectacular but you survive.“

– Maurice

Katia

„The volcanoes are our children.“

„Keine Haustiere, keine Kinder. Meine Kinder sind die Vulkane.“

„S’il n’y a pas une éruption.“

Maurice

„I am the whale and Katia is the pilot fish.“

–

„When we know everything about volcanoes, we’ll throw ourselves into the first crater that comes along.“

–

„I would say, if I had died without looking at a volcanic eruption, I had died like an idiot. I would say that everybody has to see a volcanic eruption from near. And I can not live without volcanic eruptions.“

– 1987

„I have seen so much, that now I can take some risk. Because even if it stopped tomorrow, it doesn’t matter. I have seen enough. So all the things I am looking at now… and I am only interested in volcanic eruptions, you know. Some people, some friends and volcanic eruptions. I am very specialized. But I would say that, if tomorrow I die in a volcano – not important. I have seen enough. And that’s why I am very relaxed now, when I go to see a volcano. So that’s why some volcanologists and friends are considering me as really completely crazy. But I like to be crazy, because life is crazy. And a volcano is crazy – so everything is crazy. And if it can stay crazy for many years, it’s ok. In the meantime I want to understand how volcanos are working.“

– 1987