Josef Schmithüsen

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Gerhard Franz Josef Schmithüsen (born January 30, 1909 in Aachen , † September 2, 1984 in Saarbrücken ) was a German geographer. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern biogeography . In addition to plant geography, his research interests included the theory and history of geography, landscape research , cultural and economic geography, and regional studies on the Rhine and Luxembourg.

Life

Josef Schmithüsen studied chemistry, physics and geology in Aachen , then botany, zoology, geology and geography in Bonn . In 1934 he was awarded "Dr. phil. ”. In his dissertation on the coppice of the slate mountains on the left bank of the Rhine, he combined an economic geographic approach with plant geographic methods.

After completing his studies, Schmithüsen worked in various functions in Bonn, including as assistant to Leo Waibel , in research on the West (research on German nationality in the western neighboring countries of the German Reich, which was pursued with force during the Nazi era). He headed the “Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle Bonn” of the “West German Research Association”. In Bonn and on study trips to Luxembourg, he worked on a Luxembourg national study, with which he completed his habilitation in 1939. Of the planned two volumes of the work The Luxemburger Land. National nature, folklore and rural economy only appeared in the first, as the documents for the second volume burned in the Second World War. Schmithüsen introduced some novel research methods in his Luxembourgish cultural studies, including the “phenological map” (a mapping of the seasonal change).

During the occupation of Luxembourg by the German Reich in 1940, he was employed as a folklore and geographical advisor in Luxembourg on behalf of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle . From 1941 to 1942 he worked in the Department of Regional Studies of the Reich Office for Regional Recording in Berlin. 1942–1943 he did military service on the Eastern Front. On November 1st for the “ Research Relay z. b. V. ”under the leadership of Lieutenant Otto Schulz-Kampfhenkel , he worked as a scientific liaison officer from January 1944 onwards, among other things, as a scientific liaison officer for mapping methods for terrain assessment maps obtained from aerial photographs. He became an American prisoner of war, from which he was released in May 1947.

From 1948 Schmithüsen helped to set up the Geography Institute of the TH Karlsruhe (initially as a lecturer, from 1951 as an extraordinary professor, from 1959 as a full professor). In 1962 he took on a one-year visiting professorship in Auckland (New Zealand). He then followed a call to the chair of cultural and economic geography at the Saarland University in Saarbrücken, where he taught until his retirement in 1977 and beyond.

Schmithüsen's continued scientific interest in the cultural studies of Luxembourg was shown again during his time in Saarbrücken, especially in the work of his students. He himself researched and published in the post-war period mainly on general biogeography, the landscapes of the world and their vegetation, and on the theory and history of landscape research. Research trips have taken him repeatedly to South America and the Canary Islands as well as to New Zealand, Australia, Japan and Central Asia.

Publications

(Selection)

  • The Niederwald of the slate mountains on the left bank of the Rhine. A contribution to the geography of the Rhenish cultural landscape , Bonn 1934
  • The Luxembourg country. National nature, nationality and rural economy , Leipzig 1940
  • The landscape structure of the Lorraine region , Leipzig 1942
  • Geographical land survey: The natural spatial units on sheet 161 Karlsruhe. Federal Institute for Regional Studies, Bad Godesberg 1952. →  Online map (PDF; 5.1 MB)
  • Vegetation research and ecological location theory in their significance for the geography of the cultural landscape , in: Journal of the Society for Exploration in Berlin; Born 1942, H. 3/4
  • Research in Chile (with Ernst Klapp and Gerhard Helmut Schwabe), Bonn 1956
  • Allgemeine Vegetationsgeographie (= textbook of general geography; Vol. 4), Berlin 1959, 2nd edition 1961, 3rd edition 1968
  • What is a landscape? (Inaugural lecture), 1964
  • History of Geographical Science. From the first beginnings to the end of the 18th century , Mannheim ao 1970
  • Landscape and vegetation. Collected essays from 1934-1971 , with catalog raisonné, Saarbrücken 1974
  • General geosynergetics. Basics of landscape science (= textbook of general geography; Vol. 12), Berlin et al. 1976
  • From home to the world. Review of studies, research and teaching , lecture, 1979
  • The natural world of Central Europe , with catalog raisonné, Stuttgart 1986

Editing

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Häusler, Hermann: Forschungsstaffel zbV series MILGEO No. 21/2007 p. 179

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Schmithüsen, Josef
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schmithüsen, Gerhard Franz Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geographer
DATE OF BIRTH January 30, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Aachen
DATE OF DEATH 2nd September 1984
Place of death Saarbrücken