Josef Schmidbauer

Josef Schmidbauer (born May 26, 1913 in Regensburg ; † May 10, 1971 in Essen ) was a German civil engineer specializing in geotechnical engineering.

Schmidbauer was the son of a beer brewer and, after graduating from high school in Regensburg in 1932, worked as a builder at the Regensburg Cultural Office, before starting to study cultural engineering at the Technical University of Munich in November . Before graduating in 1936, he worked in the Habersäcker engineering office in Munich in structural engineering and also in foundation engineering. In order to further his education in soil mechanics, he became a scientific assistant at the Franzius Institute in Hanover in 1938, to which he was also assigned during the Second World War. A dissertation that was completed at the end of the war burned in a bomb attack, so that in 1950 he did his doctorate on a new topic at the TH Hannover under Alfred Streck (the floating sand phenomenon in the vertically rising groundwater flow). He was involved in many of Streck's projects, especially in dyke construction and dam construction, and came into contact with his future place of work, Essen, where numerous hydraulic engineering projects were carried out in the Ruhr Association and the Emscher Cooperative. In 1952 he became a partner in the engineering office of Hans Leussink (ELE Erdbaulaboratorium Essen) and headed it with Leussink until he became Federal Minister for Education and Science in 1969. He then managed it alone until his death in 1971. In the engineering office he worked on numerous projects (airports, dams, dykes and dams, mines, power plants, etc.). In tunnels close to the surface and deep excavations, he already used the observation method with extensiometers. The problem of damage caused by subsidence in the Ruhr area was the subject of his habilitation in Hanover in 1961 (foundations in subsidence areas). He was an adjunct professor at the TH Hannover and at the Ruhr University in Bochum. His engineering office continued to exist with branches in Essen and Berlin (managed by Thomas Nendza ) even after his death .

In 1963 he became deputy chairman of the DGGT .

literature

• Barbara Gerstein: Pictures of life from the Rheinisch-Westfälischen industrial area, Nomos Verlag 1980
• Thomas Nendza, Dietmar Placzek: On the 100th birthday of Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Josef Schmidbauer, Geotechnical Engineering 2013, No. 2

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ELE