Othenio Abel

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Othenio Abel

Othenio Lothar Franz Anton Louis Abel (born June 20, 1875 in Vienna , † July 4, 1946 in Pichlhof am Mondsee ) was an Austrian paleontologist and evolutionary biologist . He is considered the founder of paleobiology as a separate branch of the formerly completely geologically oriented subject paleontology.

Life

Othenio Abel was born in Vienna as the son of the architect Lothar Abel . He studied law and natural sciences at the University of Vienna until 1899 and graduated with a doctorate as Dr. phil. from. As early as 1898 he was an assistant in the laboratory of the geologist Eduard Suess , in 1901 he completed his habilitation as a private lecturer in palaeontology at the University of Vienna and worked from 1900 to 1907 at the Geological Reichsanstalt . In 1905 his son Wolfgang Abel was born, who worked as a “ racial researcher ” during the Nazi era .

In 1907 Othenio Abel became an associate professor in Vienna, and from 1917 to 1934 he held the chair of paleontology in Vienna as a full professor. As such, he led several expeditions that made him known to wider circles, such as the Pikermi expedition to Greece in 1912 and an American and South African expedition (1925 and 1929, respectively). Abel examined the so-called dragon cave near Mixnitz and its remains of cave bears with particular zeal .

In 1920 Abel received the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal . In 1935 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina Scholars' Academy and the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . In 1927 he was admitted to the Russian Academy of Sciences as a foreign corresponding member . From 1935 to 1940 Abel was a full professor at the University of Göttingen , and in 1941 he retired. In 1942 he became an honorary member of the Paleontological Society .

Political stance

As a student, Abel was already actively involved in anti-Semitic riots at the university in 1897 in the wake of the Badeni crisis . After the First World War and the end of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy , meanwhile professor at the University of Vienna, he declared his fear of a seizure of power by “communists, social democrats, and Jews allied with both and Jews again”. According to Kurt Ehrenberg , his pupil and son-in-law, who processed Abel's autobiographical notes, Abel subsequently founded a secret association ( called the Bear Cave ) of a total of 18 Christian-Social and German-national professors, who exercised their influence on university committees around the To prevent research activities and the university careers of leftists and, according to their own statements, also Jewish scientists. A prominent victim was the physicist Otto Halpern .

He met the increasing violence of National Socialist- oriented student groups, especially against Jewish students, with open sympathy. When these attacks were also directed against Catholic students, there was a break with the Christian Socials and he was put into early retirement as rector by the Austro-Fascist leadership in 1934 , whereupon he took up a professorship in Göttingen . Abel joined the NSDAP in 1938 with membership number 1,196,288 (which was low for the year since the ban on admission had already been relaxed in 1937) .

In March 1938, after Austria's "annexation" to the National Socialist German Reich , he visited Vienna and saw swastika flags unfurled at the University of Vienna , for which he declared: "That was the most beautiful moment of my life". In 1941 the new rulers honored him with the newly introduced title of "Honorary Senator" from the University of Vienna.

According to Constantin Graf Stamati , then an employee of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories , Abel was a "cultivated Austrian of the gentleman type". According to Stamati, Abel is said to have given a lecture at a working conference of the RMfdbO's "Central Research Center for Eastern Research" in 1944 in which he contradicted the " subhuman theory also from the racial standpoint in relation to the East". Because of such statements he is said to have been on the "black list" of the SS . However, it is not unlikely that Stamati confused Abel with his son Wolfgang , an anthropologist ; All the more because this statement is contrasted with a letter of recommendation, also from 1944, with which Othenio Abel was suggested for the Goethe Medal, because he “already in the years after the First World War in the fight against the threat of Jewishization and foreign infiltration in Vienna University always in the front row ”.

Researches

His field of work was fossilized vertebrates , whereby he still interpreted the tribal history very strongly after the model of Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck .

Othenio Abel Prize

From 1985 the Austrian Academy of Sciences awarded the Othenio Abel Prize, endowed with € 3,700, every two years to the authors of an excellent publication in the field of palaeobiology or for life's work in paleontology. After Abel's close ties to National Socialism and his anti-Semitic attitudes and activities were discussed, the Academy decided in October 2012 to rename the award.

Fonts (selection)

  • Les dauphins longirostres du boldérien (miocène supérieur) des environs d'Anvers . Brussels 1901–1931, doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.16053
  • Les odontocètes du Boldérien (miocène supérieur) d'Anvers . Brussels 1905, doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.15923
  • Fossil flying fish . Yearbook KK Geol. Reichsanstalt 56, Issue 1, Vienna 1906, doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.61007
  • The morphology of the femoral rudiments of the cetaceans . Vienna 1907, doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.16064
  • Basic features of the paleobiology of vertebrates . 470 ills., 708 p., E. Schweizerbart´sche Verlagsbuchhandlung (Erwin Nägele), Stuttgart 1911, doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.61833
  • Ancient mammals . Jena 1914
  • Paleontology in research and teaching . In: Naturwissenschaften 3, 1915, pp. 413-419
  • Paleobiology of the cephalopods from the group of the Dibranchiaten . 100 Fig., 281 S., Verlag Gustav Fischer, Jena 1916, doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.46089 , doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.82313
  • The tribes of the vertebrates . 669 Fig., 914 S., Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and Leipzig, 1919, doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.2114
  • Textbook of paleozoology . 700 ills., 500 p., Verlag Gustav Fischer, Jena 1920
  • Life pictures from the animal world of prehistoric times . 507 ills., 643 p., Verlag Gustav Fischer, Jena 1922, doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.61701
  • History and method of reconstruction of ancient vertebrates . Jena 1925
  • Paleobiology and Tribal History . Jena 1929
  • The position of man in the context of the vertebrates . 1931
  • Ancient traces of life . Jena 1935
  • The animals of the past in their habitat . Jena 1939
  • Ancient animal remains in German myths, customs and popular beliefs . Jena 1939

From 1928 Abel was editor of the journal Paläobiologica .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ List of members Leopoldina, Othenio Abel (with picture)
  2. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 23.
  3. ^ Corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724: Abel, Othenio. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed August 25, 2019 (Russian).
  4. ^ Kurt Ehrenberg: Othenio Abel's life path, using autobiographical records. Kurt Ehrenberg, Vienna 1975, p. 85 f., Evaluated by Klaus Taschwer: Secret thing Bärenhöhle. How an anti-Semitic professor cartel from the University of Vienna expelled Jewish and left-wing researchers after 1918. In: Regina Fritz, Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Jana Starek (Ed.): Alma mater antisemitica: Academic milieu, Jews and anti-Semitism at the universities of Europe between 1918 and 1939. Volume 3, new academic press, Vienna 2016, p. 221– 242, here pp. 223-224 ( online ).
  5. ^ Custodian archive of the Kremsmünster observatory. Leonhard Angerer's estate, correspondence with Othenio Abel, Abel's letter to Father Leonhard Angerer of January 19, 1923, evaluated by Klaus Taschwer: Bärenhöhle is a secret. How an anti-Semitic professor cartel from the University of Vienna expelled Jewish and left-wing researchers after 1918. In: Regina Fritz, Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Jana Starek (Ed.): Alma mater antisemitica: Academic milieu, Jews and anti-Semitism at the universities of Europe between 1918 and 1939. Volume 3, new academic press, Vienna 2016, p. 221– 242, here p. 224 ( online )
  6. ^ "The most beautiful moment of my life" , Neues Wiener Tagblatt , March 18, 1938
  7. ↑ Herbert Posch: Othenio Abel, o. Univ.-Prof. , Website 650 Years - History of the University of Vienna , accessed on March 13, 2015.
  8. ^ A b Constantin Graf Stamati: On the cultural policy of the East Ministry . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 6, 1958, issue 1, pp. 78–85 ( PDF ).
  9. ↑ Ute Deichmann : Biologists under Hitler. Portrait of a science in the Nazi state . Fischer, Frankfurt 1995. ISBN 3-593-34763-6 , pp.?; quoted in: Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945, 2nd edition, Fischer, Frankfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 9.
  10. ↑ a b Der Standard : Othenio Abel, Fighter against the "Judaization" of the university , October 9, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Abel, Othenio
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Abel, Othenio Lothar Franz Anton Louis (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian paleontologist and evolutionary biologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 20, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 1946
Place of death Pichlhof am Mondsee