Hans Reck

Hans Reck (born January 24, 1886 , † August 4, 1937 in Lourenço Marques , Portuguese East Africa, today Mozambique ) was a German geologist specializing in volcanology .

Life

In the summer of 1908, Hans Reck traveled with Ina von Grumbkow to the Öskjuvatn in Iceland . Both of them carried out a search expedition with the Icelander Sigurður Sumarliðason as a knowledgeable national guide, to find out the fate of the probably drowned German geologist Walther von Knebel - he was Ina von Grumbkow's fiancé - who disappeared under mysterious circumstances on the crater lake of the Askja volcanic massif on 10 July 1907 . and his friend, the Berlin landscape painter Max Rudloff, to enlighten. However, your search was unsuccessful. In honor of the missing, the three expedition members erected a four-meter-high stone pyramid on the west bank of Öskjuvatn and chiseled the inscription "† 1907, Walther von Knebel, Max Rudloff" in lava stone, which has recently been replaced by a metal plaque. During the search, Hans Reck also managed to climb the volcano Herðubreið for the first time . Hans Reck and Ina von Grumbkow married on February 9, 1912. Together with his wife, he traveled to Africa for research purposes . On Mount Tendaguru in what was then German East Africa , they excavated for the Berlin Museum of Natural History . In 1913 he discovered the first hominini fossil recovered there in the Olduvai Gorge , a 20,000 year old skull of Homo sapiens (archive number OH 1 = Olduvai hominid 1).

During the First World War, Reck stayed with the German troops in Africa and was interned by the British for four years. Reck was later appointed associate professor at the Geological-Paleontological Institute of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin . After his early retirement, Reck died on a research trip in what is now Mozambique.

Fonts

From 1923 Hans Reck was co-editor of the Zeitschrift für Vulkanologie . His main work was the exploration of the volcano of Santorini , for which he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens . The following monographs have appeared under his authorship:

• The Hegau volcanoes (Berlin, 1923)
• Scientific results of the Oldoway expedition 1913 (Leipzig, 1925 and 1937)
• Oldoway. The gorge of primitive man (Leipzig, 1933)
• Santorini. The development of an island volcano and its eruption (3 volumes, Berlin, 1936)
• together with Ludwig Kohl-Larsen : First overview of the young animal and human finds Dr. Kohl-Larsens in the northeastern part of the Njarasa Trench (East Africa). In: Geologische Rundschau 27, 1936, pp. 401–441

literature

• Helmut Mayr:  Reck, Hans. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 232 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Lutz Mohr : Iceland - fascination and mystery. Tragedy of German researchers on the Icelandic crater lake . For Iceland's national holiday on June 17th. In: Greifswalder Blitz on Wednesday. 2nd year, No. 48 of June 14, 1995, p. 1f
• Frank Schroder: The Eisumschlungene. Searching for traces in Iceland. LundiPress Verlag, Eichstätt 1995, ISBN 3-980 164 8-3-7

Web links

• Newspaper article about Hans Reck in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .