Carl Schnabel

This article deals with the mining scientist Carl Schnabel; on the SPD politician see Karl Schnabel .

Carl Schnabel

Carl Schnabel (born March 3, 1843 in Siegen , † November 23, 1914 in Berlin ) was a German mining scientist .

Career

Carl Schnabel grew up in Siegen. His father Dr. Carl Schnabel was a natural scientist, member of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors and director of the secondary and higher middle school in Siegen. His mother Hermine Schnabel died in 1849. When he obtained his university entrance qualification in March 1860, he began studying mining and metallurgy.

The training to become a mountain assessor was a lengthy affair at the time. Before actually studying, which he completed at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin as well as the Bergakademie Berlin from 1862 to 1865, he undertook various practical assignments in Westphalian areas as a mountain inspector at the Bonn Higher Mining Authority . After successfully completing his studies at the Bergakademie Berlin in August 1865, his traineeship took him via the Siegen and Saarbrücken districts to the Bergschule Siegen and the Oberbergamt Bonn, where he passed the exam as a mining assessor in autumn 1869.

Siemens & Halske had been commissioned by the Russian government to set up an extensive telegraph network in southern Russia. For this purpose, the company had acquired copper mines and associated smelting works to ensure the supply of raw materials. It was Schnabel's job from 1871 to 1876 to modernize the plants and introduce new processes. His success as a plant manager went hand in hand with personal happiness when his Caucasian wife gave birth to a daughter in 1873. At the end of 1874 his wife died, also the second daughter. Thereupon Schnabel asked for a return to the Prussian civil service, on the grounds that his life in Transcaucasia was marked by an unhealthy climate and spiritual desolation.

In August 1876 he was accepted into the civil service and assigned to the Clausthal mining authority. He worked as a smelter inspector at the Lautenthaler Silberhütte, where he carried out experiments to improve processes and reduce emissions. He summarized part of his research in his dissertation on the extraction of silver from lead ores with the aid of zinc, which he submitted to the University of Jena in 1879 .

In July 1882 he was promoted to mountain foreman and entrusted with the management of the Goslar mining district. Shortly afterwards, he married Marie Baehr, 15 years his junior, from Belgard in Western Pomerania . A good ten years later he also lost his second wife to an illness.

In the summer semester of 1885 he was appointed lecturer for metallurgy and chemical technology at the Bergakademie Clausthal and promoted to the mountain ridge. In the years that followed, he traveled to metallurgical plants at home and abroad and attended international industrial exhibitions. He combined these study trips with his own knowledge in a textbook on general metallurgy , which was published in 1890. In 1894 he was appointed to the Oberbergrat. In 1897 he turned down a call to the Bergakademie Berlin.

In the late 1890s, his rheumatic joint ailments made him more and more troublesome, which at times made it necessary to continue lecturing in the sickroom. With the support of the director of the academy, he applied for early retirement in May 1900, which was also granted. He moved to Berlin in the fall.

In Berlin he found the leisure to complete his autobiographical book Under Green Firs of the Upper Harz . The Harz hymn “Dark firs stand out ” also sprang from his pen. In Berlin he was also accredited as a non-permanent member of the Imperial Patent Office, but in addition to rheumatism, heart problems also spoiled his regular work. He died shortly after the outbreak of World War I on November 23, 1914 at the age of 71.

Carl Schnabel was a member of the Corps Guestphalia Bonn . To this day, the Clausthal-Zellerfeld University of Technology honors people who have earned the university with the "Carl Schnabel Medal" named after him and bearing his portrait.

Rare and curious

On one of his many trips he jokingly wrote to his regulars' table in Clausthal that after exploring so many continents he had come to the conclusion that the most honest beer table on earth was undoubtedly in Clausthal. This regulars' table - abbreviated BTadE - still meets monthly in a Clausthal restaurant and honors an outstanding citizen and university professor.

Works

• Historical presentation and scientific justification of the metallurgical processes of silver extraction from silver-containing lead with the aid of zinc with special consideration of these processes in the ironworks of the Upper Harz , dissertation University of Jena, 1879.
• Textbook of general metallurgy , Springer Verlag, Berlin, 1890.
• Under the green fir trees of the Upper Harz , Georg Nauck Verlag, Berlin, 1907.

literature

• Hermann Meffert: Carl Schnabel . In: TU Clausthal bulletin, summer semester 1975 (issue 40/41), p. 8

Web links

• Biography in TUC Contact from November 2000 (PDF file; 79 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Members of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors 1857
2. ↑ Lyrics of Es ragen dunkle Tannen (PDF file, 23 kB) ( Memento from April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
3. ^ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 10 , 535
4. ↑ www.tu-clausthal.de ( Memento of the original from November 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ www.tu-clausthal.de ( Memento of the original from November 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.