ALBERT

Description: The deep reflection seismic projile MVE-90, whose western and eastem parts are described and interpreted in this issue, is the result of a cooperation between scientific institutions of the two German Republics, in 1990, immediately before the reunification. The Federal Ministry of Science and Technology (BMFT), Bonn, and the GDR Ministry of Science, East-Berlin, announced in 1990 that there would be financial support for such cooperation, and on that basis the steering committee of DEKORP (= Deutsches Kontinentales Reflexionsseismisches Programm) proposed to carry out a crustal refiection seismic profile (MVE-90) crossing major Hercynian structures as the Mid German Crystalline Rise, the Münchberg Gneiss Complex, the Vogtland, the Erzgebirge and the Elbe Zone, and thus to contribute to an understanding of the main Hercynian structures in the remote surroundings of the KTB drillhole. The proposal was accepted by the BMFT, and the measurements were peiformed together with DEKORP-3A/-3B, which has been planned earlier, from August to October 1990, crossing the former Iran Curtain (on September 24)/rom West to East, where the eastern contractor, Geophysik Leipzig GmbH, took over from the western contractor PRAKLA­SEISMOS and continued the measurements in exactly the same way. As usual, the field data were carefully processed by the experienced group of the DEKORP Processing Center at the Technical University Clausthal. Groups of geoscientists from East and West Germany joined the DEKORP Research Group and worked intensely on the interpretation of the data obtained, much of the geological and geophysical data along the eastern part of the profile MVE-90 having been secret and unpublished so far. For these reasons, the publication which covers the part of the MVE profile east of the Franconian Line, not only attempts to supply an interpretation of only one seismic profile, but also presents an overview of scientific results of the last decades which until now had not been allowed to be published by the authorities of the German Democratic Republic. Therefore, the authors of this publication especially acknowledge the essential support of the Federal Ministry of Research and Technology, Bonn, in this special and historical enterprise.