Alwin Oppel

Alwin Oppel, 1910

Edmund Alwin Guido Oppel (born March 31, 1849 in Münchengosserstädt / Thuringia ; † November 8, 1929 in Rockwinkel / Bremen ) was a German economic and school geographer.

Life

Alwin Oppel was born as the son of the teacher Georg Andreas Oppel in the small East Thuringian town of Münchengosserstädt. After the family moved, he attended the Rudolstadt high school. From 1869 to 1872 he studied ancient languages, German and history in Leipzig. As a volunteer he took part in the siege of Paris, where he was badly wounded in 1870. After his recovery he found a private tutor position in Elberfeld, where the future Minister and President of the Reich Court, Walter Simons, was his pupil.

After Oppel had completed his doctorate and state examination in Leipzig, he worked as a teacher at the Nicolaigymnasium in Leipzig from 1874 to 1879. At the request of the director, he should also give geography lessons. That is why Oppel also attended relevant lectures at the University of Leipzig, e. B. at the Chair of Geography, which was only newly established for Oscar Peschel in 1871 . Up until then, Oppel had seen himself as a classical philologist, but then saw geography as a fully valid science and not just a subject of knowledge, as he noted in his memoirs.

As early as 1878 Oppel published his first geographical work, in which he dealt with the loosing theory of Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen . At Easter 1879 Oppel moved to Bremen, because geography lessons were to be given at the secondary school there (later commercial school and then secondary school). In addition to this subject, he taught Latin, German and, at times, choral singing there for 38 years.

plant

Oppel worked on the board of the Geographical Society in Bremen, moved a. a. organized an extensive program of lectures and made a significant contribution to the Bremen industrial and trade exhibition in 1890 and the German Geographers' Day in Bremen in 1895. Together with Wilhelm Wolkenhauer , he published the German Geographical Leaflets of the aforementioned society from 1896 to 1917.

Alwin Oppel wrote articles for many journals and compilations; He also wrote a number of his own books that were used in geography lessons. Pictorial representations and maps (as wall maps and in books) were important to him, as these means were only rarely used at the time. Of his numerous study trips abroad, the trip to North America should be mentioned, which served the collection of material for his basic work "Cotton", published in 1902. He introduced the term "landscape science" with the work of the same name from 1884.

family

Alwin Oppel married Amalie Baumann from Herisau / Switzerland, daughter of the Swiss cantonal councilor Johannes Baumann, in 1882 after the death of his first wife. He had a total of nine children; the youngest daughter was the Worpswede painter Lisel Oppel (1897–1960). Oppel retired from school after a stroke in 1916 and died in Rockwinkel / Bremen in 1929 at the age of 81.

Honors

• 1899 Appointment as professor by the Bremen Senate after 25 years of teaching.
• 1924 honorary member of the Geographical Society in Bremen.

Works (selection)

• Quaestiones de Dialecto Theocritea. Dissertation. (Philosophical Faculty of the University of Leipzig) Printed by G. Drugulin. Leipzig, 1874 (Put on the Internet in digitized form by Google; however, the Greek words of the original appear only in an incomprehensible form.)
• The loess theory of Freiherr von Richthofen and its application to Europe. In: The border messengers. Journal for Politics, Literature and Art, Volume 37, 1878, Volume I, pp. 445–461
• together with Ludwig, Arnold [pseudonym of the publisher Arnold Hirt ] (ed.): Ferdinand Hirt's Geographische Bildertafeln. Ferdinand Hirt, Breslau:
  • I. General Geography, 1881 (1st edition), 1896 (3rd extended edition)
  • II. Typical landscapes, 1882
  • III. 1. Ethnology of Europe, 1886
  • III. 2. Ethnology of Asia and Australia, 1887
  • III. 3. Ethnology of Africa and America, 1888
• together with Ludwig, Arnold [pseudonym of the publisher Arnold Hirt ] (ed.): F. Hirts' picture treasure for regional and ethnographic studies. Ferdinand Hirt & Son, Leipzig, 1894
• Landscape Studies (explanatory text on II. Typical Landscapes), Ferdinand Hirt, Breslau, 1884
• Fifth German Geographers' Day in Hamburg. Carl Rocco, Bremen, 1885
• (Individual pictures from the world economy. Max Nößler. Bremen):
  • 1: Tobacco in the economic life and moral history of peoples, 1890
  • 2: The rice. 1891
  • 3: Cotton in its various relationships with the world economy. 1891
  • 4: The wool in terms of production, processing and trade. 1891
  • 5: The grain and the potato in their current significance for the life of nations and the world economy. 1892
• The rise and fall of the Spanish Empire and its colonial trade. Publishing house and printing company A.-G. (formerly JF Richter). Hamburg. 1897
• Economic geographic trip through the United States [from May 14 to September 1, 1898], carried out on behalf of the Geographical Society Bremen, in: Deutsche geographische Blätter, ed. v. der Deutschen Geographischen Gesellschaft, Bremen, 1898, Volume 21 (XXI), Issue 4, pp. 175 ff., https://archive.org/details/deutschegeograp02bremgoog/page/n187
• Cotton by history, cultivation, processing and trade, as well as by its position in national life and in the state economy. Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig, 1902
• Nature and work. A general economics. (2 volumes). Bibliographical Institute. Leipzig, Vienna. 1904
• Regional studies of British North America. GJ Göschen. Leipzig. 1906
• Economic Geography of the United States of North America. Gebauer-Schwetschke. Hall a. Saale. 1907
• The German textile industry. Development, current situation, relations with foreign countries and with the German colonial economy. Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig, 1912
• (Applied Geography. IV. Series) Verlag von Heinrich Keller, Frankfurt a. M .:
  • 5/6. Booklet: The German Seaside Cities, 1912
  • 9th booklet: World Trade, 1914
• General economics. Cheap edition of “Nature and Work”. (2 volumes). Bibliographical Institute. Leipzig, Vienna. 1914
• The economic foundations of the belligerent powers. Veit & Comp. Leipzig. 1915
• Canada and the Germans. Home and world. Dresden. 1916

supporting documents

1. ↑ ^{a b} Schütz, Ernst Harald: Obituary for Alwin Oppel in Deutsche Geographische Blätter, Volume 40, Issue 1–3, 1930, pp. 257–260, Bremen.
2. ^ Abel, Herbert: Brief vita Alwin Oppel in: Lührs, Wilhelm (ed.), Bremische Biographie 1912-1962, Verlag HM Hauschild, Bremen, 1969, pp. 361–362.