Gustav Braun (geographer)

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Gustav Oskar Max Braun (born May 30, 1881 in Dorpat , † November 11, 1940 in Oslo ) was a German geographer . Versatile and with a good organizational talent, he dealt in particular with the geography of Scandinavia, German regional studies, coastal research and from the mid-1920s on economic geography . In 1933 he was forced to retire for political reasons.

Life

Gustav Braun was the son of Maximilian Braun (1850–1930), director of the Koenigsberg Zoological Museum, and his wife Toni, geb. Leisterer. He studied at the University of Königsberg and the University of Göttingen , in Königsberg he received his doctorate in 1903 under Friedrich Hahn . In 1906 he became an assistant to Rudolf Credner at the University of Greifswald , where he completed his habilitation in 1907 . Braun worked for some time as a private lecturer in Greifswald, where he continued to teach geography after Credner's death in 1908. He turned down an appointment at Peking University in 1910 . In the same year he married Ilse von Horn.

In 1911 he became head of a department at the Institute for Oceanography in Berlin and in the following year professor of geography at the University of Basel . In 1917 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina Scholars' Academy . He was initially influenced by the research of the American William Morris Davis , but later broke away from them more and more.

With the start of the war in 1914 he served in a cavalry unit in Alsace, but fell ill in October of that year. After recovery, he was transferred to a surveying unit in 1916.

In April 1918 he was appointed to the chair of geography at the University of Greifswald . Here he headed the Department of Geography , which was renamed the Institute of Geography on his initiative in 1919 and expanded under his direction. An important field of activity for Braun was the geography of Scandinavia; he pushed through the creation of an independent institute for Finnish studies , of which he became the first director. He was also a board member of the Nordic Institute in Greifswald and co-editor of the communications from the Nordic Institute of the University of Greifswald . Another area of ​​Braun's work was German regional studies. He also devoted himself to coastal research , in particular the exploration of the bay . In 1926 he set up a small station with a boat in Wieck , from which Bodden examinations, surveying exercises and meteorological exercises were carried out.

From the mid-1920s, Braun turned to economic geography . He founded the magazine Earth and Economy , which was published by Westermann .

During his time in Greifswald, around 50 doctoral students did their doctorates with him, initially mainly on coastal morphology and regional studies, also related to Pomerania , later mainly on topics from economic geography. His assistants included the later professors Walter Geisler , Wilhelm Hartnack and Ernst Plewe .

Braun was chairman of the traditional Pomeranian Geographical Society and editor of the yearbook of the Pomeranian Geographical Society .

In 1930 he was rector of the University of Greifswald. He gave his rectorate speech on the coast of Pomerania and its ports . His intransigence towards National Socialist students made him unpopular there.

After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, he was temporarily imprisoned for political reasons; he was accused of foreign currency offenses and brought to trial; he was forcibly retired in the same year. In November 1934 he was acquitted on all counts before the Reichsgericht . The magazine he founded, Earth and Economy , was discontinued. In retirement he lived in Berlin. In April 1940 he enlisted in the Wehrmacht and died six months later while doing military service with the commander's staff in Norway.

Part of the estate, in particular his travel diaries from Germany, Italy and Scandinavia from 1904 to 1938, is in the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig .

Fonts

  • East Prussia's lakes. 1903.
  • with William Morris Davis : Principles of Physiogeography. 1911, 1930.
  • The Baltic region. 1912.
  • Ferry traffic in the north of Europe . 1912. (Reprint: Salzwasser-Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-86444-250-6 )
  • Germany. Represented on the basis of personal observation, maps and literature . 1916, 2nd revised edition in six volumes 1926–1936.
  • About the origin of the Baltic Sea. 1923.
  • The Nordic States, a Sociological Area Studies. 1924.
  • Northern Europe. 1926.
  • The problem of level fluctuations in Northern Europe and the development of the Baltic Sea. 1931.
  • with Wilhelm Hartnack : Pomerania in the imperial reform. Memorandum. Greifswald 1932.
  • The world of forms on German soil . (= German soil. Volume VII). Borntraeger brothers, Berlin 1939.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christian Tilitzki : The Albertus University of Königsberg. The story from the founding of the empire to the fall of the province of East Prussia. Volume 1, Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-05-004312-8 , p. 462, footnote 2158 ( online ).
  2. ^ Braun, Gustav - University of Greifswald. In: University in NS. University of Greifswald, accessed on December 18, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Legacies on the website of the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography ( Memento of the original dated November 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ifl-leipzig.de
predecessor Office successor
Ottomar Hoehne Rector of the University of Greifswald
1930 		Kurt Deissner
personal data
SURNAME Braun, Gustav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Braun, Gustav Oskar Max (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geographer
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Dorpat
DATE OF DEATH November 11, 1940
Place of death Oslo