Ernst Klindwort

Ernst Klindwort (born January 28, 1900 in Schwartau ; † December 26, 1988 in Hamburg ) was a German shipbuilding engineer and professor whose main focus was on the design of ships.

Life

Klindwort was born in Bad Schwartau in 1900 and, after graduating from high school, studied at the Lübeck Katharineum and the usual internship at the Technical University of Berlin-Charlottenburg . After graduating in 1922, he began to work in the design office of the Blohm + Voss shipyard , where he mainly devoted himself to the design of the merchant ships built there, the state yacht Grille and the sailing ships of the Gorch Fock class .

In 1939, Klindwort succeeded the emeritus Johann Schütte on the chair of ship design at the Technical University of Berlin-Charlottenburg. The reason for the appointment of Klindwort was the desire for a more practical orientation of the subject. Klindwort was relieved of his office as early as 1940 because he had fallen out with the National Socialist university administration. Until the end of the war, Klindwort worked as the technical director of the Deutsche Werke in Kiel.

After the war, Klindwort stayed afloat by doing odd jobs as a shipbuilding consultant in the Office for Economics and Transport of the City of Hamburg and at Bureau Veritas . After the loosening of the shipbuilding ban in the Potsdam Agreement in 1949, Fritz Horn Klindwort was once again appointed full professor at the Technical University of Berlin-Charlottenburg.

In 1953 Klindwort gave a lecture to the Shipbuilding Society in which he presented the work he had done at Blohm + Voss before the war. Klindwort complained that, for example, the theoretical work of Weinblum and Thomas Havelock or the experiments of David W. Taylor offered no direct help in finding the shape of ships. The criticism of the theoretical teaching and its representatives contained in the lecture led to a heated discussion in the circle concerned. Since Klindwort did not find approval for his type of academic teaching, the university sent him into early retirement in 1955. Klindwort then won a lawsuit against the school that rehabilitated him. Although he was no longer able to take up teaching, he subsequently continued to take an active part in the professional life of the Shipbuilding Society. Klindwort died on December 26, 1988 in Hamburg.

Fonts (selection)

• Experience in shaping and propelling ocean-going vessels with medium Froude numbers , Yearbook of the Shipbuilding Society . Volume 47, Springer, Berlin 1953

literature

• Ernst Klindwort , In: Shipbuilding Society: 100 Years Shipbuilding Society - Biographies on the History of Shipbuilding , Springer, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-540-64150-5 .