Georg Siegmund Otto Lasius

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Georg Siegmund Otto Lasius (born September 10, 1752 in Burgdorf ; † February 4, 1833 in Oldenburg (Oldb) ) was a German mineralogist , surveyor and building officer.

Life

Lasius was the son of a clergyman from Burgdorf and joined the engineering corps of the Electorate of Braunschweig-Lüneburg in 1770 . From 1775 he was employed as a lieutenant and later as a captain at the Electoral Hanover Land Registry . The topographical record of the Harz Mountains was assigned to him. The stay of several years there gave Lasius the opportunity to undertake detailed mineralogical and geological studies, the results of which he published in the two-volume work Observations over the Harz Mountains along with a petrographic map (1789–1790). According to the scientific point of view of the time, the description was an exemplary representation of the geognostic-mineralogical conditions. The petrographic map published for this was one of the first of its kind to appear in Germany. In addition, Lasius also introduced the mining term Grauwacke into science in his work . His very extensive collection of minerals and types of rock, which was created during these activities, was bought in 1821 by the Imperial Russian Mining Institute in Saint Petersburg .

In the 1790s, Lasius was involved in building the fortifications on Klüt Fort George near Hameln and in the road construction inspection there. Several smaller papers, published by the Societät der Bergbaukunde zu Leipzig or the Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin , date from this period .

When, in 1803, despite the Peace of Amiens, the war between Napoleonic France and Great Britain continued and the French occupied Hanover, the engineer corps was dissolved. Lasius entered the Oldenburg service in 1804 with a few other officers . In the duchy of a new period in the development of surveying was the measurement of the at that time Reichsdeputationshauptschluss 1803 in exchange for the Elsflether Weser inch acquired as compensation from Oldenburg offices Wildeshausen (of Hanover) and Vechta and Cloppenburg (the dissolved Bishopric Munster initiated) . Lasius led the surveying Comptoir , which was responsible for implementing the national survey and the surveys for sharing the brands and meanness. In addition, he devoted himself to structural tasks, such as building the seminar building on Wallstrasse in 1806 , an extension to the college building, extensive repairs to the mausoleum of the ducal Oldenburg house in the Gertrudenfriedhof and the design of a memorial for Minister Friedrich Levin von Holmer, who died in 1806 . During the French occupation of the country , Lasius also entered the service of the Kingdom of Westphalia as Ingénieur des ponts et chaussées and investigated the possible course of a navigable canal between Weser and Ems and between Elbe and Weser as part of a waterway from the Seine to the Baltic Sea , the projected Canal de la Seine à la Baltique . In addition, he also took care of the maintenance and expansion of the roads. He was also busy with the establishment of the Bremen Schütting as a tribunal and Akzisenhof, with the design for the conversion of the Hanover post house in Bremen into a gendarmerie barracks and with the planning of prisons in Oldenburg, Hatten , Rastede and Westerstede .

After the return of the Oldenburg Duke Peter I , Lasius returned to his service in 1813. He was now head of surveying again as a construction officer and again had numerous construction projects to do. When setting up the seaside resort on Wangerooge , he carried out the stately buildings. In 1825 he supported the Göttingen mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauß in carrying out the triangulation of the Kingdom of Hanover , the results of which were to be of considerable importance for Oldenburg as the basis for the national survey of 1836. He was also able to provide Gauß with the results of the trigonometric measurements carried out in Oldenburg by the French Colonel d'Fipailly in 1805.

family

Lasius married Justine Leopoldine geb. Lodemann († before 1833). Their son Otto Ernst Friedrich (1797–1888) became an architect and Oldenburg senior construction director.

Fonts (selection)

  • Observations over the Harz Mountains along with a profile plan as a contribution to mineralogical natural history. 2 vols. Hanover. 1789.
  • Petrographic Map of the Harz Mountains. 1789.
  • Description of the diversity in the crystals of the sedative spath. Around 1790.
  • Announcement of a degeneration of the cube shape of the boracite crystals occurring in the limestone mountains near Lüneburg. Around 1790.
  • Mineralogical journey to the Palatinate mercury mines. 1792.
  • Map of the "Departement des Bouches du Weser". Scale 1: 250,000, 1812 (together with Gerhard Anton von Halem ).
  • Description of the island of Wangerooge, which belongs to the Duchy of Oldenburg, and its seaside resort. Oldenburg. 1821.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Lasius, Georg Siegmund Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German minarealogist, land surveyor and building councilor
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1752
PLACE OF BIRTH Burgdorf
DATE OF DEATH February 4, 1833
Place of death Oldenburg (Oldb)