Robert Marc Lehmann

Jena, Kiel, and a contract that was not renewed

Lehmann was born on 7 February 1983 in Jena, took his Abitur there and completed civil service before studying biology at the University of Kiel, specialising in zoology and marine biology. He finished his diploma in 2009 with a thesis on European freshwater crayfish, worked at the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel and qualified as a research diver — the German certification that allows scientific work underwater rather than recreational diving.

From 1 December 2008 to 30 November 2009 he was a team leader at the Ozeaneum in Stralsund, and during that period accompanied three expeditions to Norway. His view of keeping animals in tanks shifted while he was doing the job, and his contract was not renewed. He came out of that year as a campaigner against holding animals in zoos and aquaria, and almost every public argument he has had since traces back to it.

Cameras before subscribers

The decade after Stralsund was spent behind a lens rather than in front of a following. In 2013 he co-founded the research-diving group Submaris with Christian Howe, Uli Kunz, Philipp Schubert and Florian Huber, taking on scientific diving contracts; the group turned up in two episodes of NDR's Nordstory. The same year, Verborgene Welten – Die Höhlen der Toten took two prizes at the Cannes Corporate Media & TV Awards, for best 3D film and best adventure and travel documentary. He also worked as a cameraman on the ZDF science strand Terra X.

The recognition through this period was mostly for pictures. He won National Geographic's Wildes Deutschland photography competition in 2015, took the German Marine Film Award at the CineMare festival in 2017, was named Mensch des Jahres by the diving magazine Tauchen in 2018, and placed second in the GDT Naturfotograf des Jahres award in 2021. In 2018 he embedded with the German special forces for the documentary KSK – kämpfe nie für dich allein, a subject some way outside the water.

Three books sit alongside the films: Michel und die Fischräuber in 2017, written with Gerhard Wegner and Johanna Ricker; Mission Erde – Die Welt ist es wert, um sie zu kämpfen in 2021, whose title has since become the name of the stage show; and the photographic volume Mission Erde – Meer als nur ein Bildband in 2022.

Mission Erde: a charity, a channel, a broadcaster of one

Lehmann founded the association Mission Erde e.V. in 2019 to fund conservation projects, habitat protection and wildlife work, including ghost-net recovery dives. VOX made him a nature ambassador in autumn 2020 and launched the television series Mission Erde on 5 October 2021, with further episodes in 2022 and a run of ten across 2023 and 2024; the episodes stream on Joyn, and the Bali films — an investigation into animal cruelty behind the tourist trade — are among the most watched.

The YouTube channel opened in May 2021 and quickly outgrew the broadcast slot. It ranked fourth in Germany for subscriber growth in 2022, and a livestream that November raised over €100,000 in donations. What it carries is not clips but long-form series: Mission: Peru, 0800 SEE ORCA, two seasons of Mission: Europa, then Uganda, Brasilien, Azoren, two seasons of Bali, Kanada, Hunderettung, Monte and Estland. In effect he commissions, shoots, cuts and distributes his own documentary strand.

The television half has gone quiet. German listings for September and October 2026 show no new VOX episodes, no repeats and nothing in the catch-up library. The centre of gravity has moved to the channel and to the halls.

The whale that split the room

The defining episode of 2026 was a humpback whale. She was first sighted on 3 March in the harbour at Wismar, in the western Baltic, then became entangled in fishing gear several times near the German coast and stranded on a sandbank off Timmendorfer Strand on 23 March. Nicknamed Timmy, she drew a media operation of a size no stranded animal in German waters had attracted before. On 28 April, after weeks of failed attempts, a privately financed rescue loaded her onto a 50-metre barge for transport to the North Sea. She left the barge and swam off on 2 May. Her carcass was found near the Danish island of Anholt on 14 May.

Lehmann became the public face of the operation and was attacked from several directions for it. Established cetacean researchers opposed the rescue as potentially cruel, one museum director saying on the basis of video evidence that the animal suffered badly during the barge operation; vets publicly corrected anatomical claims he had made; and he was accused of putting his own profile ahead of the whale. He left the operation before it ended. Against that, the marine biologist Joseph Schnitzler credited him with getting excavation machinery to the site when it was needed. The affair hardened the split that has followed him for years: a large audience that trusts him precisely because he is not institutional, and an institutional science community that regards him as the problem.

The fight he keeps picking

The zoo argument has escalated steadily. In August 2023 he published leaked footage from a closed event held by the Verband der Zoologischen Gärten at which speakers discussed how to manage criticism from influencers, which put the association on the defensive for weeks. In May 2025 he withdrew from a scheduled talk at Wuppertal's Future Festival after being told not to raise the subject of zoos, and organised a demonstration instead; roughly 2,000 people turned out. In July 2025 he attacked Nuremberg Zoo's plan to cull a group of Guinea baboons and joined the protests there, laying roses.

The next step is booked. On 4 October 2026, World Animal Day, he has called a demonstration at Pariser Platz in front of the Brandenburg Gate from noon to 3pm, billed as the largest anti-zoo protest yet, with zoo directors and keepers explicitly invited to turn up and argue. His formulation of the case is that animal protection needs habitats, not shop windows. That evening he is on stage a few streets away.

Where he stands in autumn 2026

The awards have kept coming through the controversy. He received an Ocean Hero pin in 2024 for ghost-net recovery, was named Marine Conservation Photographer of the Year by the Save Our Seas Foundation in 2025, and took the 21st Century Adventurer Award from the European Outdoor Film Tour the same year. He reports having worked in more than 120 countries.

The commercial evidence is the touring. Mission Erde Live is booked into concert halls and theatres rather than lecture rooms — Die Glocke in Bremen, Theater am Tanzbrunnen in Cologne, the Meistersingerhalle in Nuremberg, Westfalenhalle 2 in Dortmund — across Germany from October 2026, then Austria and Switzerland in February 2027 and back to Frankfurt's Jahrhunderthalle on 25 March 2027. Several dates, including Lübeck on 17 October, were sold out well in advance. For a man whose subject is ghost nets and palm oil, that is an unusual room to be filling.