Knabe was born in October 1923 in
Arnsdorf, near
Dresden, the seventh of nine children of a Protestant theologian. His father directed a facility for children with learning difficulties. He died trying to protect these children from the Nazi euthanasia programs in 1940, when Wilhelm was age 16. The younger Knabe joined the
Luftwaffe after his
Abitur at the
Fürstenschule St. Afra in
Meißen, and served for three years. After World War II, he became a member of the
Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 1946. He studied
forest management (
Forstwirtschaft) at the Forstliche Hochschule in
Tharandt near Dresden, and completed his studies with a
doctorate in
agrarian science at the
Humboldt University in Berlin. During his studies, he founded a group for preservation of the environment in 1949, together with other students, but the
SED government of the
German Democratic Republic (GDR) soon suppressed it. As assistant at the Humboldt University, he focused on plans for the recultivation after
brown coal mining, the topic of his dissertation, but they were not put into practice. Knabe left
East Germany in 1959, with his pregnant wife and three children. The family settled in
North Rhine-Westphalia,
West Germany, where he joined the
Christian Democratic Union, as it represented his
Christian ethics. He left the party in 1966 because he could no longer support its belief in unrestrained economic growth, building of highways, and support of nuclear energy. Knabe worked from the mid-1960s in a leading position for the , a state agency for ecology, in
Recklinghausen, moving to
Mülheim in 1967. He headed a project developing strategies to fight
Waldsterben (death of the forests). In the 1970s, he supported oppositional groups in the GDR, such as ecological groups, initiatives for international development, and especially the Umwelt-Bibliothek (ecological library) in Berlin and the Ökologischer Arbeitskreis (ecological work group) in Dresden. ,
Joschka Fischer,
Otto Schily, Wilhelm Knabe and in 1983 Knabe was a co-founder of the
Green Party in Germany in 1978. He stood for conservation of the environment and world peace, and against nuclear deterrence and the arms race in the East and West. In 1979, he was a co-founder of the party in
North Rhine-Westphalia, where he was the party's first speaker. He served as one of three speakers of the Greens at the federal level (
Sprecher des Bundesverbandes) from November 1982 until December 1984. In the 1980s, he developed a system for the analysis of forest health by monitoring data from 26 areas over a long period. The concept became a standard in Germany. Knabe was a Member of the
Bundestag from 1987 until 1990. Beginning in 1991, he collaborated with a students' ecological initiative (Umweltinitiative) at the
Technische Universität Dresden. He was vice mayor of the city of
Mülheim from 1994 to 1999, where he formed the first black-green coalition in Germany. He focused there on projects of culture and education. Knabe was married, and the couple had four children. Their son
Hubertus Knabe became a historian. In 2019, Wilhelm Knabe published an
autobiography titled
Erinnerungen – Ein deutsch-deutsches Leben (Memories − a German-German life). He read literature to children at the educational facility. He joined
Friday For Future demonstrations showing a poster "Opa for future – ihr seid nicht allein" (Grandpa for future – you are not alone). Knabe died in
Mülheim an der Ruhr, at age 97, from a
COVID-19 infection during the
COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. == Publications ==