Konrad Herter

Gustav Adolf Wilhelm Konrad Herter (born December 16, 1891 in Berlin ; † November 23, 1980 in Berlin) was a German zoologist who worked in the field of animal physiology .

Life

Konrad Herter was one of five children and the only son of the sculptor Ernst Herter and his wife Elisabeth, née Wiebe (1861–1939). The family lived in Berlin and from 1900 in a large villa at Uhlandstrasse 6 in the then independent city of Charlottenburg . As a child, Konrad Herter kept numerous vertebrates in terrariums and often visited the natural history museum and the zoo . He got to know zoologists early on, including the then zoo director Ludwig Heck and the assistant director at the Berlin zoo, Oskar Heinroth , who married a cousin of Herter's mother in 1904 and became director of the new aquarium in the Berlin zoo in 1913 . After training at the Falk Realgymnasium in Berlin, with a private teacher in Charlottenburg and at the Rhotert Realschule in Blankenburg (Harz) , Herter passed the Abitur in February 1913 at the Hohenzollern Oberrealschule in Schöneberg.

Herter's medical studies in Berlin and Freiburg im Breisgau were interrupted after three semesters by the First World War. After his discharge from army service at the end of 1918, Herter first studied medicine and then biology in Berlin. He received his doctorate in 1921 on the non-hearing functions of the labyrinth in the inner ear of frog tadpoles . His doctoral supervisors were Alfred Kühn and after his call to Göttingen Wolfgang von Buddenbrock-Hettersdorff .

During his time as an auxiliary and unscheduled assistant at the Zoological Institute in Göttingen, Herter married his wife Margarethe, born in March 1922. Fasquel (1892-1969). Their only child, Wolfgang-Rainer (1925–1945), died in World War II.

Konrad Herter got a position as a regular assistant at the Zoological Institute in Berlin in 1923, completed his habilitation in 1924 and in 1926 was given a teaching position for "Comparative Physiology of the Sensory Organs and Animal Physiology". 1930-1931 taught Herter with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation at the Institute of Comparative Physiology of the University of Utrecht and in 1930 extraordinary and 1939 adjunct professor .

After the Second World War, Herter was initially acting head of the Zoological Institute at the Humboldt University in Berlin, then in 1946 full professor and in 1949 director of the Zoological Institute in Invalidenstrasse. In 1952, Herter was given a full professorship at the Free University of Berlin, founded in 1948 , where he became head of the Department of Animal Physiology and Animal Psychology at the Zoological Institute in Berlin-Dahlem . His first and initially only assistant was Hildegard Strübing , who, like the student assistant at the time, Wolfgang Violence, had moved with Herter from Humboldt University to Freie Universität. Herter stayed in Dahlem until his retirement in 1959.

Hertersche grave site in the Old Twelve Apostles Cemetery in Berlin-Schöneberg, where Konrad Herter was also buried

Konrad Herter died at the age of 89 and was buried in Herter's grave in the Old Twelve Apostles Cemetery in Berlin-Schöneberg. His parents, his wife, two of his sisters (Ilse Herter (1890–1943) and Brigitta Wintzer (1899–1983)) and the long-time domestic worker Friederica Claus rest here.

Publications (selection)

• The animals ' sense of temperature , 2nd, unchangeable. Ed., Reprint of the 1st edition. Wittenberg Lutherstadt, Ziemsen, 1962, Hohenwarsleben: Westarp-Wiss.-Verlag-Gesellschaft 2006, ISBN 3-89432-720-0 , Die neue Brehm-Bücherei; H. 295
• The fish training and their sensory physiological foundations , Berlin: Akademie-Verlag 1953.
• Animal Physiology , Berlin: W. de Gruyter & Co .:
  • Part: 1., Metabolism and Movement , 1927, Göschen Collection Volume 972,
  • Part: 2., symptoms of irritation . 1928, Göschen Collection Volume 973.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o} Konrad Herter: encounters with humans and animals. Memoirs of a zoologist 1891–1978. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-428-04549-1 .
2. ↑ Konrad Herter (1921): Investigations into the non-acoustic labyrinth functions in anuric larvae. Journal of General Physiology 19: 336-414.