Alfred Hettner

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Alfred Hettner (born August 6, 1859 in Dresden , † August 31, 1941 in Heidelberg ) was a German geographer and professor at the universities of Tübingen and Heidelberg. Hettner is considered the founder of a chorological - regional geographic tradition. Hettner's regional interest, which many of his students shared, was particularly South America and East Asia.

Life

Alfred Hettner was a son of the literary and art historian Hermann Hettner and his second wife Anna geb. Grahl (1838-1897). One of his brothers was the lawyer and MP Franz Hettner , half-brothers from his father's first marriage were the archaeologist Felix Hettner and the mathematician Georg Hettner .

Hettner was the first German geographer to become a university professor without changing to geography from another subject. After studying in Halle, Bonn and Strasbourg, he did his doctorate at the University of Strasbourg with a dissertation on the climate of Chile and Western Patagonia (1881) with Georg Gerland and completed his habilitation in Leipzig in 1887 with Friedrich Ratzel . In 1894 he became adjunct professor in Leipzig and in 1897 moved to the University of Tübingen , where he became the first extraordinary professor of geography. But in 1899 he moved to the University of Heidelberg , where he was initially associate professor and in 1906 was given the newly established chair for geography. He held this position until his retirement in 1928.

Hettner carried out several extensive research trips all over the world, including to South America (especially the Colombian Andes ), Russia , East Asia (including India ) and North Africa . From 1920 to 1931 (possibly longer) Hettner was chairman of the Heidelberg department of the German Colonial Society .

Colombia trip

Although Alfred Hettner made a name for himself in the history of German geography, little attention was paid to the content of his works. In particular, his early publications, such as Journeys in the Colombian Andes (1888) or The Cordillera of Bogotá (1892), are not known to a larger audience, either in Germany or in Colombia.

Alfred Hettner traveled mainly through the Colombian Eastern Cordillera between 1882 and 1884 , but also made a short trip to the Central Cordillera. On the way, the then young Hettner had to gradually lower his initially ambitious goals. In his observations he placed the investigation of the natural area and the geological structure of the Eastern Cordillera, its morphology and its precise mapping in the foreground. On the other hand, he largely neglected socio-geographical content, although this would have been very interesting from today's perspective. His statements on the urban geography of Bogotá and the prevailing problems prove to be transferable to the Colombian present as well as to the situation of other Hispanic American countries. Other contemporary geographers, such as Peter Weichhart, argue that some of Hettner's statements must be rejected; For example, he put forward the nature-deterministic thesis that ways of life and even character traits of people can be explained by natural environmental conditions. That way of thinking is now considered out of date.

student

Hettner led a comparatively small number of young geographers to doctorate, of which, however, very many were appointed to professorships. Representatives of the first generation of Hettner's regional geographic school included:

Their students, representatives of the second generation, included, for example, Helmut Blume , Jürgen Newig , Gottfried Pfeifer , Josef Schmithüsen , Franz Tichy and Herbert Wilhelmy .

Opposition to Siegfried Passarge

One subject area that Hettner put a lot of energy into was landscape geography . It was founded in 1919 by Siegfried Passarge (professor at the Colonial Institute Hamburg ) in his 3-volume textbook The Basics of Landscape Science. He wanted to move this sub-area of geography from a purely morphological to a more comprehensive view of the landscape by adding the cross-connections to orography , geology , geomorphology and climatic science as well as flora and fauna .

Hettner turned violently against this seemingly artificial point of view. For him, in particular, comparative landscape studies were unacceptable. Quotation from a pamphlet : “But there is nothing new in the principles developed there if you use“ geographical ”instead of the word“ landscape ”.“ He saw the previous geography as completely sufficient and, contrary to Passarge, pleaded for a chorographic view the landscape: it corresponds to a ladder of individual spaces, which divides the various earth spaces according to size into continental part , land , landscape and finally locality as the smallest unit of the size structure .

Hettner's central point of criticism, however, was that Passarge's independent spatial landscape science was anyway the (previous) epitome of geography: As a science of the “conception of the earth's surface according to its spatial diversity” , it has a special chorological approach that “is only suitable for it as a science their raison d'être established in the system of science. The chorology , the geography of the state of space science, as one might speak of history as time science " .

Honors

In honor of Hettner, the Hettnerweg in Berlin-Wilhelmstadt was named after him. In 1930 the Austrian Academy of Sciences elected him a corresponding member. This membership was revoked in 1940 due to Hettner's origin and restored in 1945. From 1910 he was an extraordinary member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences .

Fonts (selection)

Alfred Hettner was the founder of the Geographische Zeitschrift , which he also headed for many years as editor. Due to his novel and broader view of geography, he is regarded as one of the scientific founders of geography in Germany.

literature

  • Heinrich Schmitthenner: Alfred Hettner . In: Geographische Zeitschrift 47 (1941), pp. 441-468 ( digitized version ).
  • Ernst Plewe:  Hettner, Alfred. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 31 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Johan Frederik Ostermeier, De opvattingen van Alfred Hettner (1859–1941) over de plaats van de geografie in het systeem van de wetenschappen. Een bijdrage tot zijn intellectuele biography . Diss. Nijmegen, 1987.
  • Francis Harvey, Ute Wardenga: The Hettner-Hartshorne connection. Reconsidering the process of reception and transformation of a geographic concept . In: Finisterra Vol. 33, No. 65, Lisbon 1998, pp. 131–140 ( full text as PDF )
  • Ute Wardenga: Geography as Chorology. On the genesis and structure of Alfred Hettner's construct of geography (= geographic knowledge, vol. 100). Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-515-06809-0 .
  • Ute Wardenga: Geography as Chorology. Alfred Hettner's attempt to determine one's position . In: 100 Years of Geography at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (1895–1995) (= Heidelberg Geographical Works, Vol. 100). Heidelberg 1996, pp. 1-17.
  • Ute Wardenga: Defining geography - the struggle and development of Alfred Hettner's methodological construct . In: Michael Watts (ed.): Struggles over Geography. Violence, freedom and development at the millennium (= Hettner lectures , vol. 3). Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 978-3-515-08408-6 , pp. 113-126.
  • Karin Peters: Alfred Hettner's travels in the Colombian Andes (1882–1884). Considerations from today's perspective (= workbooks of the Latin America Center, No. 66). Latin America Center of the Westphalian Wilhelms University of Münster, Münster 2000.
  • Dagmar Drüll: Heidelberger Gelehrtenlexikon, Vol. 2: 1803-1932 . Springer, Wiesbaden 2. [revised. u. extended] edition 2019, ISBN 978-3-658-26396-6 , pp. 349–351.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Siegfried Passarge: The basics of landscape science (Volumes I – III), L. Friederichsen & Company, 1919–1920
  2. ↑ Johannes Doll: Landscape and Cultural Landscape - Concept Development and Definition , Student Thesis Univ. Munich, 2nd edition Grin-Verlag 2007, p. 3 ff. ( Excerpt from Google Books )
  3. ^ Members of the HAdW since it was founded in 1909. Alfred Hettner. Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, accessed July 3, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Hettner, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geographer
DATE OF BIRTH August 6, 1859
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH August 31, 1941
Place of death Heidelberg