Karlhans Divine

Karlhans Göttlich (born November 9, 1914 in Tetschen ; † July 24, 1991 in Sigmaringen ) was a graduate farmer and one of the most important German researchers of peatlands and peatlands of the 20th century.

Biography and life's work

Troubled times of war

Born in Tetschen an der Elbe (Northern Bohemia ), his parents soon settled in Lemberg in Poland (now a Ukrainian city). Göttlich graduated from high school in 1935 at the German grammar school there. He then studied agriculture at the technical university in Lemberg and left this institution as a qualified farmer . The war events then took him to Posen (West Prussia), where from 1940 to 1945 he was in charge of the agricultural branch Langensalza of the Posen rural community . There he was inspired by the pedologist and moor scientist Professor PW Thomson for the moors , received a scholarship at the moor experimental station in Bremen and also wrote a doctoral thesis there, which was lost in the chaos of war.

On the run from Posen, Göttlich came to Hesse , where he worked at the Groß-Gerau agricultural school from 1945 . But after just three years he moved to Baden-Württemberg to finally settle in Sigmaringen an der Donau . There he found a job at the Water Management Office and from 1948 to 1980 he headed the “Cultural Soil and Bog Studies” department, where he finally found time for research and teaching in addition to the administrative work that was never very popular .

Cartographic pioneering work

Häckler Ried high moor (Oberschwaben) with the so-called blind lake - subject of GÖTTLICH's dissertation

During the Sigmaringen period, Göttlich created his actual life's work, the moor cadastre of southwest Germany . To do this, he looked for a total of around 3000 reeds and moors in the western part of the pre-alpine hill and moorland. Together with a small staff, he drilled the peat deposits in thickness and layer sequence ( stratigraphy ), measured the horizontal extent of the bogs, documented the type of peat , degree of decomposition , recent vegetation and current use. The 1960s and 70s were undoubtedly the most productive of his research and teaching activities. From the initially large-scale bog cadastre, he then developed the “bog map of Baden-Württemberg with explanations” (published on a scale of 1: 50,000 at the Baden-Württemberg state survey office). In doing so, Göttlich always endeavored to do justice to the imposing interdisciplinary approach: He presented Quaternary geological, developmental, pedological and floristic findings in concrete terms. For this reason, the bog maps, which were exemplary for the whole of Germany and were published with a total of 13 sheets, became indispensable data and Planning basis for state and regional planning , for water managers and farmers as well as for nature conservationists and biotope mappers . In the last years of his life he even took on the moors of South Tyrol and recorded them in stratigraphy, vegetation and geological history up to soil physics and moor hydrology .

Research and Teaching

Parallel to the mapping work, Göttlich received his doctorate in 1950 at what was then the Agricultural University in Stuttgart - Hohenheim with Heinrich Walter on the Häckler Ried, an Upper Swabian transitional and raised bog . Six years later he was given a teaching position in Hohenheim and was able to expand the range of subjects for the first time to include the discipline “ moor studies ”. In 1964, Göttlich completed his habilitation and in 1971 he was appointed adjunct professor at the institute, which has now become a university. In the 1940s and 50s, Göttlich's main research focus was still on peatland cultivation and cultural construction, but later he increasingly addressed questions of the stratigraphy and development history of peatlands, soil physics, peatland research and - on the way to pollen analysis - deal with the vegetation history of southern Germany. He devoted himself to this with increasing attention and also came to geobotany . His keen wanderlust took him - mostly with the motorhome and often with his family - to many countries, primarily to Greece , Norway and even to New Zealand , where he also did bog studies.

In addition to his around 100 scientific publications, the publication of the basic manual of peat and bog studies is the culmination of his work (so far in three German-language editions and one in English under the publisher Heathwalte ). This work is considered to be the world's most important compendium in the field of bog science.

Honors

• Founding member of the German Society for Moor and Peat Studies (DGMT)
• Honorary member of the DGMT
• Carrier of the CA Weber Medal
• Winner of the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon (June 25, 1979)

Publications

• together with AL Heathwaite: Mires: Process, Exploitation and Conservation: Process, Exploration and Conservation . John Wiley & Sons, Chichester 1993 (English).
• Bog and peat science . Schweitzerbart'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1976 (updated several times since then).
• The moor map of Baden-Württemberg . Ed .: Landesvermessungsamt Baden-Württemberg u. the regional council of Tübingen. Landesvermessungsamt, Stuttgart (15 sheets, 1965–1980).

literature

• Gerd Lüttig: Karlhans Göttlich - November 9, 1914 to July 24, 1991 . In: Telma . No. 21 , 1991, ISSN  0340-4927 , pp. 11-20 (obituary).
• Gottfried Briemle: Karlhans Göttlich (laudation on the occasion of the awarding of the CA Weber medal to Prof. Dr. Kh. Göttlich at the 8th DGMT general meeting on May 4, 1983 in Neustadt / Rübenberge) . In: Telma . No. 13 , 1983, ISSN  0340-4927 , pp. 15-17 .
• Rudolf Eggelsmann: Professor Dr. Karlhans Göttlich on his 60th birthday . In: Journal for cultural technology and land consolidation . No. 15 , 1974, ISSN  0044-2984 , pp. 245-246 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Karlhans Göttlich in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Information from the Federal President's Office