Karl Alfons Jurasky
Karl Alfons Jurasky (born May 16, 1903 in Lautsch , Kuhländchen , Austria-Hungary , † May 7, 1945 in Freiberg ) was an Austrian geologist. Jurasky was head of the Institute for Fuel Geology at the Bergakademie Freiberg from 1941 to 1945 .
Life
Jurasky came from a family of Austrian postal workers. After his father was transferred, he spent his childhood in Leibnitz and Mödling . After completing his high school education, Jurasky began studying geology, paleontology, botany and mineralogy at the University of Vienna in 1923 . In 1926 he received his doctorate with the theme Kutikularstrukturen on the leaves of Central European and Mediterranean Hölzgewächse Dr. phil. and moved to the German Empire . In 1927 Jurasky, whose specialty was the geology of lignite deposits , received an assistant position at the geological-mineralogical institute of the University of Cologne . A year later he moved to the Institute for Fuel Geology founded by Otto Stutzer in Freiberg in 1927 . As Prof. Stutzer's assistant, Jurasky played a major role in setting up the institute. In 1930 he married Olga Eberhardt, with whom he had four children.
In 1934 his habilitation took place and the Bergakademie gave him the lectureship for coal petrography and palaeobotany. After Stutzer's death in 1937, Jurasky became an employee of Karl Krejci-Graf at the Institute for Fuel Geology. Since then Jurasky has also worked for the Reich Office for Soil Research . After the annexation of the Sudetenland , Jurasky examined the lignite deposits there for the Reich Research Council .
When Prof. Krejci-Graf was appointed to be responsible for the oil deposits in the occupied territories in the Reich Office for Soil Research after the outbreak of World War II , Jurasky was transferred from 1939 to head of the Institute for Fuel Geology and the professorship during his permanent absence. In 1941 Jurasky was appointed associate professor for fuel geology.
When the Red Army arrived in Freiberg on May 7, 1945, Jurasky was taken along by Soviet armored troops as a local to show the troops the way into the city. He was an eyewitness to the handover of the city. When the troops withdrew to the south, Jurasky evaded the attempt to take them further by fleeing. He was shot dead by the Red Army in downtown Freiberg and buried anonymously on May 8, 1945. A memorial plaque commemorates him in the Donatsfriedhof in Freiberg.
Jurasky was considered lost for a long time since May 8, 1945. The family did not find out about Jurasky's death until 1963 through an eyewitness who had recognized the dying person. Since 1952, his widow has been granted an honorary pension for her husband's services to science. The chair for fuel geology remained vacant until Richard Hunger (1911–1957) was appointed in 1952.
Publications (selection)
- Germany's lignite and its formation , Berlin 1936
- Coal - the natural history of a raw material , Berlin 1940
- The refined state of the Sudetenland brown coals as a result of volcanic warming , Freiberg 1940
literature
- Hans-Georg Schäfer: Jurasky, Karl Alfons. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-428-00191-5 , p. 700 ( digitized version ).
- Carl Schiffner : From the life of old Freiberg mountain students , Volume 3, Freiberg 1940
- 1945 memories & documents , communications from the Freiberg Antiquities Association, issue 75, Freiberg 1995
- Richard Wettstein's assistants and students in Plant Systematics and Evolution , Volume 1/2, Vienna 1933
- Werner Lauterbach , Werner Arnold: The truth about the death of Prof. Karl Alfons Jurasky , in a magazine for friends and supporters of the Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg, issue 1/2 1994/96
- Herbert Kaden : Prof. Dr. phil. habil. Karl Alfons Jurasky . In: Journal for friends and sponsors of the TU Bergakademie Freiberg. Vol. 10, 2003, pp. 63-65
Web links
- Memorial stone
- Literature by and about Karl Alfons Jurasky in the catalog of the German National Library
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Jurasky, Karl Alfons |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian geologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 16, 1903 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Odry |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 7, 1945 |
| Place of death | Freiberg |