Otto Geist

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Otto Geist at the age of 16 (1905)

Frank Otto Wilhelm (William) Geist (born December 27, 1888 in Kircheiselfing , † August 2, 1963 in Munich ) was a German-born American archaeologist and paleontologist .

Life

Otto Geist was the eleventh of fifteen children of the teacher Franz Anton Geist and his wife Mathilde. The father, who was interested in many things, was also active as a homeland and antiquity researcher. Otto was given into the family of his sister Mathilde and his brother-in-law Josef Maier in Schwabniederhofen at the age of nine . He attended the Martinsbühel monastery school near Innsbruck , where he was also trained as a locksmith. Like his father, he developed an interest in ancient finds here. After his apprenticeship as an art fitter in Mallersdorf in Lower Bavaria , he worked as a driver and mechanic for a bus company. He then did his military service in Augsburg . In 1910 Otto Geist emigrated to the United States , where three of his brothers were already living.

He worked as a farm hand in Kansas for three years and then as a mechanic in Kansas City . Eventually he became a chauffeur and gardener for Joy Sterling Morton (1855-1934), President of the Morton Salt Company . In 1916 he took part as a driver in the US punitive expedition to Mexico, commanded by General John J. Pershing . When the United States entered the First World War on April 6, 1917 , Geist served again as a truck driver in France and, after the war ended, was the chauffeur of the American Commission for the Peace Negotiations. After his release in 1920, he set up his own freight forwarding company in Kansas City, but soon had to give up. In 1923 he traveled to his brother Josef, who worked in a marble quarry near Tokeen on Prince of Wales Island in Alaska. Together, the brothers participated in the construction of the Alaska Railroad . In 1924 he was the second machinist on the paddle steamer Teddy H. and met the naturalists Margaret (1902–2003) and Olaus Murie (1889–1963), with whom he was to become a lifelong friend. In 1925 he found his first artifacts of the Eskimo . On the advice of the Muries, he showed the President of the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines , Charles Bunnell (1878-1956), his finds and took some courses. In 1926 he traveled north and visited old Eskimo settlements and burial sites. His finds were so impressive that Bunnell gave him orders for further expeditions in the following years. From 1927 to 1933 Geist carried out excavations on St. Lawrence Island , where the Eskimo gave him the name Aghvook ( "whale" ). In 1934 he worked in the Punuk Islands . In the years that followed, Geist concentrated on fieldwork in vertebrate paleontology , but continued to do archeology. He collected numerous zoological and botanical fossils , of which, under an agreement with the Frick Laboratories of the American Museum of Natural History, he sent several tons each year to the museum headquarters in New York for classification and examination .

During World War II , he served with the Alaska Territorial Guard with the rank of major . In 1956 Otto Geist visited Germany for the first time since 1910. On another trip he died in Munich in 1963.

Although he did not have an academic degree, Otto Geist is considered to be the founder of archaeological work on the St. Lawrence Island. The Museum of the North at the University of Alaska Fairbanks owes him one of the largest Eskimo archaeological collections in the world.

Honors

Geist Road and Otto W. Geist Building in Fairbanks

The University of Alaska awarded Otto Geist an honorary doctorate in 1957 . Several buildings in which the Museum of the North was housed one after the other were each named after Otto Geist. A street in Fairbanks and the 3,267 meter high Mount Geist in the Alaska Range also bear his name.

In his home town Eiselfing, which Otto Geist made honorary citizenship , a street is also named after him.

In honor of Otto Geist, an extinct species of bison is called Platycerobison Geisti .

Publications (selection)

  • Habits of the Ground Squirrel Citellus lyratus on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska . In: Journal of Mammalogy . Volume 14, No. 4, 1933, pp. 306-308. doi: 10.2307 / 1373946
  • Brown Bear Lakes on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska . In: Journal of Mammalogy . Volume 15, No. 4, 1934, pp. 316-317. doi: /10.1093/jmammal/15.4.316-b
  • First Flight to St. Lawrence Island, Alaska . In: The Geographical Review . Volume 25, No. 3, 1935, pp. 488-489.
  • St Lawrence Island Expedition, 1931-32 . Report of Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines, 1932.
  • St Lawrence Island Expedition . Report of Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines, 1933.
  • with Froelich G. Rainey : Archaeological Excavations at Kukulik, St. Lawrence Island, Alaska (= University of Alaska, Miscellaneous Publications . Volume 2). Washington 1936 ( digitized ).
  • Collecting Pleistocene Fossils in Alaska . In: Proceedings of the Second Alaskan Science Conference , 1954, pp. 171-172.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Herbert Huber: Otto Wilhelm (William) Geist , accessed on September 6, 2019
  2. ↑ a b Ivar Skarland: Otto William Geist, 1888-1963 . In: American Antiquity . Volume 29, No. 4, 1964, pp. 484-485 (English). doi: 10.1017 / S0002731600014050
  3. ↑ a b c Charles J. Keim: Otto W. Geist: A Legend In His Own Lifetime . In: UA News , August 6, 1963, accessed September 6, 2019.
  4. ↑ Mount Geist, Alaska on Peakbagger.com (English).
  5. ↑ Herbert Huber: Accompanying material on Otto Geist , accessed on September 6, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Spirit, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Geist, Frank Otto Wilhelm (full name); Geist, Otto William (name in US)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American archaeologist and paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 27, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Kircheiselfing
DATE OF DEATH 2nd August 1963
Place of death Munich