Gustav Steinmann

Johann Heinrich Conrad Gottfried Gustav Steinmann (born April 9, 1856 in Braunschweig , † October 7, 1929 in Bonn ) was a German geologist and paleontologist . He was the first director of the newly established geological-paleontological institutes at the universities of Freiburg im Breisgau and Bonn (see honors and awards ). Its official botanical author's abbreviation is “ Steinm. ".

His regional geological work is considered to be outstanding for the time, e. B. on South America , and his modern views on Alpine geology .

Life

His ancestors were farmers in Woltorf near Braunschweig, his father in the military administration and then in the court theater. Even as a schoolboy he was interested in science and had his own little greenhouse in the family garden. After studying in Braunschweig and Munich, where he received his doctorate from Karl von Zittel in 1877 on fossil hydroids from the Corynid family . Another teacher in Munich was Carl Wilhelm von Gümbel (petrography), from whom he learned how to use thin sections. In 1877 Steinmann came to Strasbourg as an assistant to Ernst Wilhelm Benecke , where he completed his habilitation in 1880 with a thesis on fossils from the Jurassic and Chalk from Caracoles in Bolivia (he renounced the Venia legendi because he felt ignored). Under Benecke he mapped the then partly German Lorraine. In 1882/83 he himself came to South America for the first time as part of an astronomical expedition to observe the transit of Venus in Punta Arenas under Arthur von Auwers . He also explored the geology of southern Patagonia and then Chile (including Cretaceous ammonites and geology of Quiriquina ) and Bolivia. After a year (1885–1886) as an associate professor in Jena , Steinmann went to Freiburg im Breisgau, where he was rector from 1899/1900 and stayed until he moved to Bonn in 1906. In 1904 the second trip to South America took place (especially to Bolivia, Peru). In 1906 he succeeded Clemens Schlueter as director of the Geological Institute in Bonn, where he had received funding from the Prussian Ministry of Culture, which opened in 1911. In 1908 he traveled to Peru. In 1924 he retired.

He dealt mainly with the geology of South America and from 1892 published the series of articles on the geology and paleontology of South America (they appeared in a total of 29 volumes until 1927). In 1892 he published his geological map of South America (in Berghaus, Physikalischer Atlas, Gotha 1892) and in 1891 a sketch of the geology of South America in The American Naturalist . In 1926 he was elected to the Commission of the International Geological World Map for the area of South America at the International Geological Congress in Madrid. In 1929 his standard work on the geology of Peru was published. In Freiburg and later in Bonn he also dealt with the Pleistocene of the Upper Rhine and other aspects of regional geology, with the Swiss Alps (especially Graubünden) and generally with palaeontology and the theory of descent, advocating a controversial theory of the multi-stemmed origin of larger groups of organisms (presented in his books Introduction to Paleontology and The Geological Foundations of Descent ). In addition to South America, he also traveled to the Urals and in 1929 East Asia (Java, Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong).

Gustav Steinmann's archaeological publications include his contribution to the find report on the double grave of Oberkassel . In it he described the place where the two human skeletons from the Upper Palaeolithic were found.

Gustav Steinmann was a founding member of the Geological Association (and its chairman from 1920 to 1930 and for a time editor of the Geological Review), first secretary of the Upper Rhine Geological Association and chairman of the Natural Research Society in Freiburg im Breisgau . He was an honorary member of the German Geological Society. He is the recipient of the Golden Moreno Medal of the Museum of the University of La Plata (1925). He was a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Academia Nacional de Ciencias en Córdoba in Argentina.

In 1886 he married the women's rights activist and politician Adelheid Holtzmann . The marriage produced a son who became a teacher in Essen. One of the grandchildren was Wulf Steinmann (1930–2019), member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and President and Rector of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich (1982–1994).

honors and awards

The Gustav Steinmann Medal , which has been awarded by the Geological Association since 1938, is named after Gustav Steinmann . According to the statutes, scientists are honored who have made a special contribution to promoting general and regional geosciences .

Also named after Gustav Steinmann is Steinmann-Institute for Geology, Mineralogy and Paleontology at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University of Bonn .

Furthermore, the so-called Steinmann Trinity , the association of ocean floor basalts ( ophiolites ), pebbles ( radiolarites ) and deep-sea clays ( Bündner slate ) , which is typical for the Pennine of the Alps .

April 3, 1929: Honorary member of the Upper Rhine Geological Association (OGV)

Memberships

1879: Upper Rhine Geological Association (OGV)

Fonts

with Ludwig Döderlein : Elements of paleontology , Leipzig: Engelmann, 1890 (Döderlein treated vertebrates)
A Sketch of the Geology of South America , American Naturalist, Vol. 25, No. 298, 1891
Via Thecospira in the Rhaetian sandstone of Nürtingen. In: New Yearbook for Mineralogy, Geology and Palaeontology, year 1894, Stuttgart 1894. pp. 276–277
Explanations of the special geological map of the Grand Duchy of Baden , G. Steinmann & C. Regelmann, Heidelberg, 1903
Introduction to paleontology , Leipzig 1903, 2nd edition 1907
The geological foundations of the theory of descent , Leipzig 1908
Editor with Otto Wilckens: Handbook of regional geology , Heidelberg: Winter, 1910–1921 ff. (In several volumes)
Diluvial human finds in Obercassel near Bonn . In: The natural sciences . No. 27, 1914, together with Max Verworn and Robert Bonnet
The Ice Age and Prehistoric Man , Leipzig; Berlin: Teubner, 1917
The diluvial human find from Obercassel near Bonn . Wiesbaden 1919, together with Max Verworn and Robert Bonnet
Geology of Perú , Heidelberg: Carl Winter [publ.], 1929

Web links

Literature by and about Gustav Steinmann in the catalog of the German National Library
Author entry and list of the described plant names for Gustav Steinmann at the IPNI
Recipient of the Gustav Steinmann Medal since 1938
On the work of G. Steinmann in Freiburg (from Max Pfannenstiel 1957)

Individual evidence

^ Max Pfannenstiel : On the history of the geological-mineralogical collections of the University of Freiburg i. Br . In: E. Zentgraf (Ed.): From the history of the natural sciences at the University of Freiburg i. Br . Eberhard Albert University Bookstore, Freiburg im Breisgau 1957, p. 77-96 .
↑ A colleague had become an associate professor although he completed his habilitation after him
^ O. Wittmann: History of the Upper Rhine Geological Association 1871-1958 . In: Annual reports and communications of the Upper Rhine Geological Association, New Series . tape 40 . Stuttgart 1958, p. 1-76 .

personal data
SURNAME	Steinmann, Gustav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Steinmann, Johann Heinrich Conrad Gottfried Gustav (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German geologist and paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH	April 9, 1856
PLACE OF BIRTH	Braunschweig
DATE OF DEATH	October 7, 1929
Place of death	Bonn

[1] Max Pfannenstiel : On the history of the geological-mineralogical collections of the University of Freiburg i. Br . In: E. Zentgraf (Ed.): From the history of the natural sciences at the University of Freiburg i. Br . Eberhard Albert University Bookstore, Freiburg im Breisgau 1957, p. 77-96 .

[2] A colleague had become an associate professor although he completed his habilitation after him

[3] O. Wittmann: History of the Upper Rhine Geological Association 1871-1958 . In: Annual reports and communications of the Upper Rhine Geological Association, New Series . tape 40 . Stuttgart 1958, p. 1-76 .