Martin Schwarzbach

Memorial plaque for Martin Schwarzbach at the earthquake station in Bensberg

Martin Schwarzbach (born December 7, 1907 in Polkwitz (now Polkowice), Lower Silesia; † December 24, 2003 in Bergisch Gladbach ) was a German geoscientist . He is internationally known as the "father of paleoclimatology " because of his pioneering scientific work in this area.

life and work

Martin Schwarzbach was born as the seventh child of an employee of the Evangelical Inner Mission in Polkwitz in Lower Silesia (in today's Poland). Already in his childhood he showed a tendency towards natural sciences and the encounter with fossil-containing ice-age debris aroused his interest in their formation under the different climatic conditions of the past. From 1922 he attended the advanced school in Steinau an der Oder (today Ścinawa), about 30 kilometers from his home town. After a 1928 with honors high school he decided on a study of astronomy at the University of Heidelberg , which him a scholarship of studienstiftung allowed. In the second semester, however, he switched to the University of Jena to study geology . After further stops in Tübingen and last Wroclaw Schwarzenbach in 1933 received his doctorate there in Erich Bederke to Dr. phil. about the Cambrian of Upper Lusatia , the oldest fossil animal world in the German Empire . His minor subjects were mineralogy and physics .

Schwarzbach received a position as a scientific assistant and completed his habilitation in 1937 with a thesis on the Silesian Carboniferous . In 1938 he was appointed lecturer and in 1944 honorary professor at the University and Technical University of Breslau. In 1938 the first two scientific publications on paleoclimatology appeared. Several works in 1941 and 1942 deal with paleoclimatological issues in different geological epochs, such as the problem of the Ice Age . In 1940 he married Margarete Dassek, who had a doctorate in botanical studies. In 1943 he was called up for military service ; after a serious illness, Schwarzbach was last employed in the military geology staff. After the war he again worked as an assistant in Halle, and from 1946 in Göttingen . The post-war conditions were difficult, so a scientific essay published in 1946, his first after the war, as well as the preparatory work for his groundbreaking textbook Das Klima der Vorzeit , published in 1950, had to be done in a Göttingen heating hall . From The climate of the past over the years published several revised editions (fifth in 1993) as well as translations into English and Russian. In 1947, he received a call to the Geological Institute of the University of Cologne , which had suffered in the war but heavy destruction. In the following years, the work had to take place in various provisionally prepared rooms, a circumstance that did not come to an end until 1964 when the new building moved into it. After the unexpected death of his wife in 1967, he married again in 1972 (Beate Goldhardt). In 1975 he retired.

Schwarzbach's scientific work is characterized by a broad geoscientific approach in which the question of the suitability of the information used as climate witnesses was in the foreground. He competently interpreted the paleontological findings from paleobotany to vertebrate paleontology and used data from geology, meteorology and astronomy to solve paleoclimatological problems. He succeeded in developing the difficult-to-understand climatological approaches of Wladimir Peter Köppen and Alfred Wegener into a comprehensive overview. In 1951 and 1964 he organized conferences on paleoclimatology in Cologne. Schwarzbach has long been a critic of the premature application of Milutin Milankovich's radiation curve to geology. Another focus of his academic career should be the study of Iceland with special consideration of the history of the climate . He has also published over 30 papers on topics related to the history of geosciences and the history of natural sciences in general. From 1976 to 1988 he was in charge of the geological archive in Freiburg.

Schwarzbach was director of the Cologne Geological Institute for 30 years. During this time, significant expansions and modernizations took place, such as the establishment of the Bensberg earthquake station , the construction of which began in 1952 on the initiative of Schwarzbach after the severe earthquake in Euskirchen on March 14, 1951, when it was discovered that there was no earthquake research facility in the Rhineland gave. Regular operation began in 1955 after a trial phase. Schwarzbach lived and worked in the ward rooms for more than three decades. In the Dechenia he published an earthquake chronicle of the Rhineland every year. Furthermore, he advocated the establishment of a chair for paleontology and ice age research , as well as efficient laboratories and a small museum.

Martin Schwarzbach received numerous honors for his scientific achievements, including the Great Federal Cross of Merit in 1968 , the Steinmann Medal in 1977 , the Albrecht Penck Medal in 1980 and the Hans Stille Medal in 1982 . He died on December 24, 2003 after a long illness at the age of 96. The Cologne seismologist and longtime head of the earthquake station in Bensberg Ludwig Ahorner (1930–2007) noted in his obituary that Martin Schwarzbach could be considered "one of the last universal scholars in the field of geology" due to the diversity of his research activities .

His criticism of what he saw as the lower level of the New Yearbook for Geology, Mineralogy and Paleontology (he sent the notebooks back to the editor Otto Heinrich Schindewolf ) led to Schindewolf making him co-editor in 1949. He was also co-editor of the journals Ice Age and Present, as well as Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology .

Schwarzbach played the organ in his spare time.

Since 2007 Martin Schwarzbach has been honored annually by the Martin Schwarzbach Colloquium at the University of Cologne.

Fonts

• The climate of the past. An introduction to palaeoclimatology , Stuttgart 1950, 1961, 1974, 4th edition Enke 1988
• European sites of geological research , Stuttgart 1970, 2nd edition Hirzel 1983
• Famous sites of geological research , Stuttgart, Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft 1981
• Alfred Wegener and the Drift of the Continents , Stuttgart 1980, 2nd edition Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft 1989
• In the footsteps of our naturalists. Monuments and plaques. A travel guide , Stuttgart: Hirzel 1981
• Geologist trips in Iceland , Ludwigsburg 1983
• The Cambrium of Upper Lusatia. Treatise Natural science. Ges. Görlitz 32 (2), 1933, pp. 7-54
• The diluvial climate during the highest level of icing. Journal Deutsche Geol. Ges. 92, 1940, pp. 565-582
• Bionomy, climate and sedimentation speed in the Upper Silesian Carboniferous. Journal Deutsche Geol. Ges. 94, 1942, pp. 511-548
• (as ed.) Natural sciences and natural scientists in Cologne between the old and the new university: (1798 - 1919) , Cologne: Böhlau 1985, ISBN 978-3-412-00985-4

He also contributed to the textbook on general geology by Roland Brinkmann (1964, 1967).

literature

• Friedrich Strauch: Martin Schwarzbach, a life for paleoclimatology . GMit , No. 28, June 2007. pp. 58-63
• Eugen Seibold : Martin Schwarzbach; December 7, 1907-24. December 2003 , Geologische Rundschau 93, 2004, 652-655, doi : 10.1007 / s00531-004-0427-2

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Ludwig Ahorner (2003): “The geologist Professor Dr. Martin Schwarzbach is dead " ( Memento from July 2, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
2. ^ Bensberg earthquake station - The history of the Bensberg earthquake station , accessed on December 6, 2013.
3. ↑ http://www.rathay-biographien.de/persoenitäten-/S--/Schwarzbach_Martin/schwarzbach-urheberrecht.htm

Web links

• Literature by and about Martin Schwarzbach in the catalog of the German National Library