Karl Weiken

Karl Weiken 1930 in Greenland

Karl Weiken (born March 9, 1895 in Assinghausen ; †  March 8, 1983 ) was a German geodesist and polar explorer .

Life

Weiken was born the son of a farmer in Assinghausen / Westphalia. After high school he worked for a year as a land surveyor at the land registry in Münster . In 1914 he began studying at the Agricultural University in Berlin , which was interrupted by the First World War. In 1921 he passed the surveyor's examination in cultural engineering . He then stayed as an assistant at the Agricultural University, but also studied geodesy, astronomy and economics at the Friedrich Wilhelms University . He finally did his doctorate under Arnold Kohlschütter with the work adjustment of trigonometric and astronomical measurements according to coordinates .

After working for one year in land consolidation , Weiken moved to the Geodetic Institute in Potsdam in 1928 . In 1930/31 he took part in Alfred Wegener's Greenland expedition . He carried out the gravity measurements and in 1931 measured three quarters of the 400 km long route between the western station on the coast and the station Eismitte on the Greenland ice sheet by means of triangulation . When Wegener set out on his tragically ending journey to Eismitte on September 21, 1930, Weiken took over the management of the western station until the arrival of the new expedition leader Kurt Wegener in the summer of 1931.

After returning from Greenland, Weiken stayed at the Geodetic Institute, was appointed professor and in 1936 took over the management of the gravity department. In December 1947 he returned to Westphalia and became a technical advisor for land consolidation in Bonn . In 1951 Heinrich Lübke , who knew him from his student days, brought him to the Ministry of Agriculture , which he headed . In 1960 Weiken retired as a ministerial advisor, but worked as an employee in the ministry for another two years. In 1963 he became chairman of the German Society for Polar Research . In 1973 he gave up this post for reasons of age and was appointed first honorary chairman.

Since 1997 he has given its name to the Weiken Basin , a lake basin in the Antarctic.

Fonts (selection)

• Karl Weiken: Geodesy . In: Scientific results of the German Greenland Expedition Alfred Wegener 1929 and 1930–1931 . Volume 5, FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1933
• K. Hahn, P. von Halen, B. Klempert, M. Klöckner, N. Philippsen, W. Rathje, K. Weiken and H. Wortmann: Soil conservation and water management in the USA . Commentator, Frankfurt am Main 1956.

literature

• Dietrich Möller : Karl Weiken. In: Polar Research . 54, Heft 1, 1984, pp. 55-57 hdl : 10013 / epic.29550.d001 (obituary).
• Else Wegener and Fritz Loewe : Alfred Wegener's last trip to Greenland. The experiences of the German Greenland expedition in 1930/1931 described by his traveling companions and according to the researcher's diaries. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1932.