Edmond Fuchs

Edmond Fuchs in 1882

Philippe-Jacques-Edmond Fuchs (born April 1 or August 1, 1837 in Strasbourg , † September 7, 1889 in Paris ) was a French geologist , engineer du corps des mines and explorer .

Life

Edmond Fuchs came from an Alsatian family and grew up in Strasbourg, France, where he attended the prestigious Protestant grammar school. He then studied from 1856 at the Polytechnique in Paris, which he graduated in 1858 as the second best of his class. He now switched to the École des Mines , where he studied geological , mineralogical and metallurgical topics. After completing his studies in 1861, combined with his appointment as an engineer , he stayed as a teacher at the university and became a professor of descriptive geometry and topography the following year . In 1879 he was to receive the chair of applied geology. In 1863 he married Henriette Ledoux , the sister of his fellow student Charles Ledoux , who would later make a career as an industrialist in Spain. The couple had four children.

In addition to his teaching activities, Fuchs supported Élie de Beaumont in the following years with the creation and completion of the precise geological map of France and continued this task after his death. In 1867 he was a member of the organizing committee of the World Exhibition in Paris and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor .

In the Franco-Prussian War , Fuchs volunteered in December 1870 and served in the Loire Army under Jauréguiberry . For his achievements in the Battle of Le Mans , he was promoted to officer in the Legion of Honor . The French defeat led to the loss of his homeland; His parents' house was also destroyed in the bombing of Strasbourg .

Edmond Fuchs was best known for his numerous research expeditions that took him to almost all parts of the world. He carried out some of these ventures on his own, but most of the time he was commissioned by mining companies or the French state to look for coal and metal deposits overseas. As a student, Fuchs had already made two extensive trips through Europe (which took him to the North Cape and the Crimea) and visited numerous mines and metalworking plants on the way. His later expeditions took him to Sweden-Norway, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria-Hungary, Romania and the mines of Prussia and Saxony. In 1870 he traveled to Chile, where he visited the Atacama Desert and canceled a planned crossing of the Andes due to the outbreak of war. Fuchs spent most of the years 1873 and 1874 on government orders in Tunisia and Algeria; Here he devoted himself to geological exploration of the Sahara, always connected with the search for usable raw material deposits. Fuchs also investigated on site to what extent the plan proposed by Roudaire to flood the sub-sea-level areas of the Sahara through a canal running through Tunisia and thus create an inland sea, would be technically feasible. In 1877 he traveled to the Urals .

In later years his student Edouard-Emile Saladin , an aspiring metallurgist, became his assistant. The two traveled together to Cambodia and Tonkin in Southeast Asia from 1881 to 1882 . In Tonkin, which was formally part of the Vietnamese Empire but was in fact ruled by the Black Flags , Fuchs and Saladin searched for mineral resources and found extensive coal deposits in East Tonkin. Fuchs' report of these deposits and their easy economic exploitation were the main cause of the military conquest of Tonkins the following year and the resulting war against China . Shortly before, Tunisia had already been conquered by France, and Fuchs' geological reports probably played a role here too.

In 1885 and 1888 Edmond Fuchs made two trips to the United States and Mexico. The following year he died of pneumonia at the age of 52. He was the holder of numerous orders and decorations, in addition to an officer of the Legion of Honor he was also Officier de l'Instruction publique , Grand Officer of the Royal Order of Cambodia and the Tunisian Order of Nishan el Iftikhar , Commander of the Italian Order of Mauritius and Lazarus , of the Spanish Order of Isabellas the Catholic , the Portuguese Order of Christ , the Order of the Crown of Romania and the Dragon Order of Annam , as well as Knights of the Swedish Order of Vasa and the Prussian Order of Eagle .

literature

• A. Meyer (Ed.): Biographies alsaciennes avec portraits en photographie. Série 5 , Colmar, entry Edmond Fuchs (p. 155). Available in digitized form from Gallica .
• Obituaries in the journal Annales des Mines :
  • Haton de La Goupillière: Discours aux funérailles de M. Ed. Fuchs, ingénieur en chef des mines , September 9, 1889 ( available online )
  • Albert de Lapparent : Notice nécrologique sur Edmond Fuchs, ingénieur en chef des mines , Annales des Mines 8e série Vol. 17, 1890 ( available online )
• Bradley Camp Davis: States of Banditry: The Nguyen Government, Bandit Rule, and the Culture of Power in the Post-Taiping China-Vietnam Borderlands , ProQuest, Ann Arbor MI, 2008, pp. 218ff
• Dieter Brötel: French Imperialism in Vietnam , Atlantis-Verlag, Freiburg 1971, p. 92ff ( Fuchs report on Tongking coal )

Web links

Commons : Edmond Fuchs  - Collection of images, videos and audio files