Ernst Wandersleb

Grave of Ernst Wandersleb in the north cemetery in Jena

Ernst Wandersleb (born April 12, 1879 in Gotha ; † May 2, 1963 in Jena ) was a German physicist , photographer , balloonist , mountaineer and philanthropist .

resume

In 1897 Wandersleb passed the Abitur as the best of his class at the Gotha Ernestinum . He then took up studies in physics, mathematics and chemistry, which he completed in Jena , Munich and Berlin . In 1901 he received his doctorate with the physicist Adolph Winckelmann (1848–1910) with “summa cum laude” on the elasticity of Schott glasses and immediately afterwards took a position at Carl Zeiss in Jena. The managing director Ernst Abbe had brought him to the photo department of the Zeiss plant to work and research alongside Paul Rudolph , the inventor of the Tessar lens. Wandersleb was mainly occupied with calculating new camera lenses and recognized early on the possibilities of increasing the light intensity of the Tessar.

In October 1904 the calculation of the “Tessar 1: 4.5” was completed and the lens, later known as the “eagle eye of the camera”, was ready for production. In 1905 Ernst Wandersleb undertook his first balloon flight and from then on he was never able to let go of this passion. In 1908 he founded the “Thuringian Aviation Association” together with Jena professors and colleagues from the Carl Zeiss company. On his more than 40 balloon trips until 1913, Wandersleb gained experience that helped him to construct devices for exploration from the air at the Zeiss factory. When he succeeded Paul Rudolph at the age of 32, however, he had to end this passion, which was still quite dangerous at the time. The same applied to mountaineering, which Wandersleb was just as enthusiastic about; In 1911 he had u. a. conquered the 4810 meter high Mont Blanc .

In addition to physics, Ernst Wandersleb became interested in astronomy , zoology and art . In Jena, Wandersleb has also become known as a promoter of musical life. So he founded u. a. the "Academic Choir", which was renamed the "Philharmonic Choir" from 1918 onwards.

Because of his Jewish wife Emmy, Otto Eppenstein's sister , he and his family were discriminated against during the “ Third Reich ” and denounced by a colleague, which resulted in his dismissal from Carl Zeiss. His children emigrated, his wife was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp , where she saw the end of the war.

balloon ride

Ernst Wandersleb, who was a member of the "German Airship Association" from 1905, undertook his first balloon flight in the same year and later passed the balloon pilot's examination. In 1909 he went on his first independent journey. Wandersleb undertook his balloon trips as an employee of the photographic department of Carl Zeiss Jena, always equipped with the most powerful cameras and the most modern photo optics of his time. This resulted in a collection of several hundred aerial photographs of large parts of Central Germany. Many of the sensational recordings in brilliant quality are the earliest aerial photos of the respective places or landscapes. Ernst Wandersleb's collection, which is remarkably well documented, with more than 800 own and third-party aerial photographs of the balloon flights, has been in the Geography Archive of the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig since 1962 .

literature

• Heinz Peter Brogiato and Luise Grundmann: Central Germany in early aerial photographs. Balloon photographs from the archive of the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography . Lehmstedt Verlag, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-937146-20-2 .

Web links

• PDF file with a brief description and some aerial photos (2.08 MB) ( Memento from September 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive )