Erwin Knipping

Erwin Knipping

Erwin Rudolf Theobald Knipping (born April 27, 1844 in Cleve ; † November 22, 1922 in Kiel ) was a German meteorologist and cartographer . As a “foreign contractor” ( Japanese お 雇 い 外国人 , O-yatoi gaikokujin) he lived in Tokyo from 1871 to 1891 . He built up the Japanese weather service and created the first weather map of Japan on February 16, 1883 .

Life

Erwin Knipping drove to the high school on various German and Dutch sailing ships before 1864 in Amsterdam his patent as helmsman made. He then did his military service as a one-year volunteer in the Royal Prussian Navy and initially served on the frigate SMS Gefion . He drove to the Cape Verde Islands on the cadet training ship SMS Niobe . Dismissed from service as a second lieutenant, he was hired in 1866 as second mate on the steamer Courier , which regularly sailed to East Asia . In 1868 Knipping was promoted to first helmsman on the same ship.

In May 1871 Knipping became a language and mathematics teacher at Daigaku Nankō , which was called from 1873 Tōkyō Kaisei Gakkō ( 東京 開 成 学校 , German  "Kaisei School Tokyo" ), and from 1877 the faculties of law, natural sciences and humanities University of Tokyo should emerge. One of his students was the geologist and ministerial official Wada Tsunashirō (1856-1920). Knipping taught here until 1876. After that, the Ministry of Transport appointed him to the examination board for captains and helmsmen of the Japanese merchant navy. He was also used to investigate marine casualties. He had been doing weather observations since 1871 and studying typhoons and earthquakes . He regularly published his results in the communications of the German Society for Natural History and Ethnology of East Asia , of which he was a member. In addition, he was also active in cartography and published in the renowned magazine Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen . In 1879 he published a general map of Japan on a scale of 1: 1,115,800 with supplementary maps showing, among other things, the railway network and telegraph lines. His map of the Japanese post stations was the basis for Bruno Hassenstein's (1839–1902) Japan atlas published by Perthes in Gotha in 1894 . In 1881 Knipping submitted plans for a storm warning service for Japan. The following year he began working as a meteorologist at the Ministry of Interior's Geography Office. After he had organized a weather observation network, he created the first weather map of Japan on February 16, 1883 based on the incoming observation reports. The daily publication of a weather map began on March 1st. On May 26, 1883, he issued a first storm warning . Knipping remained scientific director of the Japanese weather service until 1891. In 1888 Erwin Knipping was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

In 1891 Knipping returned to Germany and found a job at the Deutsche Seewarte in Hamburg . He dealt here with cyclones and sea ​​manuals . In 1909 he retired. He lived in Cleve until 1912 and then in Kiel until his death.

Familiar

Erwin Knipping married Augustine Dinger (1842–1901) on July 26, 1872. Their five children Hedwig (1873-1958), Eugenie (1875-1907), Fritz (1878-1953), Paul (1881-1842) and Else (1885-1945) were born in Japan. His son Paul became a marine engineer and was married to Aline Köppen, the daughter of the meteorologist Wladimir Köppen . In 1900 Eugenie married the mathematician and later President of the Imperial Statistical Office in Berlin, Ernst Delbrück (1858–1933).

Works (selection)

• Stanford's library map of Japan, principally compiled from Japanes documents , 1879.
• The tropical hurricanes of the South Seas between Australia and the Paumotu Islands . In: From the archive of the Deutsche Seewarte . Volume 16, No. 1, 1893, pp. 1-28.
• The annual period of mean direction of winds, lower and upper air currents in Japan . In: Nova acta Academiae Caesareae Leopoldino-Carolinae Germanicae Naturae Curiosorum . Volume 61, 1894, pp. 217-288.
• Justhus Perthes' See-Atlas , Perthes, Gotha 1894 (with Hermann habenicht).
• Maritime shipping for everyone , Niemeyer, Hamburg 1898.
• In Japanese services. Two decades of a Prussian meteorologist in the first half of the Meiji period (1868–1912) , edited by Matthias Koch and Aya Puster, Cass, Löhne 2014. ISBN 978-3-944751-01-6 .

literature

• Karl Keil:  Knipping, Erwin. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 188 ( digitized version ).
• Gerhard Krebs : Book Review II ( Memento from November 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). In: OAG Notes 9/2014, p. 53 f. (PDF; 778 kB).

Web links

• Literature by and about Erwin Knipping in the catalog of the German National Library
• Bernd Lepach: Knipping, Erwin on the Meiji Portraits website
• Portrait photo at the Bibliothèque nationale de France
• Introduction to the book In Japanese service at cass verlag

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ernst Behm : Geographical monthly report . In: Petermanns Geographische Mittheilungen . Volume 25, 1879, p. 433.
2. ^ Member entry by Erwin Knipping at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on November 4, 2016.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Bernd Lepach: Knipping, Erwin . on Meiji Portraits website, accessed November 4, 2016.
4. ↑ Rudolf Geiger:  Köppen, Wladimir. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 371 f. ( Digitized version ).