Ekke Wolfgang Guenther

Ekke Wolfgang Guenther (born July 14, 1907 in Freiburg im Breisgau ; † March 19, 1995 in Ehrenstetten ) was a German geologist and paleontologist specializing in large mammals of the Quaternary (Ice Ages). He was a professor at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel .

His father was the zoology professor in Freiburg Konrad Guenther , his maternal grandfather the Karl May publisher Friedrich Ernst Fehsenfeld , and he was related to the Africa researchers Gerhard Rohlfs and Georg Schweinfurth .

After high school and bookseller apprenticeship in Bonn and Freiburg, he studied geosciences, ethnology and zoology in Freiburg, Göttingen and Munich from 1930. On May 1, 1933, he was accepted into the NSDAP . He received his doctorate in 1935 under Wolfgang Soergel in Freiburg on tectonics and stratigraphy of the Freiburg Bay, was assistant to Hans Philipp in Cologne and Johannes Weigelt in Halle . Under Weigelt, he dug up ancient tertiary mammals in the crevice fillings in the shell limestone of Walbeck near Weferlingen . During World War II military geologist in Lapland (Finland) and Norway and completed his habilitation in 1941 while on leave from the front with Johannes Weigelt in Halle (The Younger Tectonic Movements in Southwestern Germany). He had been at Kiel University since 1949, where he became a professor in 1953 and headed the Ice Age Research Department at the Geological-Paleontological Institute from 1958 until his retirement in 1972.

He was particularly concerned with fossil elephants of the Pleistocene (but also deer, reindeer, wild cattle, etc.), digging in Mexico (1965 to 1967) in addition to Europe. Another focus was the investigation of loess , for which he developed special procedures (sludge analysis), and hydrogeology.

With Hans Schneiderhöhn he mapped the Kaiserstuhl .

From its founding in 1952 to 1972 he was editor of Meyniana and he was the editor of the publications of the Natural Science Association for Schleswig-Holstein for a long time . From 1967 to 1995 he was co-editor of Quaternary magazine . In 1966 he became president of the Hugo Obermaier Society for Ice Age Research.

Fonts

• The geological structure of the Freiburg Bay. In: bathroom. Geol. Abh., 7, Heft 1/2, 1935, pp. 1–58
• Conglomerate deposits in layers of shell limestone south of Badenweiler. In: Jber. U. Mitt. Oberrh. Geol. Ver., NF 37, 92-102.
• On the question of the extinction of large glacial mammals - especially mammoths - in Central Europe. In: Cranium 4, 1987, pp. 67-75
• Mammoths and their miserable forms from Eurasia to Mexico. In: Quartär 37/38, 1987, pp. 13-51.

literature

• H. Böger, Obituary, Writings of the Natural Science Association for Schleswig-Holstein, 65, 1995, 139–144
• L. Reisch, Obituary in Quaternary, 45/46, 1995, 7-14