Paul Langhans

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paul Max Harry Langhans (born April 1, 1867 in Hamburg , † January 17, 1952 in Gotha ) was a German geographer and cartographer .

life and work

Paul Langhans, son of the innkeeper Paul Langhans (1838–1922), attended the Hamburg secondary school from 1878 to 1886. From 1886 to 1889 he studied geography, natural sciences and economics in Kiel and Leipzig . During his studies he joined the Association of German Students in Kiel and Leipzig.

In 1889 he became an employee at Justus Perthes' Geographisch-Kartographischen Anstalt in Gotha. In the following decades Langhans published numerous maps and atlases, including the German Colonial Atlas (1897). In 1902 he founded the magazine Deutsche Erde , which was close to the Pan-German Association and supported theories of folk and cultural soil research . Langhans is considered to be one of the most important German representatives of ethnocentric geopolitics . From 1909 to 1937 he was editor of Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen and from 1923 editor-in-chief of the Gothaischer Hofkalender .

In his function as a member of the anti - Semitic German Social Reform Party , Langhans was editor of the Anti-Semitic Monthly Gazette from 1896 to 1907 . From 1909 to 1942 he was federal warden of the German Confederation , whose members saw themselves as the “racial elite” and strived for a “deepening of Germanness”. In 1931 Langhans joined the NSDAP , for which he worked as a training speaker at the NSDAP district school in Schönau vor dem Walde , Gotha councilor (from 1936) and cultural advisory board (from 1938). Because of these services, he was granted honorary citizenship of the city of Gotha on April 1, 1940. In the honorary citizenship letter, the city praised him primarily for "his commitment to the building of the NSDAP, who was always ready to make sacrifices, for his decades of work as a caller to national awakening". thanked and only afterwards “for his outstanding work of world renown as a German geographic scientist”.

Others

Family burial site in Gotha

Langhans was married to Rosa Langhans (born Rasch, 1870–1960), with whom he had a daughter, Irmtrud (1907–1998), who was married to Paul Magdanz (1901–1988).

The Langhans volcano in the South Pacific and the Langhans glacier on Svalbard were named after Langhans . The Langhans Prize of the German Association also goes back to him .

The grave of the Langhans family in the main cemetery in Gotha (Fam.-Platz No. 545) has been preserved to this day.

Awards and honors

  • 1900 title of professor
  • 1927 honorary doctorate from the University of Jena
  • 1940 honorary citizen of Gotha (revoked 1946)

Publications (selection)

  • German Colonial Atlas , Gotha 1893–1897. (15 deliveries) ( online in the David Rumsey Map Collection)
  • Small trade atlas for educational institutions , Gotha 1895.
  • Justus Perthes' Citizens Atlas , Gotha 1896, 4th ed. 1904.
  • German Marine Atlas , Gotha 1898.
  • German Army Atlas , Gotha 1899.
  • Commercial school atlas , Gotha 1901.
  • Left and right of the railway , Gotha 1901–1909. (74 issues)
  • German earth , Gotha 1902.
  • The promotion of rural culture in Schleswig-Holstein from 1914–1929 , Kiel 1929.
  • Wall maps on the economic and colonial movement , Gotha o. J.

literature

  • Gerhard Engelmann:  Langhans, Paul. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 603 ( digitized version ).
  • Matthias Wenzel : On the 50th anniversary of the cartographer's death […] Paul Langhans . In: Thüringer Allgemeine , January 12, 2002
  • Philipp Meyer: Paul Langhans , in: Michael Fahlbusch / Ingo Haar / Alexander Pinwinkler (eds.): Handbuch der Völkischen Wissenschaften. Actors, networks, research programs , 2nd completely revised. u. exp. Berlin and Boston 2017, pp. 404–408.

Web links

Commons : Paul Langhans  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans Güldner, Kyffhäuser Association of German Student Associations : Directory of honorary members and old men. Gütersloh 1899, p. 36.
  2. ^ Matthias Wenzel: On the 50th anniversary of the cartographer's death [...] Paul Langhans . In: Thüringer Allgemeine , January 12, 2002
  3. ↑ Stefan Breuer: The dispute over the "Nordic idea" in the national movement . In: Journal for Religious and Intellectual History , Issue 1/2010
personal data
SURNAME Langhans, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Langhans, Paul Max Harry (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geographer and cartographer
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH 17th January 1952
Place of death Gotha