Hermann Anschütz-Kaempfe

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Hermann Anschütz-Kaempfe (left) with Albert Einstein (1914)

Hermann (Franz Joseph Hubertus Maria) Anschütz-Kaempfe (born October 3, 1872 in Zweibrücken , † May 6, 1931 in Munich ) was a German scientist and inventor of the gyrocompass .

Live and act

Anschütz-Fights was the son of the Munich math and physics teacher Friedrich Wilhelm Anschütz and his wife Maria Johanna Schuler, who came from a family of manufacturers in Zweibrücken. His grandfather was the painter and professor Hermann Franz Anschütz . After his father's death, he was adopted by the Austrian art historian Kaempfe.

Anschütz-Kaempfe first studied medicine at the University of Innsbruck , but did not complete this course, then studied art history and earned a doctorate in this subject. phil. As a student he became a member of the AKV Tirolia , which is now part of the ÖKV .

After completing his studies and several trips to the Mediterranean and the Arctic, Anschütz-Kaempfe settled in Vienna and worked as an inventor. He worked intensively on the plan to reach the North Pole in the submarine. However, the navigation technology of that time was not yet sufficiently developed. Anschütz-Kaempfe made important technical inventions for this purpose and constructed (as a model as early as 1902) the first single-gyro compass, which was first used in 1908 on the German liner SMS Deutschland . But the multi-gyro compass he built in 1912 and tested on the German battle cruiser Moltke worked more reliably. In 1913 the first deployment took place on a merchant ship , the German passenger ship Imperator .

In 1915, Anschütz-Kaempfe won a patent dispute on the gyro compass against Elmer Ambrose Sperry , where he met Albert Einstein when he was called in as an expert in 1914. A long-term friendship with Einstein began, which led to the latter doing many calculations for the gyro compass for Anschütz-Kaempfe and visiting him for many years during the summer holidays in Kiel. Anschütz almost succeeded in placing Einstein with a chair at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel , which ultimately failed at the beginning of the 1930s because of the anti-Semitic professorships there.

Anschütz-Kaempfe developed the "Anschütz two-gyro spherical compass" named after him in 1927. This compass served as the basis for today's gyro compass systems. The three-circle compass goes back to the collaboration with his cousin Maximilian Schuler .

Hermann Anschütz-Kaempfe founded the company Anschütz & Co (today: Raytheon Anschütz ) in Kiel on September 23, 1905 , which he headed until 1930, when he transferred his shares to the Carl Zeiss Foundation .

In addition to gyrocompasses, the company produced the first semi-automatic and later automatic coupling tables as early as 1911 , which combined the data from the compasses with the values ​​from the speedometer and displayed them on a nautical chart.

Anschütz-Kaempfe was married three times without children. Since he was very wealthy due to his inventions, he generously supported and promoted science and technology. In 1919 he founded the Foundation for Physics, Chemistry and Natural Sciences with endowment capital of 1 million marks. He made extensive donations to the University of Munich. In 1922 he acquired Lautrach Castle in Lautrach (Upper Swabia), had it renovated and then made it available as a rest home for professors and students. Here he held so-called "faculty meetings" with scientists he had selected, such as Karl von Frisch , Wilhelm Wien , Richard Willstätter , Albrecht Kossel , Arnold Sommerfeld and Albert Einstein .

Among the prominent citizens who founded the Bayerische Reitschule AG in Munich in September 1927 was Anschütz-Kaempfe, who acquired all the shares in the AG in 1931 in order to donate them to the university with the aim of promoting student riding.

Anschütz-Kaempfe continued to be very interested in art, painted watercolors and appeared as an art collector.

Anschütz-Kaempfe had donated a park as a sports facility for students, and he died while visiting. His grave is in Munich at the Waldfriedhof Alter Teil 178 - W - 23.

Honors

  • In the Munich district of Berg am Laim, a street is named after Anschütz-Kaempfe and the Anschützstraße in Erlangen .
  • In Kiel, Lorentzendamm 43, a plaque commemorates the founder of the company Anschütz & Co.
  • Honorary citizen and honorary doctor of the University of Munich
  • In his hometown Zweibrücken, a large model of a gyro-compass was set up on the center island of a roundabout near the university as a homage to him .
  • Namesake for the Anschütz Fights Trough , a lake basin in the Lasarew Sea in Antarctica

Fonts

  • The submarine in the service of polar research (1902). Lecture given in January 1902 in the KuK Geographical Society in Vienna
  • The gyro as a guide on earth with special consideration of its usability on ships (Yearbook of the Shipbuilding Society Vol. 10/1909)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerd Stolz: People and Events - memorial plaques in Kiel , p. 40
  2. ^ Mathias Schneck: Honor for the great Zweibrücker. In: pfaelzischer-merkur.de. Pfälzischer Merkur , January 3, 2015, accessed on November 6, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Anschütz-Kaempfe, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Anschütz-Kaempfe, Hermann Franz Joseph Hubertus Maria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German scientist and inventor of the gyrocompass
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Zweibrücken
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 1931
Place of death Munich