Kurt Fiege

Kurt Friedrich Daniel Fiege (born October 18, 1897 in Hanover , † January 23, 1983 in Göttingen ) was a German geologist.

Life

Kurt Fiege was born on October 18, 1897 as the tenth child of Daniel Fiege and his wife Marie, b. Elvers, born in Hanover. He attended the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Hanover, where on June 15, 1915 he passed the final examination (Notabitur).

He signed up as a volunteer in the military during World War I and began his basic training in Itzehoe on June 30, 1915. On January 1, 1916, he was transferred to the Eastern Front in Russia, on March 24, 1917, he was promoted to sergeant, passed the officers' examination on August 28, 1917 and was promoted to lieutenant on February 1, 1918. On June 4, 1918, he was transferred to the Western Front. On December 30, 1918, he was given leave of absence to Kassel, where his father and sisters Frieda and Marie were now living and had founded a business. His mother died on August 7, 1918. He was released from military service on February 6, 1919.

In the summer semester of 1919 he began studying geology, zoology and chemistry in Jena and became a member of the Academic Turner Association (ATB). In the winter semester of 1919/20 he moved to Göttingen, he spent the summer semester of 1920 in Tübingen and returned to Göttingen in the winter semester of 1920/21, where he became a Dr. phil. PhD.

From May to October 1923 he worked as an expert in Kassel before starting a position at the Museum of the City of Essen on November 1, 1923. In the course of his work, he carried out various geological excursions at home and abroad (including in Holland and England). From March 15, 1928 Kurt Fiege worked for a geophysical society, from April to November 1928 in Serbia. On December 15, 1928, he married Gertrud Emma Henny Friederike Töpperwien. In May 1929 he was on business in Italy. In June he travels to America, where he carried out geological and geophysical work in Canada (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario) and the USA (Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas), sometimes under difficult expedition conditions. In the spring of 1930 his wife followed him to Canada. On January 3, 1931, their daughter Gertrud was born in Denver / Col. born. Since June 1931 the geophysical society got into economic difficulties, which led to the termination on September 15, 1931. The family therefore returned to Germany in July 1931.

After that, Kurt Fiege was initially unemployed and only occasionally worked. In May 1932 he began working as an assistant at the Geological Institute of the University of Göttingen. In 1933 he joined the NSDAP. In this context, in autumn 1933 he was given the honorary department (later: district office) for foreign policy from the Göttingen district leadership. This included giving lectures on regional history about countries in Western Europe and North America. Since 1935 there were serious differences with the district leadership and the like. a. because of the "synchronization" of academic connections (including the Academic Gymnastics Federation, of which he was a member). His commitment to a Jewish colleague who was dismissed for racial reasons also contradicted the district leadership.

In March 1934 he was promoted to senior assistant. On April 23, 1936, he completed his habilitation and was given a lectureship. Due to the dispute with the district leadership of the NSDAP, he was transferred to the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel on January 20, 1937, where he was only employed as an assistant. On October 9, 1939, he was promoted to lecturer and civil servant. Since 1935, he made various military exercises as an artilleryman in the rank of lieutenant of the reserve in Hildesheim and Rendsburg. As a reserve officer he took part in the occupation of the Sudetenland in September / October 1938 . On January 1, 1939, he was made first lieutenant d. R. and on August 27, 1939 to Captain d. R. promoted and was battery leader in the 30th Artillery Regiment in Rendsburg. In September 1939 he was called up in this capacity and took part in the Second World War in France, Holland and Norway. He was seriously wounded on November 13, 1940, followed by hospital stays in Holland and Kiel. Unable to work due to his injury on April 1, 1941, he was appointed provisional director of the Geological Institute of the Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Kiel and had been in this position since November 1941. Their son Jürgen was born on August 2, 1942 in Kiel. On July 26, 1943, Kurt Fiege was appointed adjunct professor. In May 1943 he was drafted again for military service now with the naval fortress pioneers in Paris. On November 1, 1943 promoted to Major d. R. he was transferred to Norway in August 1944. After the surrender of the German Wehrmacht , he was first in Norway, then in Sweden and Schleswig-Holstein as a prisoner of war, from which he was released in August 1945.

In September 1945 he resumed his activity at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel. In October 1947, denazification proceedings were initiated against him. On January 1, 1948, he was "temporarily" dismissed from the service and was banned from lecturing. This process ended on January 12, 1949 with denazification and classification in Group V (unencumbered). On April 20, 1949, his dismissal as a university lecturer was withdrawn.

From 1949 to 1963 Kurt Fiege worked as an adjunct professor at the Geological Institute of the Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel. His main research interests were paleontology and mineral deposits. In this context, he carried out numerous excursions in the German low mountain ranges, England, Belgium and France, took part in international geological congresses, maintained close scientific cooperation with foreign colleagues and, in addition to lecturing, trained a number of doctoral students. After his retirement he held teaching positions at the University of Heidelberg from 1962 to 1965. In May 1973 he and his wife Gertrud moved to Göttingen. The wife died on January 20, 1982, and he himself died on January 23, 1983 a year later.

plant

Among other things, he dealt with sediment cycles and palichnology (trace fossils).

Fonts

• Investigations on cyclical sedimentation of geosynclinal and epicontinental spaces, treatises of the Prussians. Geolog. Landesanstalt, Volume 177, 1937 (218 pages)
• Sediment Cycles and Epirogenesis , Journal of the German Geological Society, Volume 103, 1951, pp. 17-22.

Web links

• Horst Küppers On the history of mineralogy in Kiel , 2007, PDF
• Literature by and about Kurt Fiege in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ z. B. Sediment and traces of life in a rain pan in the Middle Keuper of southern Hanover , Journal of the German Geological Society, Volume 99, 1947, pp. 132-138, A fish swimming track from the Kulm near Waldeck , Neues Jb. Geolog. Paläontologie, 1951, traces of life from the shell limestone of northwest Germany , Neues Jb. Mineralogie, Geologie, Paläontologie, Volume 88, 1944, pp. 401-426, the latter on Thalassinoides , tunnels that are mostly attributed to decapods .