Ludwig Kohl-Larsen

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Ludwig Kohl-Larsen (* April 5, 1884 as Ludwig Kohl , Landau in the Palatinate ; † November 12, 1969 in Sigmarszell ) was a German doctor, paleontologist and explorer.

Life

Maxilla fragment of an Australopithecus afarensis (Garusi 1), around 3.6 million years old Garusi River , ( Tanzania ), Kohl-Larsen Collection, Museum of the University of Tübingen MUT

He attended school in Landau in the Palatinate , studied medicine in Munich and in 1903 became a member of the Rhineland-Palatinate Corps Transrhenania . In 1911, he traveled as a ship's doctor Ludwig Kohl on Germany with Wilhelm Filchner in the Antarctic , but could after appendicitis rather than the real expedition into Wedellmeer participate. He cured himself in South Georgia and met his future wife, the daughter of Carl Anton Larsen , the founder of Grytviken . After the wedding he called himself Kohl-Larsen. During the First World War he was working as a government doctor in Micronesia . In 1928 he visited South Georgia with his wife and the cameraman Albert Benitz and carried out the first scientific expedition to explore the island there. The Kohl Plateau is named after him. In 1931 he took part in the Arctic voyage of the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin airship .

As early as 1931 he became a member of the NSDAP , later he undertook numerous expeditions , partly on behalf of the German Research Foundation , for example to East Africa to the Hadzabe people and to polar regions.

In 1934, Kohl-Larsen went in search of prehistoric man in what was once German East Africa . In 1938/39 he discovered the first bones of Australopithecus afarensis in Laetoli in Tanganyika (including the fragment of an upper jaw, the so-called Garusi fragment , today usually called Garusi 1 ), without being aware of their meaning. With a few pieces of a jawbone, he tried, back in Germany, to solicit money from many organizations for his research work in East Africa.

Kohl-Larsen, an avowed National Socialist and colonial revisionist , tried to prove that all people had a common origin, but that the African peoples had remained at the level of primitive man , while the "Aryan" peoples had developed further. In 1939 Kohl-Larsen became professor of ethnology at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen .

In the course of denazification he lost his professorship, but from 1949 worked again at the Institute for Prehistory and Protohistory in Tübingen. His estate, comprising several thousand objects, is contained in the Kohl-Larsen Collection of the Museum of the University of Tübingen MUT .

His hometown Landau in the Palatinate made him an honorary citizen in 1964.

Works

  • The Issansu, arable farmers and cattle breeders in the drainless area of ​​German East Africa. Medicine and cult. Publication of the Reich Office for Educational Films. Reich Office for Educational Films, 1941
  • On the trail of the prehistoric man. Strecker and Schröder, Stuttgart. 1943
  • Ludwig Kohl-Larsen: The Elephant Game. Myths, giants and tribal legends. Tindiga folk tales . Erich Röth-Verlag, Eisenach • Kassel 1956 . A collection of myths of Hadzabe : giant, Origin of order in the world, tribal legends, anecdotal tales.
  • The big train after midnight. A hike with the rag to the Northern Arctic Ocean . Kassel 1958

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 115 , 194
  2. ↑ Kohl-Larsen-Plateau (geographic.org)
  3. ^ Robert Headland: The Island of South Georgia . CUP Archive, 1992, ISBN 0-521-42474-7 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed January 6, 2017]).
  4. ↑ Kurt Hassert : The polar research. History of voyages of discovery to the North and South Poles. Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, Munich 1956, p. 198.
  5. ↑ Pierre-François Puecha, François Cianfaranic and Helga Roth: Reconstruction of the maxillary dental arcade of Garusi Hominid 1. Journal of Human Evolution 15/5, July 1986, pp. 325-332, doi: 10.1016 / S0047-2484 (86) 80015-X
  6. ^ City of Landau in the Palatinate: Honorary Citizen Accessed on August 5, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Kohl-Larsen, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German paleontologist and explorer
DATE OF BIRTH April 5, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Landau in the Palatinate
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 1969
Place of death Sigmarszell