Erich Obst

Karl August Erich Obst (* 13. September 1886 in Berlin ; † 9. June 1981 in Göttingen ) was a German geographer , theorist of geopolitics and high school teachers .

Live and act

Obst studies geography , geology and mineralogy in Jena and Breslau . From 1908 he worked at the newly founded colonial institute in Hamburg . In 1909 he received his doctorate in Breslau. From 1910 to 1912 he was the leader of the East Africa expedition of the Geographical Society in Hamburg. In 1912 he became a private lecturer at the University of Marburg , and in 1915 professor of geography at the Darülfünun . There he was also director of the Imperial Ottoman Central Institute for Weathering . After the First World War, Obst first accepted a chair in Breslau in 1919, until he was appointed professor for transport and economic geography in Hanover in 1921 and was entrusted with setting up the Institute of Geography (until 1938). In November 1933 he signed the German professors' confession of Adolf Hitler . From 1938 he was full professor at the University of Breslau , where 13 volumes of the 19-volume Colonial Handbook (1941–43) were created. After 1945 the continuation of the work was stopped. From 1945 fruit held a chair at the Technical University of Hanover .

In the Geographical Society of Hanover , one of his employees was Emil Conrad , who later became director of the Wilhelm Busch Museum .

From 1924 to 1932 he edited the magazine for geopolitics together with Karl Haushofer , from whose concept he increasingly distanced himself.

Publications (examples)

• The climate of Thrace as the basis of the economy , Leipzig / Berlin: Teubner, 1921
• Centralization or decentralization in the world economy , Essen: W. Girardet, 1926
• Guidelines for the writing of African names , Leipzig: Deutsche Kartografische Gesellschaft, 1941
• The great marginal step on the east side of South Africa and its foreland: A contribution to the history of d. young singling d. Subcontinents , Hanover: Geographical Society, 1949
• The problem of general geography , Landshut / Bavaria: Verlag des Amt für Landeskunde, 1950

Honors

• Member of the Leopoldina (1933)

literature

• Uta Lindgren :  Obst, Erich KG. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 407 ( digitized version ).
• Paul Trommsdorff: The faculty of the Technical University of Hanover 1831-1931. Hanover, 1931, p. 45.

Web links

• Literature by and about Erich Obst in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Erich Obst in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Waldemar R. Röhrbein : Conrad, Emil. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 116.
2. ↑ Member entry of Erich Obst at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on February 15, 2015.