Gerta von Ubisch

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Gerta von Ubisch (also: Gertrud von Ubisch ; born October 3, 1882 in Metz ; † March 31, 1965 in Heidelberg ) was a German physicist , botanist , plant geneticist and university professor . She was the first female professor in Baden .

Life

Gerta von Ubisch came from an old German noble merchant family (sometimes also " von Urbisch "); her father was temporarily director of the armory in Berlin. Her mother was Jewish (née Goldschmidt).

At the age of 16, Gerta von Ubisch decided to study physics, but first did a household apprenticeship in a parish household, completed so-called “real-life courses” from 1900 and passed the Abitur in 1904. She then went to Heidelberg University for a semester , spent a year in Freiburg im Breisgau and then returned to Berlin, where she met Lise Meitner . In Strasbourg she did her doctorate under Ludwig Jost on electrical waves: number of vibrations and damping in luminous and non-luminous sodium vapor.

But then she discovered her interest in botany. In 1911 she went to the plant geneticist Erwin Baur at the Agricultural University in Berlin-Friedrichshagen and in 1914 to Carl Correns in Münster .

During the First World War she earned her living as a seed breeding manager . In 1918 she went back to Berlin for a few years to the Plant Physiology Institute in Baur, then to Heidelberg, where she became a scientific assistant for plant physiology at Jost in 1921.

In 1923 von Ubisch completed his habilitation under her teacher, the botanist Ludwig Jost , on heredity . She was the first to complete her habilitation in Heidelberg in 1923, which opened the way to teaching and research at the university there. She was the first woman to qualify as a professor in Baden and the fifteenth in all of Germany. In 1924 she received a teaching position in Heidelberg and in 1929 her appointment as extraordinary professor for botany. Because of her Jewish ancestors, her teaching position was withdrawn by the National Socialists in 1933 . She was fired from her position, but was then allowed to teach until 1934 - due to the intervention of people like Jost and Baur - but her lectures were prevented by the boycott of the National Socialist students. At the invitation of the Association of Women Academics, she went to Utrecht in the Netherlands .

In 1935 she emigrated to Brazil and worked as a department head at the Instituto Butantan in São Paulo . There she was supposed to do research on horses, with the aim of obtaining immune serum against snake venom , and to improve oat cultivation . She also worked on the plant Antennaria (" cat's paw ") and began doing research on guinea pigs . She discovered that the wild guinea pigs could not be immunized against snake venom and diphtheria . In 1936 she carried out cross-breeding experiments with oats and also researched corn , papaya and lupins . In 1937 she took a leave of absence to have cataracts operated on. In 1938, she and all other foreign employees of the institute were dismissed and dismissed.

In 1939 she took up a new position at the Center for Agricultural Research in Rio de Janeiro . In 1940 she went to Rolândia , a small town that was then a refuge for many Jewish refugees from Germany. There she began research on sweet potatoes with the goal of a non-sweet variety . She also studied the Tung tree , whose nuts provide oil for high-quality paints. Since she suffered from the subtropical climate in Rolândia , she returned to São Paulo in 1941; However, she did not find a job there, but lived on savings and private biology lessons. After three lean years she became seriously ill; she had to have three eye operations.

In 1946 von Ubisch was allowed to enter Norway , where her brother Leopold von Ubisch lived with his family. In 1952 she returned to Heidelberg; the professors there showed her only reluctant interest. In the following years she filed for damages and sued for redress . After lengthy legal battles she received a pension and died in 1965 in a financially secure situation. She was buried in Marburg in the grave of her older sister Magda.

The memoirs written by Gerta von Ubisch in 1955, which are typed in typescript in the Heidelberg University Library, were published in an edited form in 2011.

Honors

In the entrance area of ​​Heidelberg University there is a reference to university teachers who were persecuted after the Nazis came to power in 1933; Gerta von Ubisch is listed there.

In her honor, certain characteristics of pollen are named Ubic-body .

A street in the Heidelberg district of Kirchheim was named after Gerta von Ubisch in 1994 , Gertrude-von-Ubisch-Straße (in this spelling).

Works

  • Experiments on heredity and fertility in heterostyly and flower filling. [Fischer], [Jena] [1923]. In: Zeitschrift für Botanik 15, Heidelberg, pp. 193–232 (Naturwiss.-math. Habilitation paper)
  • with Ludwig Jost : On the wind question. W. de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 1926 (Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. Reports of meetings of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, mathematical and natural science class; born 1926, Abh. 8)
  • Influence of the heterostyle features of Oxalis stricta by Ustilago Oxalidis. [Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Mij.], [Amsterdam] [1935] (from: Proceedings / Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam. Vol. 38. 1935, No. 1, pp. [93] - 100)
  • Susan Richter , Armin Schlechter (ed.): Between all worlds. The memoirs of the first Heidelberg professor Gerta von Ubisch . Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2011, ISBN 978-3-7995-0890-2 .

literature

  • Gudrun Fischer: Gerta von Ubisch (1882–1965). In: Gudrun Fischer (ed.) With Alwine Witte: Darwin's sisters. Portraits of naturalists and biologists. Orlanda Frauenverlag, Berlin 2009; ISBN 978-3-936937-67-1 ; Pp. 104-123.
  • Meike Baader: Gerta von Ubisch , in: Baden-Württembergische Biographien, Vol. II, Stuttgart 2002, pp. 423-425.
  • Meike Baader: Gerta von Ubisch. The unfulfilled promise of equality. In: Birgit Knorr, Rosemarie Wehling (Hrsg.): Women in the German Southwest. Stuttgart 1993, pp. 236-262
  • Meike Baader, Christian Jansen: Gerta von Ubisch - the first woman to qualify as a professor in Baden. In: Number 2, Heidelberg 1990, pp. 65-68.
  • Ute Deichmann : Biologists under Hitler. Expulsion, careers, research , Frankfurt / Main 1992, pp. 303–309.
  • Max Weber: German-English family history 1800–1950 ISBN 3-16-147557-7
  • Jutta Dick, Marina Sassenberg (ed.): Jewish women in the 19th and 20th centuries . Lexicon to life and work, Reinbek 1993, ISBN 3-499-16344-6

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Meike Baader: Gerta von Ubisch, in: Baden-Württembergische Biographien, Vol. II, Stuttgart 2002, pp. 423-425.
  2. ↑ Universitätsplatz - Women at the University. (PDF; 58 kB) heidelberg.de, accessed on February 15, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Ubisch, Gerta von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ubisch, Gertrud von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist, botanist, plant geneticist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Metz
DATE OF DEATH March 31, 1965
Place of death Heidelberg