Otto Jessen (geographer)

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Otto Jessen (born February 18, 1891 in Kronprinzenkoog ; † June 9, 1951 in Munich ) was a German geographer .

Live and act

Otto Jessen was the child of the pharmacist's son, seaman and later farmer Franz Carl Jessen (1855–1926) and his wife Doris Catharina, née Paulsen (1866–1942). He attended a grammar school in Neumünster and in 1910 studied geography, geology and anthropology for one semester at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau . In the same year he moved to the University of Munich , where he heard from Erich von Drygalski . In 1912 he worked as an assistant at the Geographic Institute at the University of Hamburg , but returned a short time later to the Munich University. In 1914 he received his doctorate from the university. phil.

Jessen served as an officer during World War I and suffered serious injuries on the Somme . He then worked as a war geologist in Alsace-Lorraine. After the end of the war he went to the Geographical Institute of the University of Tübingen as assistant to Carl Uhlig , where he completed his habilitation in 1921. In 1924 or 1925 he received a call from the university as an associate professor. In 1926 he married Hedwig Müller from Stuttgart (1899–1956), with whom he had no children.

In 1928 Jessen took on a teaching position for foreign geography. In 1929 he was offered a professorship from the University of Cologne with a teaching position for physical geography. In 1933 he followed as a professor of geography at the University of Rostock on Wilhelm Ule . During the Second World War , he did military service for some time. After the end of the war, Jessen took over the ordinariate for geography at the University of Würzburg in 1946 and moved to the same department at the Munich University in 1948.

Jessen was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 1937 and from 1947 was a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . The Geographical Society of Munich awarded him the Erich von Drygalski Medal.

Working as a geographer

In his early days and his habilitation thesis, Jessen dealt with the morphology of coasts. He found out that the history of the formation of the North Sea and the alternation of ebb and flow were decisive for the fact that the main channels of the estuaries of the sea tributaries shifted to the left. He also recognized that active morphological processes in German coastal areas were identical to the dry, warm periods of time that changed over a 35-year period.

During this time the geographer also dealt with questions of landscape science and cultural geography. Particularly noteworthy is a study on hedge landscapes in North-West Europe, in which he was the first to describe that the hedge of fields can be a geographical problem.

During his time at the University of Tübingen in particular, Jessen traveled to Spain. Here he dealt with the search for the Tartessos and their possible localization on the Atlantic. He also dealt with Castile-La Mancha and the relationships between environmental influences on the character and feelings of the local population. His publications on this are considered impressive and astute. During these journeys the geographer dealt for the first time with possible geographical remote effects. Later he wrote a masterful study on the long-range effects of the Alps.

In 1930/31 Jessen went on an expedition to Angola with his wife . He reported on his findings in 1936 in a generally understandable book "Travel and Research in Angola". In it described impressions and observations he had gained on eleven routes. Jessen described in particular the relief and geological substrate, botany and economic forms and thus expanded the previously scarce knowledge about this region to a significant extent.

Jessen later dealt again with Africa and wrote his most important work with "The thresholds of the continents", in which he dealt with the Lower Guinea threshold .

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ according to the NDB
  2. ↑ according to SHBL

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Member entry of Otto Jessen at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on October 17, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Jessen, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geographer
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Crown Prince Koog
DATE OF DEATH June 9, 1951
Place of death Munich