Erich Kaiser (geologist)

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Friedrich Wilhelm Erich Kaiser (born December 31, 1871 in Essen , † January 6, 1934 in Munich ) was a German geologist and professor at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich (LMU). He is known for researching the geology of Namibia .

Life

Kaiser was the son of a senior teacher in Essen and from 1890 studied natural sciences and mathematics at the universities of Marburg, Munich and Bonn, where he received his doctorate in physics in 1897 (experiments on the merging of two masses of liquids). From 1894 he was an assistant at the Mineralogical Institute in Bonn, where he became a private lecturer in 1897. From 1900 to 1904 he was at the Prussian State Geological Institute , where, in addition to mapping work in the Rhineland, he also worked on mineral springs in the Rhenish Slate Mountains ( Bad Neuenahr ), on the weathering of building materials (including at Cologne Cathedral ) and on volcanic rocks .

He was a district geologist with the PGLA. In 1904 he became a full professor for mineralogy and geology at the University of Giessen . During this time he came into contact with the geologist Heinrich Lotz , who was involved in the suppression of the Herero uprising and who carried out geological investigations and collections in German South West Africa (Namibia), which Kaiser worked on in Gießen. When the German Diamond Society under Lotz became active in South West Africa, Kaiser sent two of his assistants (Ernst Reuning, Werner Beetz) there, and from 1914 to 1919 he went to South West Africa himself to investigate the diamond deposits on the coast and desert phenomena. Originally planned in part as a vacation trip for five months, the outbreak of the First World War turned it into five years. Despite the course of the war, he was able to work there unhindered, as the South Africans gave him a relatively large amount of freedom of movement after the surrender of the Schutztruppe in July 1915 (he was supported by his assistant Beetz) and the Diamond Society allowed him to continue working. This mining operation was independently sold to a South African company before the Versailles Treaty. Previously, he had been drafted into the protection force as a first lieutenant in the Landwehr, but was deported to a lonely outpost (canoe).

In 1919 he was back in Giessen. In 1920 he became a full professor at the LMU Munich and the first holder of the chair for general and applied geology. He was able to publish his research results in South Africa thanks to the support of the diamond society, which is well equipped with foreign exchange. In 1926, with the support of the Diamond Society, he traveled again to Southern Africa to investigate weathering phenomena on the eastern edge of the Kalahari region and the newly discovered manganese ore deposits around Postmasburg . In Munich he also carried out research in the field of sediment petrography and in the Mesozoic sedimentary basin on the northwestern edge of the Bohemian Massif . Thanks to his organizational talent and his relationships, he was able to secure its own institute building (in the Wilhelminum ) and provide sufficient funds for the newly founded Geological Institute, which began with him as a guest in the Paleontological Institute of August Rothpletz . From 1930 he was increasingly marked by serious illnesses.

He was a privy councilor and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Cape Town in 1929 . In the same year he attended the International Geological Congress in Pretoria . In 1931 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

From 1914 he was editor of the Zeitschrift für Kristallographie and from 1922 in the editorial office of the New Yearbook for Mineralogy, Geology and Paleontology. He was vice chairman of the Geological Association.

Fonts

  • Geological representation of the northern slope of the Siebengebirge . In: Negotiations of the Natural History Association of the Prussian Rhineland, Westphalia and the Reg.-District Osnabrück, 54, Bonn 1897, pp. 78–204 ( digitized version )
  • with Werner Beetz: The diamond desert of Southwest Africa, at the same time an explanation of a special geological map of the southern diamond fields 1: 25,000, Berlin: Verlag D. Reimer 1926
  • Report on geological studies during the war in South West Africa, treatises of the Giessen University Society 1920

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 127.
personal data
SURNAME Kaiser, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kaiser, Friedrich Wilhelm Erich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 31, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH eat
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1934
Place of death Munich