Adolf Remane

Adolf Remane (born August 10, 1898 in Krotoschin (Posen Province), † December 22, 1976 in Plön ) was a German zoologist .

Life

Adolf Remane was the son of a drawing teacher and a handicraft teacher. After graduating from high school in 1916, he volunteered and served on the front in France until 1918. He then studied biology , anthropology , palaeontology and ethnology in Berlin and received his doctorate in 1921 with a morphological thesis.

From 1923 Remane was an assistant at the Zoological Institute of the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel until he was appointed associate professor there in 1929. In 1934 he was appointed full professor and director of the Zoological Institute at the University of Halle . In 1936 he took over the management of the Zoological Institute and Museum in Kiel, from where he founded the Institute for Oceanography in Kitzeberg on the Kiel Fjord in 1937 . In the same year he joined the NSDAP and was appointed to the board of the German Zoological Society . In 1942 he was one of the signatories of a letter from the board of directors of the Zoological Society to the Berlin Reich Chancellery , in which all National Socialist measures against Judaism were expressly endorsed.

After the end of the Second World War , Remane was interned by the British occupying forces and accused of publishing racial publications. Since his publications in question had only dealt with the zoological systematics (in which the term race was still common at the time), he was given the management of the Zoological Institute and Museum in Kiel again in 1947, which he held until his retirement in 1966. 1963/1964 Remane was again President of the German Zoological Society .

Adolf Remane had two sons: the entomologist Reinhard Remane (1929–2009) and the geologist and paleontologist Jürgen Remane (1934–2004).

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Remane is considered one of the most important German zoologists of the 20th century. His research focused on zoological systematics, oceanography, and the zoology and paleontology of primates . In addition, there was theoretical work on phylogenetics and comparative anatomy, where he developed the homology criteria that are still valid today . With Volker Storch and Ulrich Welsch , he wrote the standard works Kurzes Lehrbuch der Zoologie (1972) and Systematic Zoologie (1976), of which his co-authors have published many new editions until recently.

Memberships

• Leopoldina (1935)
• Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz (1949)
• Societas Scientiarum Helsinki (1956)
• Stockholm Academy of Sciences (1960)

Works

• The basics of the natural system, comparative anatomy and phylogenetics . Leipzig: Geest & Portig K.-G., 1952 (2nd edition 1956, 2nd edition reprinted by Verlag Otto Koeltz, Koenigstein / Taunus 1971)
• The social life of animals . Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1960 (rowohlts deutsche enzyklopädie 97)
• Adolf Remane ao: Systematic Zoology. Tribes of the animal kingdom . Stuttgart: G. Fischer Verlag, 1976.
• Adolf Remane, Volker Storch , Ulrich Welsch : Short textbook of zoology . Stuttgart and New York: Fischer, 1985, ISBN 3437203371 (and various other editions)

literature

• F. Zachos, U. Hossfeld: Adolf Remane (1898-1976): Biography and selected evolutionary aspects in his work. In: U. Hoßfeld and R. Brömer (eds.): Darwinism and / as ideology. (Negotiations on the History and Theory of Biology, Vol. 6). Berlin: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, 2001, pp. 313–358.
• Jürgen Remane:  Remane, Adolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 412 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Adolf Remane in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Jürgen Remane : Remane, Robert Gustav Adolf , in: Neue Deutsche Biographie 21 (2003), pp. 412–413. ( Online )
2. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 491.