Georg Hartung

Georg Friedrich Karl Hartung , also George Hartung (born July 13, 1821 in Königsberg (Prussia) , † March 28, 1891 in Heidelberg ) was a German geologist and book author. He became known for his work on the geology and geological history of the Azores and Canaries .

Life

Georg Hartung was the eldest child of the printer and publisher George Friedrich Hartung (1782–1849) and his wife Anna Maria Sophie, née Greis (1797–1870). He attended high school in Insterburg and joined his father's company in 1838, which he took over in 1848. He later left the management to his brother Hermann Hartung (1823–1901).

In 1850 Georg Hartung traveled to Madeira , attracted by the mild climate . It was probably only here that he discovered his interest in natural history . It was funded by the Swiss paleontologist Oswald Heer , with whom Hartung shared a house in Funchal . It concerned not only geology, but also botany , entomology and agriculture . Hartung accompanied Heer on excursions to Madeira for six months. In April 1851 they traveled together via Cádiz to the Canary Islands, where they visited Lanzarote , Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria . Hartung spent the winter of 1852/53 on Madeira again. In 1853/54 he accompanied the British geologist Sir Charles Lyell for two months in his field research on the island. The two had a strong teacher-student relationship. Lyell spoke of Hartung as one of his most active employees and benefited from his knowledge of the place and the language. They also spent a month in the Canary Islands in 1854 - on Tenerife , La Palma and again on Gran Canaria. In the summer he traveled through Germany and Switzerland. He made some sketches for Lyell and visited Heer in Zurich. In November 1854 he was back in Madeira. He worked there until April as well as on Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. In May he traveled to Lyell in London for a few weeks and then to Germany.

Hartung was aware that he was lacking an academic education and considered attending geology lectures at Heidelberg University . He missed the beginning of the semester and instead took private lessons in geology and mineralogy . In December 1855 he rented a house in Heidelberg, where he stayed for most of 1856 and worked on his samples. He spent the winter in Madeira again, and from mid-April to late August 1857 he traveled to the Azores.

In the following years, Hartung consulted numerous colleagues and prepared his publications on the geology of the Canary Islands and Azores, which appeared from 1857, beginning with the treatise The geological conditions of the islands of Lanzarote and Fuertaventura . In the book The Azores in Their Appearance and Geognostic Nature , published in 1860, Hartung described the physical geography and rocks of each of the nine islands and illustrated the work with drawings and landscape images. The description of the fossils of Santa Maria was carried out by the paleontologist Heinrich Georg Bronn . He published a work on volcanism in 1862 under the title Considerations on Elevation Craters, Older and Newer Eruptive Masses, along with a description of the geological conditions on the island of Gran Canaria . In the same year Hartung received his doctorate from the University of Königsberg - probably in recognition of this work . A description of the islands of Madeira and Porto Santo followed in 1864. In 1867 an atlas of Tenerife was published in collaboration with Karl von Fritsch and Wilhelm Reiss .

In the second half of the 1870s, Hartung traveled to Scandinavia several times . He published the travelogue Norwegian Journey and wrote a short article in Heer's multi-volume work Flora fossilis arctica .

Some first descriptors of Madeira's fossils gave names in honor of Georg Hartung, e. B. Cardium Hartungi (Bronn), Janthina Hartungi ( Karl Mayer-Eymar ) and Ilex Hartungi (Heer).

Works (selection)

• Georg Hartung: The geological conditions of the islands of Lanzarote and Fuertaventura . In: New memoranda of the general Swiss society for the entire natural sciences . Volume 15, 1857, pp. 1-168 ( digitized version ).
• Georg Hartung: Geological map of the islands of Lanzarote and Fuertaventura . Wurster, Winterthur 1857 ( digitized ; PDF; 1.5 MB).
• George Hartung: The Azores in their external appearance and according to their geognostic nature (with description of the fossil remains by Prof. HG Bronn). Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig, 1860 ( digital copy ; PDF; 91.5 MB).
• Georg Hartung: Considerations about elevation craters, older and newer eruptive masses, together with a description of the geological conditions on the island of Gran Canaria . Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig, 1862 ( digitized ).
• Karl Wilhelm Georg von Fritsch, Georg Hartung, Johann Wilhelm Reiss: Tenerife geologically represented topographically, a contribution to the knowledge of volcanic mountains , J. Wurster, Winterthur 1867 ( digitalisat ; PDF; 19.6 MB).
• Georg Hartung: About the plant fossils from Andö in Norway. I. Description of the site and the storage conditions . In: Oswald Heer (Ed.): Flora fossilis arctica. The fossil flora of the polar countries . 4th volume, Wurster, Zurich 1877 ( digitized version ).
• Georg Hartung, Albert Dulk : trips through Norway and the Lappmark . Kröner Brothers, Stuttgart 1877 ( digitized version ).

literature

• MS Pinto, A. Bouheiry: The German geologist Georg Hartung (1821-1891) and the geology of the Azores and Madeira islands . Geological Society, London, Special Publications, Volume 287, 2007, pp. 229-238 (English). doi : 10.1144 / SP287.18 ( limited preview in Google Book search)