Franz Beyschlag

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Franz Heinrich August Beyschlag (born October 5, 1856 in Karlsruhe , † July 23, 1935 in Berlin ) was a German geologist . As such, he was Professor of Geology at the Bergakademie Berlin and President of the Prussian Geological State Institute .

family

Franz Beyschlag was born in Karlsruhe as the son of court preacher and theologian Willibald Beyschlag . One of his sons, Rudolf Beyschlag , was a German civil engineer. The younger son Bernhard Beyschlag (* June 14, 1900; † October 6, 1980) studied mechanical engineering and physics in Berlin, obtained his doctorate and opened a factory for passive resistors on Sylt .

Life

At the age of four he moved with his father to Halle , where he also attended school. He was interested in mining and went to the Rhineland to gain practical experience in the coal mines there. He then studied at the University of Halle , the Bergakademie Berlin and the Humboldt University in Berlin and graduated from the Oberbergamt Halle in 1881. During his studies in 1877 he became a member of the Fridericiana Halle singers . Then he worked as a mountain trainee and finally received his doctorate. phil. Beyschlag was concerned with popularizing the latest knowledge in geology; To do this, he made a depth profile in the form of a wall from natural rock for the Agricultural Institute of the University of Halle , which simulated a section through the earth's crust; a similar wall was built in 1894/95 in Berlin's Humboldthain . He then became an employee of Christian Ernst Weiss at the Berlin Mineral Collection.

In 1883 he became a district geologist and in 1889 a state geologist. On January 5, 1888 ( matriculation no. 2713 ) he was elected a member of the Leopoldina Scholars' Academy . Until 1901, Beyschlag was mainly concerned with the production of geological maps and was one of the most important geological cartographers of his time. In addition, from 1892 he also gave lectures at the Bergakademie Berlin, which, alongside the Bergakademie Freiberg, became the second German center for mining studies in Germany.

In 1898 he was appointed professor of geology there. Finally, Beyschlag also became chairman of the Prussian State Geological Institute as the successor to Karl Schmeißer . He was particularly committed to the practical economic implementation of geological knowledge in the age of industrialization . For this he also produced his most important work, the map of the usable deposits in Germany , consisting of 76 individual sheets. At the beginning of the 20th century, the state authorities in Germany pushed for the most accurate inventory possible of raw material deposits, above all in order to be able to determine the needs of the heavy and especially the arms industry. Beyschlag, although actually a scholar, saw himself as a loyal servant of the state. Franz Beyschlag became a member of the Paleontological Society in the founding year 1912 . Beyschlag was president of the Prussian Geological State Institute until 1923. He was also involved in the German Geological Society , of which he became a member in 1883, of which he had been a member of the board since 1893 and of which he was temporarily chairman.

Franz Beyschlag was buried in the Wilmersdorf cemetery in Berlin.

Research priorities

His investigations into salt, iron ore, bauxite , gold, oil and groundwater deposits in Germany were groundbreaking. Many of his more than 100 publications appeared in the “Zeitschrift für Praxis Geologie”, which he edited, where he also dealt with the geological aspects of railway routing or with environmental damage caused by mining.

However, his work did not concentrate solely on Germany: from 1893 to 1913 he continued the project of the Carte Géologique internationale de l'Europe , which had already been started in 1881 , which was followed by the geological map of the earth after the Second World War .

Fonts

Honors

In Berlin-Schulzendorf , the Beyschlag settlement and a car tunnel underneath it was named after Franz Beyschlag.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dr. Bernhard Beyschlag , in: sylt2000.de .
  2. ↑ Paul Meißner (Ed.): Alt-Herren-Directory of the German Singers. Leipzig 1934, p. 66.
  3. ↑ Member entry of Franz Beyschlag at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on September 13, 2017.
  4. ^ Palaeontological Journal 1, Issue 1, March 1914.
personal data
SURNAME Beyschlag, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Beyschlag, Franz Heinrich August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 5, 1856
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlsruhe
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 1935
Place of death Berlin