Ott Christoph Hilgenberg

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Ott Hilgenberg (1975)

Ott Christoph Hilgenberg (born January 18, 1896 in Grebenstein near Kassel , † September 21, 1976 in Berlin ) was a German engineer , geoscientist and founder of the expansion theory of the earth.

Life

Ott Christoph Hilgenberg was the youngest of four children. His father Hermann was the manager of the Raiffeisen-Kornhaus in Hanau and died in 1902. The mother Marie ensured that the children were well educated. Immediately after graduating from high school in 1914 at the Oberreal-Schule I in Kassel, Hilgenberg took part in the First World War for four years as a front-line soldier. A shot through the left knee healed without consequences, and a burst eardrum caused permanent hearing damage. He was awarded the Wound Badge and the Iron Cross II.

From 1919 he studied electrical engineering at the Technical University of Berlin with the help of a scholarship from his former school, finished his studies in 1922 as a graduate engineer and remained as an assistant at the TH Berlin until 1924.

In the next four years Hilgenberg found his real calling in the USA: geophysics. As a leader of the survey troops with geophysical measuring instruments during oil exploration in Texas and New Mexico , he worked closely with geologists and geophysicists, with whom he interpreted the seismic signals measured from the depths for the search for any oil-bearing layers. In doing so he experienced extraordinary difficulties, especially since certain criteria for differentiation did not exist. That was the main reason for his later rock physics research at the TH Berlin. For the same reason, he was supported by several TH professors with donations in kind and laboratories, as they had recognized the importance of his research for improved find rates in deposit research and raw material searches .

Ott Christoph Hilgenberg had begun his writing On the Growing Globe at the end of the 1920s while Alfred Wegener was still alive . It was intended as a preliminary work and supplement to Wegener's theory of continental drift . The latter's unexpected death in 1930 prompted Ott Christoph Hilgenberg to posthumously dedicate his own work Vom Growing Erdball to Wegener's great role model . With four model globes, Hilgenberg was the first to show how all the continents of the earth fit together seamlessly as a closed earth crust when the earth's diameter is about half as large as it is today. In 1933 he published his findings from the growing globe .

In 1929 he met his future partner Hanni Drewer. She took care of him for 46 years. Their daughter Helge was born in 1932. From 1934 to 1938 he was assistant and lecturer at the chair for transmission theory at the TH Berlin. An academic career failed because of his refusal to become a member of the NSDAP . His first doctoral thesis on flow experiments with sinks and sources, which fundamentally explain the nature of gravity, was rejected by the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in 1938, mainly because his conception of aether and gravity did not agree with Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

During the Second World War, Ott Christoph Hilgenberg worked at the library of the TH Berlin. As a Volkssturm man, he was deployed to protect the TH Berlin during the last days of the war. He was shot in the left arm. The arm was then temporarily paralyzed. After the end of the war, he fetched several truckloads with thousands of evacuated TH books from the Soviet-occupied zone to the new Technical University of Berlin in West Berlin . It was also able to get back valuable outsourced books from the British protecting power through clever negotiations. When he was to be proposed for the new Federal Cross of Merit a few years later for these achievements, he showed no interest.

From 1947 to 1950 he was senior librarian at the former state library on Unter den Linden in the eastern sector of Berlin. During this time he also worked on his dissertation The fracture structure of the earth's crust and received his doctorate in 1948 at the TU Berlin as a Dr.-Ing. As a West Berliner, he was dismissed from library service in the GDR in 1950 .

He worked as a freelance researcher until the end of his life. The TU Berlin provided him with a work space for his scientific work at the Institute for Geology and Paleontology. During his work at the Technical University and later at the Technical University, he was always supported by professors of geology, including Heinrich Quiring and Werner Zeil , a long-time supporter of earth expansion. In addition to many publications, his main work Geotectonics appeared in 1974 , viewed in a new way . Ott Christoph Hilgenberg died of heart failure on September 21, 1976.

Hilgenberg's original globes no longer exist. The four model globes reconstructed by Giancarlo Scalera are now in the Museo Geofisico in Rocca di Papa near Rome.

Fonts (selection)

Hilgenberg's globes for earth expansion
  • From the growing globe . Giessmann & Bartsch, Berlin 1933, 56 pp. ( Online ).
  • The fracture structure of the earth's crust, especially of Greenland, compared to the weak network of brittle test specimens. Dissertation , Technical University Berlin, Faculty f. general Wiss., January 8, 1948. Published as: The fracture structure of the sialic earth crust. Akademie Verlag , Berlin 1949, 106 pp.
  • Confirmation of the Kennedy Channel shear through the fracture structure of Greenland and Northeast Canada. Evidence of the Kennedy Channel Shear by the Fracture Patterns of Greenland and Northeastern Canada (= Geotectonic Research No. 22). E. Schweizerbart, Stuttgart 1966, 74 pages, 3 maps.
  • Geotectonics, seen in a new way. E. Schweizerbart, Stuttgart 1974, 194 pp., 42 figs., 6 tables, 2 supplements, ISBN 978-3-510-50011-6 ( table of contents ).

literature

  • Giancarlo Scalera & Karl-Heinz Jacob (Eds.): Why expanding earth? A book in honor of Ott Christoph Hilgenberg. Proceedings of the 3rd Lautenthaler Montanistisches Colloquium held in Lautenthal, Mining Industry Museum, on May 26, 2001. (Lautenthaler Montanistisches Colloquium) Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) Publicazioni, Roma 2003, 465 S., Ill., Graph. Darst., Cards.
  • And yet she is moving! Documentation, France, Italy 2006, 45 min., Director: Franz Fitzke, production: ZDF , first broadcast: Jan. 31, 2007 on arte ( table of contents from arte and film review , PDF file, 9 pages).

Web links


personal data
SURNAME Hilgenberg, Ott Christoph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German engineer and geoscientist
DATE OF BIRTH January 18, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Grebenstein near Kassel
DATE OF DEATH September 21, 1976
Place of death Berlin