Kurt Wegener (polar explorer)

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Kurt Wegener (1908)
Kurt Wegener (far left) as a participant in the Junkers-Spitzbergen expedition in 1923

Kurt Wegener (born April 3, 1878 in Berlin , † February 29, 1964 in Munich ) was a German polar explorer and meteorologist.

He came from a family of theologians. After studying natural sciences in Innsbruck, Kiel and Berlin, he became, like his younger brother Alfred , an assistant at the Royal Prussian Aeronautical Observatory Lindenberg near Berlin. The two brothers wanted to do polar research .

From 1904 to 1907 he explored the atmosphere by balloon flights. From April 5 to 7, 1906, he and his brother undertook a 52-hour world record run in a free balloon . From 1908 to 1911 he was head of the Samoa Observatory and 1912/13 of the Geophysical Observatory Ebeltofthafen on Spitsbergen . Then he was at the Meteorological Central Station of Alsace-Lorraine in Strasbourg. On June 22, 1914, he acquired the German aircraft license number 796 at the Habsheim airfield. In 1919, he became head of department at the Deutsche Seewarte in Hamburg . In 1922 he was transferred to Berlin, where, as an enthusiastic aviator, the local weather service offered him to carry out the first meteorological high-altitude flights. In 1923 he took part as a scientific advisor in the Junkers auxiliary expedition for Roald Amundsen to Spitzbergen. After that he was in South America for a few years.

In 1930/31 he was appointed as a meteorological advisor to the Central Office for Weather Flight in the Reich Ministry of Transport .

In 1931 he led his brother's expedition to Greenland after his death in November 1930 and then took over his professorship at the University of Graz .

After his retirement he carried out radiation measurements in South America. He spent the last years of his life with his sister-in-law Else in Munich.

The 938 m high mountain Wegenerfjellet in Albert-I-Land on the island of Svalbard is named after Kurt Wegener .

Works

  • The expeditions to the rescue of Schröder-Stranz and his companions. Described by their guides. Reimer, Berlin 1914 (with Arve Staxrud )
  • On flying , R. Oldenbourg, Munich 1923
  • Scientific results of Alfred Wegener's German Greenland Expedition ; 7 volumes
  • The physics of the earth. An introduction in an understandable representation , Barth, Leipzig 1934
  • The basics of gliding , Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, Leipzig 1935

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurt Wegener: The meteorological result of the 52-hour balloon flight from April 5 to 7, 1906. In: Meteorologische Zeitschrift 23, 1906, pp. 289-293
  2. ↑ List of pilots 1909-1914 with German aircraft license (PDF; 71 kB)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wegener, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German polar researcher and meteorologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH February 29, 1964
Place of death Munich