Georg Gerland

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Georg Cornelius Karl Gerland (born January 29, 1833 in Kassel , † February 16, 1919 in Strasbourg ) (pseudonym Fritz Walter) was a German geographer and geophysicist .

Live and act

Georg Gerland was born as the son of the officer Balthasar Gerland. His brother was the physics historian Ernst Gerland , a nephew of the historian Ernst Gerland.

Gerland grew up in Kassel, Hesse, where he passed his Abitur in 1851. As evidence of his versatile talents - he was active as a composer, linguist, ethnologist, geographer and geophysicist - the fact that he was already composing at the age of eleven and published his first piano sonatas at eighteen can be seen. Some of his songs were included in the German Kommersbuch , others were later printed in booklets. Gerland published a historical drama by Konrad I in 1892 under the pseudonym Fritz Walter.

Gerland spent his student days in Berlin and Marburg . In Marburg he became a member of the Germania fraternity in 1851 and an honorary member of the Arminia Marburg fraternity in 1861 . He dealt with areas of knowledge such as classical philology, German studies and anthropology and cultivated close relationships with personalities such as the Brothers Grimm and the psychologist and anthropologist Weitz. He submitted his doctorate in Marburg in 1859. Between 1856 and 1879 Gerland taught successively as a teacher at high schools in Kassel, Hanau, Magdeburg and Halle. In 1864 he married Wilhelmine Henke (1836–1885), a daughter of the theologian Ernst Henke (1804–1872). The marriage resulted in a son and four daughters, including the legal scholar and politician Heinrich Gerland .

Also in 1864, after Weitz's death, Gerland completed the 5th volume of Weitz's broad-based work on the anthropology of indigenous peoples, of which he also wrote the 6th volume ( The peoples of the South Seas ) (1872). He then wrote other works in the field of ethnology . Following on from his ethological research, Gerland dealt with the question of the environment into which humans are born, and thus came to geography. In 1875 he followed the call to the University of Strasbourg , where he took over the newly created chair of geography; in the same year he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . In the thirty-five years of his teaching activity in Strasbourg, Gerland lectured on subjects in religious studies, ethnologist, mathematical geography, cartography, geography of organisms, descriptive geography and geophysics. He also led seminars, colloquiums and excursions.

In 1887 the first volume of the journal Contributions to Geophysics , founded by Gerland, was published , one of the oldest journals in this field, which today operates under the title Gerland's Contributions to Geophysics . Gerland's opinion, expressed in the foreword of the first volume, that the study of man should be excluded from geography, caused a great stir in geographical circles at the time. According to Gerland himself, he endeavored “to study the earth in its entirety, in its planetary character, in the interaction of the physical forces bound to its matter. In this sense, he turned to the then young discipline of geophysics, of which Gerland is considered to be a co-founder. "

At Gerland's invitation, the First International Seismology Conference took place in Strasbourg in April 1901 , at which the " International Seismological Society ", today's International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth's Interior , was founded two years later , as well as the establishment of a main station for Earthquake research in Strasbourg and the Meteorological Institute of Alsace-Lorraine were decided.

Fonts

  • The ancient Greek dative , Marburg 1859. (Dissertation)
  • Ancient Greek fairy tales in the Odyssey , Magdeburg, 1869. (digitized version)
  • On the extinction of primitive peoples , 1868.
  • Atlas of Ethnology in Brockhaus'schen Bilderatlas , 1876.
  • Reports on anthropological-ethnographic research , 1876–1900.
  • Extinction of the natives of Australia , in: 3rd Annual Report of the Metz Geographic Association, 1880.
  • Atlas of Ethnology , 1892.
  • Strange Vosges Mountains, Black Forest and Vosges, valley formation of the northern Vosges , in: Municipality newspaper of the northern Vosges.
  • Der Hoheneck , in: Commune newspaper for Alsace-Lorraine, 1880/81.
  • Geographical treatise from the Reichslande Alsace-Lorraine , 1892.
  • The realm of Alsace-Lorraine , 1898–1901.
  • Immanuel Kant, his geographical and anthropological works , Berlin, 1906, 174 pp.
  • The seismic behavior of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans , lecture at the 9th international geographic congress in Geneva, 1908.
  • The myth of the Flood , Bonn, 1912. (digitized version)
  • Correspondence [between] Hans Thoma and Georg Gerland , 1938.

literature

  • Gustav Angenheister :  Gerland, Georg Cornelius Karl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 305 ( digitized version ).
  • L. Neumann: Petermann's communications . Volume 65, 1919, pp. 22f.
  • K. Sapper: Geographical Journal . Volume 25, 1919, pp. 329-340.
  • Rudolf Bonnet: The dead of the Marburg fraternity Arminia . Volume 1, Frankfurt am Main, 1926, p. 5. (There also picture in the foreword)
  • K. Sapper: Life reports from Kurhessen and Waldeck . Volume II, 1940, pp. 150-162.
  • Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume II: Artists. Winter, Heidelberg 2018, ISBN 978-3-8253-6813-5 , pp. 242–243.

See also

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gerland, Georg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gerland, Georg Cornelius Karl (full name); Walter, Fritz (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geographer and geophysicist
DATE OF BIRTH January 29, 1833
PLACE OF BIRTH kassel
DATE OF DEATH February 16, 1919
Place of death Strasbourg