Friedrich Gustav Gauss

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Friedrich Gustav Gauß, bronze plaque in Bielefeld town hall
Friedrich Gustav Gauß, marble bust in the Technical University of Berlin

Friedrich Gustav Gauß (born June 20, 1829 in Bielefeld , † June 26, 1915 in Berlin ) was a German geodesist . Gauss was instrumental in developing the real estate cadastre in Prussia ; he also published tables of logarithms .

Life

Friedrich Gustav Gauß grew up as the son of Johann Phillip Gauß, a small trader from Bielefeld, and Johanna Sophie Gauß. After attending community school, grammar school through to primary school and the provincial trade school, he decided to become a surveyor. In 1846 and 1847 he did practical training with the chief geometer Johann Jakob Vorländer . Vorländer, who was personally acquainted with Carl Friedrich Gauß , worked particularly in the area of ​​triangulations.

In October 1848, Friedrich Gustav Gauß passed the surveyor's examination in Minden . The following year he was sworn in and joined the remeasurement service of the Rhineland-Westphalian land tax cadastre. In the next ten years he gained a wide range of practical and theoretical knowledge in cadastral construction. Between 1852 and 1856 he worked as a cadastral supernumerar in the Minden cadastral inspection and also served in the army during this time. After he was appointed cadastral inspector in 1857, he was appointed in October 1858 as a "helper" in the secret calculation of the Royal Ministry of Finance in Berlin.

With a memorandum on the uniform determination of agricultural yields, taking into account the differences between the individual provinces of the state, he aroused attention, as he proposed a practical concept for fair tax collection. As early as 1859 he was appointed secret secretary for expeditions. In the following decades Gauß was responsible for the property tax and building cadastre to be established in the eastern provinces of Prussia from 1861. On June 13, 1861, Gauß was appointed as surveying inspector to the technical director of the newly established department “Central Directorate for the Regulation of Property Tax in the Prussian State”.

It is thanks to Gauß and his organizational talent that the mammoth task of setting up the tax cadastre could be completed on time within five years, on January 1, 1865, with 3400 employees. For all of Prussia, the net income from the land and buildings could be determined, which formed the basis for setting the tax rates.

On June 13, 1864 the authorization was issued that an office is to be set up at every government for the maintenance and updating of cadastral documents; from 1872 these offices were designated as land registry offices . Because of his services in setting up the cadastral system, he was also called "Katastergauß".

In March 1872 Gauss was promoted to general inspector of the cadastre in the rank of councilors third class, in October 1875 to the rank of councilors second class. In 1892 he was appointed to the Real Secret Upper Finance Council with the rank of first class. When Miquel's tax reform of the 1890s assigned property and building taxes to the municipalities and introduced the supplementary tax on movable and immovable property for the state, Gauss developed new ways of valuing property as the third major task of his life, with science and practice later setting the trend have recognized. In 1905 (at the age of 76!) Gauß resigned from active civil service as a Really Privy Councilor with the title “Excellence”.

Gauß published many specialist books on tax law and surveying topics, including logarithmic and trigonometric tables. He participated in the elaboration of the regulations for the Prussian land surveyor examination regulations, which came into force on September 4, 1882 and for the first time required scientific training as a prerequisite. Gauss was a member and chairman of the examination committee.

In 1899 Gauss was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Strasbourg as Dr. phil. H. c. awarded.

Over the years Gauß had various apartments in Berlin, for example at Brandenburgstrasse 33 (today Lobeckstrasse), Blumeshof 3, Bahnhofstrasse. 1 (Lichterfelde) and most recently at Lützowufer 17, where he also died. In his private life he was a friend of ornithology and hiking.

The grave of Gauss in Berlin-Kreuzberg

Death and remembrance

Friedrich Gustav Gauß died in Berlin in 1915, just a few days after his 86th birthday. His grave is in Cemetery I of the Jerusalem and New Church Congregation in Berlin-Kreuzberg .

The inscription on the tombstone reads:

Here rest in God
Elise Gauss b. Brune
born October 25, 1833 d. June 21, 1889
Dr. FG Gauss
Really Go advice
born June 20, 1829 died June 26, 1915

By resolution of the Berlin Senate , Gauß's last resting place has been dedicated as a Berlin honorary grave since 1978 (grave number 122-7-24). The dedication was extended in 1999 for the usual period of twenty years.

In the town hall of his birthplace Bielefeld, a bronze relief commemorates Gauss.

FGGauß Foundation

Presumably on January 26, 1899, on the 50th anniversary of Gauß's service, the FGGauß Foundation was brought into being by colleagues. The foundation supported “ambitious children of senior cadastral officials” by granting scholarships to study geodesy and through prizes for geodetic work. In 1929, the then finance minister donated 6,000 Reichsmarks to the foundation on the occasion of Gauß's 100th birthday. The foundation was canceled by the Berlin Senate Department for Justice in 1964 due to lack of assets.

Works (selection)

  • The building tax in Prussia. R. v. Decker's Verlag, Berlin 1866
  • The trigonometric and polygonometric calculations in field mesz art. 1876
  • The division of the plots, in particular on the basis of rectangular coordinates R. v. Decker's Verlag, Berlin 1878
  • Five-digit full logarithmic and trigonometric tables. 1880
  • The supplementary tax in Prussia. Carl Heymanns Verlag, Berlin 1894
  • The building tax in Prussia according to the law of May 21, 1861 and the subsequent amending laws including implementing provisions. 1897
  • Five-digit complete trigonometric and polygonometric tables for machine computing. 1901
  • Technician Board - General number tables and four-digit trigonometric and logarithmic tables. Edition for technical schools and practice
  • Four-digit full log and trigonometric tables; (Sexagesimally subdivided old degree)

literature

  • A. Christiani: Festschrift for the 50th Service anniversary of the FG Gauß . In: Allgemeine Vermessungsnachrichten , 11, 1899, special issue.
  • O. Koll. In: Allgemeine Vermessungsnachrichten , 28, 1899, pp. 66-86.
  • F. Suckow. In: Allgemeine Vermessungsnachrichten , 58, 1929, pp. 482-502.
  • F. Suckow. In: Allgemeine Vermessungsnachrichten , 1929, p. 417.
  • P. Werkmeister: Lexicon of surveying. 1943.
  • Walter Grossmann:  Gauss, Friedrich Gustav. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 108 ( digitized version ).
  • Günther Bolze: Friedrich Gustav Gauß - conception and construction of a surveying administration. Communications from surveying No. 10, July 1979, Berlin.
  • Wolfgang Ufer: The Prussian property tax reform and the emergence of land registry offices. In: Allg. Vermessungsnachrichten , 10, 1987, pp. 382-388.
  • Silke Friedrich: Legend during his lifetime, almost forgotten today - on the 170th birthday of Friedrich Gustav Gauß . In: Vermessung Brandenburg , 2/1999, Potsdam, pp. 40–44.
  • Hans-Gerd Becker: Friedrich Gustav Gauß grave. In: On the trail of land surveying in Berlin and Brandenburg. Potsdam 2014, p. 20.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard Leibrock: Gauss register. In: Homepage of the Gauß Society. August 3, 2017, accessed July 2, 2018 .
  2. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 213.
  3. ↑ Honorary graves of the State of Berlin (as of November 2018) . (PDF, 413 kB) Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection, p. 24; accessed on March 12, 2019.. For a time limit of 20 years, see: Implementing regulations for Section 12 (6) of the Cemetery Act (AV Ehrengrabstätten) (PDF, 24 kB) of August 15, 2007, paragraph 10; accessed on March 11, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Gauss, Friedrich Gustav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gauss, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geodesist
DATE OF BIRTH June 20, 1829
PLACE OF BIRTH Bielefeld
DATE OF DEATH June 26, 1915
Place of death Berlin