August Hertwig

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August (Hermann Adalbert) Hertwig (born March 20, 1872 in Mühlhausen / Thuringia ; † April 14, 1955 in Berlin ) was a German civil engineer , construction clerk as well as university professor and rector of RWTH Aachen University .

Live and act

The cousin of the zoologists Oscar Hertwig and Richard von Hertwig studied architecture and civil engineering after graduating from high school in 1890 with Heinrich Müller-Breslau at the Technical University (Berlin-) Charlottenburg , where he passed his second state examination in 1898. During his studies he became a member of the Academic Association Motiv . After completing his studies, he was employed as a government master builder ( assessor ) in the construction office for the new construction of the Oberbaum Bridge in Berlin before moving to the Grand Ducal Oldenburg Railway Directorate.

He first took over the planning and construction of the new plant houses in the Botanical Garden in Berlin , but then followed on October 1, 1902 a call to the RWTH Aachen, where to him in the capacity of full professor the chair of statics of building constructions transferred and after the retirement by Frederick Heinz Erling the Department of iron construction. He stayed here until March 31, 1924 and was rector of the university from 1909 to 1911 as the successor to Wilhelm Borchers and from 1915 to 1917 as the successor to Adolf Wallichs and was also elected vice-rector several times.

In 1924 Hertwig, who had meanwhile been promoted to secret government councilor, was appointed to succeed his old teacher Müller-Breslau at the Technical University of Berlin-Charlottenburg, where he headed the chair for statics and steel construction until his retirement in 1937 . During this time he was among other things co-founder of the German Research Association for Soil Mechanics (Degebo), a completely new science at the time, and since 1928, at the urging of Gottwalt Schaper, co-editor of the specialist journal “der Stahlbau” and the engineering archive. During the Nazi era, Hertwig was able to distance himself from political influences as far as possible, was only a member of the National Socialist Teachers' Association , but allowed himself to be functionally harnessed by consulting activities such as the preparation of reports on bridges being blown without resistance. Despite his retirement, Hertwig was called upon again in 1946 when he was involved in the reconstruction of the Technische Hochschule Berlin and was even given the orphaned chair from Ferdinand Schleicher for four years , which he had to give up due to his denazification procedure .

August Hertwig was a humanistically influenced scholar, for whom the calculations of highly statically indeterminate systems as well as the static and dynamic investigations and the welded joints in steel construction, as well as the history of technology, were a matter close to his heart. For his many services, Hertwig was awarded the Red Eagle Order IV class, in 1925 with an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Darmstadt and in 1942 with the Goethe Medal for Art and Science .

Fonts (selection)

  • Johann Wilhelm Schwedler . His life and his work. Edited and published on behalf of the Academy of Civil Engineering. Verlag Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1930.
  • The determination of the most important properties of the soil for the construction industry by means of forced vibrations. Julius Springer Publishing House, Berlin 1933.
  • Comments on recent earth pressure studies. Julius Springer Publishing House, Berlin 1939.
  • Life and work of the Reichsbahn bridge builders Schwedler, Zimmermann, Labes, Schaper. A brief history of the development of bridge construction. Publisher Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1950.

literature

Web links and sources

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Black Ring. Membership directory. Darmstadt 1930, p. 32.
personal data
SURNAME Hertwig, August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hertwig, August Hermann Adalbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German civil engineer and university professor, rector of RWTH Aachen University
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Mühlhausen / Thuringia
DATE OF DEATH April 14, 1955
Place of death Berlin