Otto Schmidtgen (paleontologist)

Otto Schmidtgen (born December 19, 1879 in Dillenburg , † December 23, 1938 in Mainz ) was a German paleontologist and director of the Natural History Museum in Mainz.

Schmidtgen was the son of a postal secretary and grew up in Limburg, Frankfurt am Main, Pforzheim and Mainz. After graduating from high school in Main in 1899, he studied zoology in Gießen, where he was assistant to Johann Wilhelm Spengel . During his studies in 1899 he became a member of the Alemannia Gießen fraternity . After the state examination in 1903 he was a teacher at the Realgymnasium in Darmstadt and then at the Gymnasium in Büdingen . In 1907 he became a senior teacher and received his doctorate in the same year with the dissertation The cloake and its organs in turtles . In 1908 he was invited to reorganize the Natural History Museum in Mainz and took leave from teaching. In 1914 he became its director and in 1917 he was appointed professor. During the French occupation he was arrested and expelled to Darmstadt in 1923 because he opposed excesses by the occupation soldiers, but then returned to his position as director of the museum.

Schmidtgen was an honorary member of the Upper Rhine Geological Association and from 1934 to 1936 President of the Paleontological Society . In 1934 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Darmstadt and in 1935 a member of the Leopoldina .

He excavated in the Tertiary and Quaternary of the Mainz Basin (including ice-age large mammal finds near Mosbach , finds from the Pliocene of Eppelsheim , marine fauna of the Oligocene ). Among other things, he found a Paleolithic hunting site in Wallertheim . But he also dug in the Rotliegend of Nierstein , where he found fossil tracks.

He was Otto Schmidtgen's father . Schmidtgen was friends with Wolfgang Soergel .

literature

Obituary by Othenio Abel , Paläontologische Zeitschrift, Volume 21, 1939, No. 2, p. 79

Web links

photo
Member entry by Otto Schmidtgen at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on December 4, 2015.

Individual evidence

^ Paul Wentzcke : Fraternity lists. Second volume: Hans Schneider and Georg Lehnert: Gießen - The Gießener Burschenschaft 1814 to 1936. Görlitz 1942, T. Alemannia. No. 190.

personal data
SURNAME	Schmidtgen, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH	December 19, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH	Dillenburg
DATE OF DEATH	December 23, 1938
Place of death	Mainz

[1] Paul Wentzcke : Fraternity lists. Second volume: Hans Schneider and Georg Lehnert: Gießen - The Gießener Burschenschaft 1814 to 1936. Görlitz 1942, T. Alemannia. No. 190.