Friedrich von Alberti

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Friedrich von Alberti
Alberti memorial stone in the old cemetery Heilbronn

Friedrich August von Alberti (born September 4, 1795 in Stuttgart , † September 12, 1878 in Heilbronn ) was a German geologist . He gave the Triassic its name and for decades made a name for himself in salt production in Württemberg in the 19th century.

Life

Alberti was the son of the Württemberg officer Franz Karl Alberti, who was a teacher at the Hohen Karlsschule and was raised to the nobility by King Friedrich in 1807 by being awarded the Knight's Cross of the Military Merit Order .

Friedrich Alberti went to school at his father's locations in Stuttgart , Rottweil and Öhringen . From 1809 he studied with the mountain cadet corps of the Stuttgart military institute, which emerged from the Karlsschule. After completing his training, he got his first job as a geologist in the royal Württemberg saltworks in Sulz am Neckar , in which brine was extracted from boreholes and boiled into salt . He established a good reputation there and in 1818 was entrusted with the supervision of the construction of the new Friedrichshall salt works in Jagstfeld (today Bad Friedrichshall ).

On October 23, 1821 Alberti married his wife Julie, nee Freiin von Degenfeld , in neighboring Kochendorf (today Bad Friedrichshall) , with whom he had eleven children (three of whom died early), including Otto von Alberti (1834-1904). From 1822 he looked for rock salt on behalf of the Württemberg government near Schwenningen and finally found it in July 1823 between Dürrheim and Schwenningen. Württemberg had the Wilhelmshall saltworks under Alberti's management built here (named after the then King Wilhelm I of Württemberg ), which produced salt for Switzerland , whose sole supply of salt had been contractually secured by Württemberg. Further boreholes suggested by Alberti in the Primtal near Rottweil encountered rock salt at the former Rottenmünster monastery on September 14, 1824 . Another saltworks was built there, which was also named Wilhelmshall and was under the direction of Alberti, as was the saltworks in Sulz. Thanks to the Württemberg boiling system developed by him , Alberti was later able to double the salt yield when boiling.

In 1826 his first scientific work, The Mountains of the Kingdom of Würtemberg, was published with a special focus on halurgy , in which, in addition to the Württemberg saltworks, he mainly dealt with rock science. A whole chapter of the book dealt with the "Thon, Gyps and Sandstone Mountains of Heilbronn", which Alberti called the Keuper formation. As a result, Alberti made a particular contribution to researching the Triassic Formation , which he gave this name to in his work Contribution to a monograph of the colorful sandstone, shell limestone and Keuper, and the connection of these structures to a formation . He owed his knowledge to the intensive study of the landscape in the Württemberg lowlands around Heilbronn, which is why geoscientists still regard it today as a model landscape for the Triassic. Technical terms such as Heilbronn formation or Löwenstein formation are evidence of this.

Alberti was a member of the committee from the beginning in the association founded in 1832 for the exploration of antiquities in the area of ​​Rottweil , later the Archaeological Association in Rottweil , the first historical association in Württemberg. He led various excavations and wrote some of the association's annual reports. In 1836 Alberti was named a mountain ridge and, at the instigation of the Württemberg finance minister Johann Christoph von Herdegen, undertook a long journey through almost all salt works in Germany and the salt stores of Upper Silesia , southern Poland , Galicia and the Eastern Alps . Further trips to France and the Central Alps at the beginning of the 1840s served as preliminary studies for his Halurgical Geology published in 1852 .

After Switzerland had opened up its own salt stores and the salt trade there had consequently declined, the Württemberg government saw itself compelled to shift the focus of salt production in the country from the upper Neckar to the lower Neckar, which is now more favorable for sales . The increasing importance of Heilbronn located there as an industrial city was another reason for this.

Steinsalz has been mined in the Wilhelmsglück mine near Hall since 1824 . Alberti was also of the opinion that the future belongs to the salt mine opposite the salt pans. An unsuccessful manhole construction attempt at Rottweil for several years was stopped in 1849. In 1853 the government decided to build a shaft near the Friedrichshall salt works. Alberti was entrusted with the management of the building and returned to Friedrichshall after more than 30 years. On January 2, 1854, construction of the shaft began. Unforeseen water ingress delayed completion and drove construction costs up to almost one million guilders . On March 14, 1859, at a depth of 153 meters, a 15-meter thick layer of rock salt was finally encountered, which could be mined and thus supplemented the previously operated brine extraction. The Friedrichshall salt mine was the second in Württemberg after the Wilhelmsglück mine.

Alberti enjoyed great confidence in the royal family of Württemberg; In 1856, Prince Wilhelm, then eight years old, spent two weeks in the Albertis house in Friedrichshall. The extensive collections of fossils that Alberti had built up throughout his life were bought by the Württemberg state in 1862 for the Königliche Naturalienkabinett (today the State Museum of Natural History ).

Alberti's last major work was published in 1864, an overview of the Triassic taking into account its occurrence in the Alps . He was able to use new geological knowledge about the sequence of layers in the Heilbronn area, which had been gained from 1859 to 1862 during the construction of the 891 meter long Weinsberg tunnel on the Heilbronn – Crailsheim railway line between Heilbronn and Weinsberg . For the first time he also tried to compare the Württemberg Triassic strata with similar rock sequences in the Alps .

Until 1870 Alberti was still in charge of the Friedrichshall saltworks and mine, as well as the Clemenshall saltworks in neighboring Offenau, and then retired at the age of 75. Until his death in September 1878, he lived in Heilbronn for eight years. He survived his wife, who died in April 1873, by five years. From 1881, three years after Alberti's death, salt was also drilled in Heilbronn, following the example of Alberti's life's work. Salzwerk Heilbronn AG , today's Südwestdeutsche Salzwerke AG , was founded in 1883 . In 1885, mining began in the Heilbronn salt mine.

Alberti was considered energetic, hardworking and striving for justice in his profession. According to contemporaries, he was a good speaker who enjoyed entertaining societies with lots of anecdotes. As a family man, he always had a close relationship with his wife and children.

Appreciation

Alberti was honored in many ways during his lifetime and was awarded the royal Württemberg gold medal for science and art, the Knight's Cross of the Order of the Württemberg Crown (1838) and the Commander's Cross of the Friedrich Order . In 1863, when the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Tübingen was founded, he was made an honorary doctorate in natural sciences. In at least nine learned societies he was a member or honorary member, u. a. He was accepted into the German Geological Society , which was newly founded at the end of December 1848, in January 1849 (serial number 1 of 170 members) and in 1854 was elected a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

In addition to many fossils, two rock layers of the Triassic were named after Alberti; an international, English-language geological journal is named Albertiana in his honor . In Rottweil and Heilbronn one street each bears his name, and the Bad Friedrichshaller Gymnasium, which was inaugurated in 1996, bears the name Friedrich-von-Alberti-Gymnasium after him .

Since 1998, two science prizes named after Alberti have been awarded: on the one hand, the Friedrich von Alberti Prize of the Alberti Foundation of the Hohenloher Muschelkalkwerke, endowed with 10,000 euros, for outstanding achievements in the field of paleontology , and on the other hand the Friedrich von Alberti Prize Medal of the Heilbronn Mineral and Fossil Friends Association for services to the regional geology of the Heilbronn area.

Fonts

  • The mountains of the Kingdom of Würtemberg, with special reference to halurgy: With comments and attachments by Prof. G. Schübler in Tübingen / by Friedrich von Alberti, salt works manager of Wilhelmshall. With 5 geognostic maps. Stuttgart and Tübingen, in the JG Cotta'schen Buchhandlung, 1826.
  • Contribution to a monograph of the colorful sandstone, shell limestone and Keupers, and the connection of these structures to a formation. With 2 plates. lith. Stuttgart & Tübingen, 1834.
    • Reprographic reprint of the edition Stuttgart, Cotta, 1834 / Friedrich von Alberti Foundation of the Hohenloher Muschelkalkwerke. With a foreword by the editor and a biographical essay by Wolfgang Hansch. Goldschneck-Verlag Weidert, Weinstadt 1998, ISBN 3-00-003351-3
  • Overview of the mineralogical conditions in the area of ​​the former free imperial city of Rottweil. Rottweil: Englerth 1840. In: Heinrich Ruckgaber: History of the Free and Imperial City of Rottweil , pp. 576–627.
  • Halurgical geology. 2 volumes. Cotta, Stuttgart 1852.
  • The Jura ores, their relationship with the molasses and the gypses of Paris, Aix and Hohenhoewen. Stuttgart 1853. Also in: Württembergische Naturwissenschaftliche Jahreshefte 1853.
  • Overview of the Triassic, taking into account its occurrence in the Alps. With 7 lithographic plates. Stuttgart 1864. doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.14903 , Archive
  • Roman antiquities in the area around Rottweil am Neckar . Stuttgart: 1833-1837. Annual report of the Archaeological Association of Rottweil.

literature

  • Fritz Berckhemer : Friedrich von Alberti . In: Swabian Life Pictures. Volume 2. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1941. pp. 1-10.
  • Walter Carlé : The role of the Royal Mountain Council Dr. hc Friedrich August von Alberti in the development of geology, saltworks and mining . In: Biographies of South German Salinists. Stuttgart 1978, pp. 54-87.
  • Wolfgang Hansch: A landscape and its namesake. Friedrich von Alberti (1795–1878) . In: Christhard Schrenk (ed.): Heilbronner Köpfe II. Life pictures from two centuries . Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 1999, ISBN 3-928990-70-5 (Small series of publications by the Heilbronn City Archives, 45)
  • Wolfgang Irtenkauf : Fed up with the stones: letters from the Triassic researcher Friedrich August von Alberti . In: Erwin-Rutte-Festschrift. 1983. pp. 99-103.
  • Hans Hagdorn : Friedrich von Alberti Prize of the Hohenloher Schotterwerke: DM 20,000 for outstanding achievements in the field of paleontology . 1998
  • Erich Krenkel :  Alberti, Friedrich August von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , pp. 140 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Friedrich von Alberti  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Journal of the German Geological Society, Volume 1, Issue 1, 1849, p. 38
  2. ^ Member entry by Friedrich von Alberti (with picture) at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on February 3, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Alberti, Friedrich von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Alberti, Friedrich August von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 4, 1795
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH September 12, 1878
Place of death Heilbronn