Ludwig Weickmann

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Ludwig Friedrich Weickmann (born August 15, 1882 in Neu-Ulm , Swabia ; † November 29, 1961 in Bad Kissingen , Lower Franconia ) was a German geophysicist , meteorologist and university professor .

Life

He was the youngest of three children of Sergeant Franz Paul Weickmann (1840–1912) from Witzighausen (now part of Senden ) and Anna Maria Sauter (1845–1911) from Dietenheim . Weickmann married Therese Maria Anna Mayer on August 12, 1911 (* December 15, 1883 in Munich ; officially † February 15, 1941 in Hartheim Castle, actually † February 3, 1941 in the Pirna-Sonnenstein euthanasia facility ), the daughter of Franz Borgias Michael Mayer (1848–1926) from Munich and Therese Elisabeth Pustet (1861–1901) from Erlau (now part of Obernzell ).

After graduating from high school at the humanistic grammar school in Ulm , Weickmann studied mathematics, physics and astronomy at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , completed an internship with Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen and passed his teaching degree in 1906. Supported by the Lamont - scholarship he extended his studies for another two years, at times also depend on the Georg-August University of Goettingen .

Since 1905, Weickmann had worked alongside his studies as an assistant under August Schmauß (1877–1954) at the Royal Meteorological Central Station in Munich. After the two years of the scholarship, he went back to the Bavarian State Weather Service , received his doctorate in 1911 with Aurel Voss (1845–1931) on a mathematical subject on the “theory of surfaces” and then took on a teaching position as a private lecturer in Weihenstephan .

With the Bavarian Airship Battalion , Weickmann moved to the Western Front at the beginning of the First World War (1914) until September 1915 . The military used its specialist knowledge for the developing front-line aviation , for free and tethered balloon missions , for airship flights and the like. In October 1915 he traveled to Constantinople with the head of the military weather service at the German headquarters, Privy Councilor Hugo Hergesell, and was head of the Turkish weather service from 1915 to 1918 . Weickmann used the scientific knowledge gained there in 1922 at the University of Munich for his habilitation thesis on the subject of "Air pressure and winds in the eastern Mediterranean region" .

1923 Weick man entered the Directorate of "Geophysical Institute" at the University of Leipzig and occupied, succeeding Robert Wenger (1886-1922) the local Department . The following two decades are often referred to as the institute's heyday. First and foremost, Weickmann's unusual talent for scientific organization and his outstanding personality as a university lecturer contributed to this. Weickmann became known in public through his participation in sensational research trips. The polar flight of the airship LZ127 ("Graf Zeppelin") in 1931 should be mentioned in particular , during which he was the meteorological director. This expedition with an extensive research program occupies an excellent place in the context of international Arctic research.

Outside of his institute and in addition to his teaching activities, Weickmann took on a number of other offices. For a long time he was Dean of the Philosophical Faculty and Vice Rector of the University of Leipzig. In November 1933 he was one of the signatories of the professors' commitment at German universities and colleges to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist state . In the " German Geophysical Society " he was deputy chairman for eleven years. In the " German Meteorological Society " he was involved in the advisory board. Weickmann was President of the Reichsamt für Wetterdienst, founded in 1934 in Berlin. Weickmann was listed as a member of the NSDAP from 1940 without his own application , but anti-Semitism was completely alien to him. As dean, he successfully protested against the dismissal of his colleague Friedrich Levi (1888–1966) at the Mathematical Institute. Two years later Levi was released anyway and emigrated to India . After 1945 his former Jewish student and assistant Bernhard Haurwitz (1905–1986) also testified to Weickmann's anti-Nazi stance.

After the occupation of Norway , Weickmann was posted for some time as chief meteorologist for Air Fleet 5 in Oslo in April 1940 , but kept his position in Leipzig until the end of the Second World War (1945).

On October 19, Weick man was from the American military government (OMGUS) as a consultant for the development of the German Weather Service to Berlin fetched. As a result, Weickmann became the first president of the new German Weather Service (DWD) based in Bad Kissingen in 1946 and held this office until 1952, when he retired. In his time as chief meteorologist of Germany, the production fell the documentary "Wetterwart on Germany's highest peak" of Wolfgang Gorter on the Zugspitze weather center , whose commentary Weick man himself spoke.

After he retired, he was given a teaching position for two years at the “Meteorological Institute” of the Free University of Berlin , which Weickmann had already worked on during his term in office in Bad Kissingen. On June 19, 1954, he was awarded the honorary doctorate of a Dr. hc rer. nat. excellent.

Having just returned from a meeting of the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Weather Service, Weickmann died at home in Bad Kissingen as a result of a stroke .

Michael Börngen et al. (see below) describe Weickmann in their essay as one of the last German "geophysicists who still represented the entirety of the subject, the physics of the solid earth, the atmosphere and the hydrosphere" .

Memberships

Weickmann was a member or even an honorary member of numerous academies such as the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig (from 1925, from 1940 to 1945 as its president), the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina (from 1932, from 1943 to 1961 as chairman of the geophysics section and Meteorology), the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz.

Orders and decorations

literature

  • Michael Börngen et al .: Ludwig F. Weickmann (1882-1961) (PDF; 4.1 MB) . In: Mitteilungen der Deutschen Geophysikalische Gesellschaft 3, 2007, pp. 4–16
  • Frank Raberg : Biographical Lexicon for Ulm and Neu-Ulm 1802-2009 . Süddeutsche Verlagsgesellschaft im Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern 2010, ISBN 978-3-7995-8040-3 , p. 458 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ E. Bruns: Phenological observation networks today and yesterday (PDF file; 76.82 MB). In: promet 33, No. 1/2, 2007, pp. 2–6.
personal data
SURNAME Weickmann, Ludwig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weickmann, Ludwig Friedrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geophysicist, meteorologist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH August 15, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH New Ulm
DATE OF DEATH November 29, 1961
Place of death Bad Kissingen