Otto Olshausen

Otto Olshausen (around 1900)

Hermann Otto Wilhelm Olshausen (born July 7, 1840 in Kiel , † January 10, 1922 in Berlin ) was a German chemist and private scholar .

Life and work

Family and youth

Otto Olshausen came from a family of scholars. His father, Justus Olshausen , was a professor of oriental languages ​​in Kiel until he lost his position there in 1852 after the Schleswig-Holstein revolt against the ruling kingdom of Denmark because of his anti - Danish attitude. The family then moved to Königsberg , where the father received a new professorship. Otto was the middle of three brothers, of whom the older, Robert , became a gynecologist , and the younger, Justus , a renowned lawyer , senior Reich attorney and Senate President at the Imperial Court. Otto Olshausen himself first attended high school in Kiel and later in Königsberg, which he graduated from high school in 1859 . He then studied chemistry at universities in Berlin , Heidelberg and Göttingen .

His son was the diplomat Franz Olshausen , his daughter-in-law the writer Käthe Olshausen-Schönberger .

Professional

In 1864 Otto Olshausen became August Wilhelm von Hofmann's assistant at the Royal College of Chemistry in London and followed this to the University of Berlin in 1865 . Three years later he became a founding member of the German Chemical Society , which von Hofmann helped initiate. In 1868 he received his doctorate from the University of Heidelberg under Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and then worked at the Oehler tar paint plant in Offenbach am Main until 1872 . From 1873 to 1876 he worked at the Kalle chemical factory in Wiesbaden-Biebrich and from 1877 to 1880 at Bayer in Elberfeld . Outside of his professional activities, Otto Olshausen became increasingly interested in prehistoric research , so that he finally retired in 1880 and settled in Berlin as a private scholar.

In later years, Olshausen, who was politically liberal and democratic, refused to accept office as well as to be ennobled ; his two brothers, however, had been raised to the nobility. In 1910 he received the title of professor, and in 1915 he was awarded the Rudolf Virchow plaque of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory .

Archeology and nursing

Olshausen (back row, 5th from left = middle) on an excursion by the Berlin Society of Anthropologists

From 1881 Otto Olshausen was a member of the Berlin Anthropological Society, which was founded on the initiative of the doctor and anthropologist Rudolf Virchow . As the Society's secretary, he managed to get it to have its own premises in the Museum of Prehistory and Early History . From 1880 to 1889 and from 1909 until his death he was involved in the excavations of the Latène period graves and burial mounds of the Vikings on Amrum . In 1893, during excavations on a burial mound on Helgoland, called Lütge Berg ("small mountain") , Olshausen discovered the Heligoland stone box .

With his investigations into the chemical composition of prehistoric finds made of bronze, copper, iron and gold as well as amber, glass and leather and the analysis of bone finds, Olshausen is considered one of the founders of archaeometry : “Often a grain of substance had to be used for chemical analysis and a splinter is enough for the microscopic examination. ”In 1887 the director of the Egyptian Museum , Adolf Erman , approached him and told him about the unusually fast deterioration of exhibits. Olshausen then worked with Richard Schöne , the director of the Royal Museums , to set up a chemical laboratory in which the material, age and origin of cultural-historical objects were to be determined, and methods of conservation and restoration were to be developed. The laboratory was founded in 1888 and, at Olshausen's suggestion, was placed under the direction of the chemist Friedrich Rathgen . The Rathgen research laboratory named after him exists to this day as a facility of the National Museums in Berlin / Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation .

From 1889 onwards, Olshausen's further commitment was the reform of nursing . He strove for a purely humanitarian nursing as a supplement to what was then mainly denominational care. This should also serve as a profession for women, which offered them a sufficient livelihood. A "Comité" founded in 1889 created the conditions for the training of nurses. In 1891 the Märkisches Haus for Nursing was founded in Berlin-Kreuzberg , and he headed its administration until 1909.

Death and inheritance

Otto Olshausen died in Berlin in 1922 at the age of 81 and was buried in the Old St. Matthew Cemetery in Berlin-Schöneberg . The grave has not been preserved.

His estate and the papers of other family members are in the Secret State Archives in Berlin.

Publications

• Suggestions for establishing a school for nurses . Berlin. Unger 1889
• On the prehistory of Heligoland: along with an appendix about saber needles . Berlin 1893
• Iron extraction in prehistoric times . Berlin 1909
• "About iron in antiquity". In: Prehistoric Journal , Volume 7, No. 1/2, (1915). Pp. 1-45
• Amrum. Report on the barrows on the island with an appendix about the dunes . Berlin. Leuschner 1920
• (posthumous) With Justus Olshausen / Franz Olshausen: Family tree of the Olshausen family . Berlin 1936

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Michael Engel:  Olshausen, Hermann Otto Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 529 f. ( Digitized version ).
2. ↑ ^{a b} Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory. Session v. January 21, 1922. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie , 54th year, H. 1/5, 1922, p. 142 , accessed on May 16, 2015 . 
3. ↑ Stephanie Lettgen: The enigmatic Helgoländer stone box grave. In: welt.de . August 16, 2014, accessed May 15, 2015 . 
4. ↑ Martina Griesser-Stermscheg: metal conservation , metal restoration . Böhlau Verlag Wien, 2009, ISBN 978-3-205-78196-7 , p. 16 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
5. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Rathgen. Berlin State Museums, accessed on May 16, 2015 . 
6. ↑ Headquarters for private welfare: The welfare institutions of Greater Berlin along with a guide for the practical exercise of poor relief in Berlin. Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-662-34035-6 , p. 175 ( limited preview in Google book search).
7. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexicon of Berlin tombs . Haude & Spener, Berlin 2006. p. 307.
8. ↑ Olshausen, family 1766 - 1922. In: Database secret state archive. Retrieved May 16, 2015 .