Fritz Koerner (geographer)

Fritz Koerner (born June 30, 1893 in Weimar , † October 26, 1959 in Jena ) was a German university professor and geographer.

life and work

Koerner studied history, geography and German at the University of Jena . He interrupted the course he had just started to participate in the First World War , from which he returned with an arm injury. Initially resumed in 1918 in Strasbourg, he finished his studies in 1920 with the state examination for higher education. After his legal clerkship, numerous short-term jobs followed in various Thuringian cities before he moved to Jena as a teacher at the Carolo-Alexandrinum grammar school in 1927 . Here he received his doctorate in 1928 under Gustav von Zahn with a work on settlement history. This gave Koerner an unpaid teaching position for settlement geography and historical geography at the University of Jena in 1934, after he had held exercises there since 1931. Freed from military service, Koerner was able to teach and go on excursions until the winter semester of 1944/45. After the end of the Second World War , he was the deputy director of the institute and the de facto director until Joachim Heinrich Schultze's denazification process was completed in 1950 and he returned. Due to his merits and adaptability, Koerner was appointed professor with a teaching position for historical geography in 1952 and thus ended his teaching activity prematurely. It was only four years later that he submitted his habilitation thesis. Until the spring of 1957 he was acting director of the institute and was retired in 1958.

Fonts (selection)

• Corridor size and slope factor in the district court districts of Apolda, Buttstädt, Großrudestedt, Vieselbach and Weimar , Jena / Apolda: Hugo Blume 1929 (dissertation).
• Contributions to the geopolitics and population history of the central Saale area (= series of publications of the National Socialist Teachers' Association Jena, Volume 1), Jena: Fromann, 1935.
• The "municipality boundary map of Thuringia as a basis for historical and statistical research", scale 1: 200000. An account of their creation , ed. by the Thuringian Historical Commission (special print from: Journal of the Association for Thuringian History and Archeology 1854-1943. NF36 = 44.1942, pp. 275-282), Fischer: Jena 1942.
• The population distribution in Thuringia at the end of the 16th century, with 3 map supplements (= scientific publications of the German Institute for Regional Geography. NF Volume 15/16), Leipzig 1958 (habilitation thesis of May 12, 1956).

literature

• Annemarie Mälzer: The life and work of the historian and geographer Fritz Koerner at the University of Jena (1912–1958) , in: Zeitschrift für Thüringische Geschichte (2018), pp. 149–171.