Otto Schoetensack

Otto Karl Friedrich Schoetensack (born July 12, 1850 in Stendal , † December 23, 1912 in Ospedaletti , Liguria , Italy ) was a German anthropologist and paleontologist who scientifically described the lower jaw of Mauer in 1908 and named it Homo heidelbergensis . Later paleoanthropologists used this species name as a designation for the European descendants of Homo erectus , that is, for fossil finds of the genus Homo from around 600,000 to 200,000 years ago.

Otto Schoetensack in a photo from 1882

Life

Family and youth

Otto Schoetensack was the youngest of five sons of the Stendal high school teacher Heinrich August Schoetensack (1812-1891) and his wife Julie Schoetensack, nee. Shrike. Schoetensack's father's scientific interests were linguistics and history . Otto Schoetensack married Marie Schneider, the daughter of a doctor from Ludwigshafen am Rhein, in 1878 . Otto Schoetensack's marriage to Marie Schneider sprung two sons, the legal scholar August Schoetensack (1880-1957) and Otto Schoetensack junior (1883-1963), a lawyer who later as a lawyer 's office in his parents' home in Heidelberg led Blumenstraße first Otto Schoetensack senior was hooked with Oskar von Bülow , his son August Schoetensack married Bülow's daughter Luise.

In 1867 Otto Schoetensack senior left grammar school as a secondary school graduate and began an apprenticeship as a druggist in Hamburg a year later . This practical training gave him the basic knowledge for his later success as an entrepreneur in his chemical factory in Ludwigshafen am Rhein.

Career as an entrepreneur, the establishment of the company "Hofmann & Schoetensack oHG"

Chemical factory Hofmann & Schoetensack, ether , chloral hydrate , chloroform and gallic acids were produced here

In the autumn of 1877 Schoetensack founded the company "Hofmann & Schoetensack oHG", in the same year the "Chemische Fabrik vormals Hofmann u. Schoetensack AG ”with headquarters in Mannheim and the factory in Ludwigshafen. The company's share capital was 900,000 gold marks. The company employed 200 workers in production. Among other things, the company supplied large amounts of ether to the Mannheim entrepreneur Boehringer Mannheim . Schoetensack's company was also a manufacturer of chloral hydrate , chloroform and gallic acids .

The company prospered, but since no adequate precautions had been taken to protect against harmful emissions from chemicals , legal ordinances and sufficient knowledge of the toxic connections were not yet available in the late years of the founding , the economic success brought regrettable, serious consequences for Schoetensack's health themselves. Otto Schoetensack suffered increasingly respiratory affections . He suffered from chronic bronchitis so that he was forced to sell his industrial company. Financially secure, Schoetensack now devoted himself to his main interests in science and research , paleoanthropology .

Career as a scientist Studied mineralogy, geology, anthropology, paleontology

In 1883 Otto Schoetensack went to Freiburg im Breisgau with his wife and two sons . In his mid-thirties, he began studying mineralogy , geology , anthropology , paleontology and complementary sciences. 1885 Otto Schoetensack at was University of Freiburg with a dissertation on The Nephritoide the Mineralogical and Ethnolographisch prehistoric Museum of the University of Freiburg Dr. phil. whereupon the University of Freiburg entrusted him with the management of this museum in 1886.

Change of residence to Heidelberg, scientific observation of the sand pits of Mauer

Otto Schoetensack lived in this property with his wife and two sons, August Schoetensack and Otto Schoetensack junior, who later practiced and lived as a resident lawyer in this house.

During their time in Heidelberg, the Schoetensacks lived at Blumenstrasse 1 in a house they had bought. In honor of Otto Schoetensack, a bronze plaque was attached to this house. In Heidelberg he joined the Masonic Lodge Ruprecht to the five roses .

In 1888 Otto Schoetensack, enriched with profound knowledge, moved with his family to Heidelberg. Schoetensack was increasingly concerned with the genesis of higher life, the history of the development of Homo sapiens , where man probably came from. As a paleontologist , he turned his attention to the sedimentary rocks in the sand pits in the area. This also applies to the Grafenrain mine near the Wall . He was on friendly terms with the owner of this mine, Mr. Rösch. Otto Schoetensack had the mine monitored and made sure that the workers handled the finds carefully and reported them to him in Heidelberg immediately.

1904 Schoetensack was on the scientific and mathematical faculty of the University of Heidelberg for prehistory of man with a thesis on the mammal fauna of the Neolithic habilitation . This work was essentially a scientific review of his research into the sediments and fossils of the surrounding fossil-bearing sand pits.

The discovery of the lower jaw in the sands of Mauer

The lower jaw of Mauer , discovered in the sands of Mauer in 1907 , faithful to the original

The Palais House for giant was around 1907 under the direction of Wilhelm Salomon-Calvi , the seat of the Geological-Palaeontological Institute, University of Heidelberg, where Otto Schoetensack explored the recovered fossil finds and also the lower jaw of wall

Title page of the first description of Homo heidelbergensis

The discovery that crowned Schoetensack's scientific career took place in autumn 1907: On October 21, a fossil lower jaw was recovered by worker Daniel Hartmann in the Grafenrain sand pit near Mauer : the lower jaw of Mauer . Schoetensack was taught the next day.

The almost 20 years of regular monitoring of the fossil-bearing sand pit had paid off and Schoetensack was able to prove, after intensive research work and support from Hermann Klaatsch , among others , that the fossil found was the lower jaw of a member of the Homo genus . He named the fossil of the species as a reminiscence of the place where it was found and its adopted home, Homo heidelbergensis . In his main scientific work - The lower jaw of Homo Heidelbergensis from the sands of Mauer near Heidelberg. A contribution to human paleontology . - a year later he summarized his findings and theories. The work that made Schoetensack famous around the world is still considered an exemplary description of the find. Schoetensack had the site measured by a geometer to the nearest centimeter.

Last years in Ospedaletti on the Italian Riviera

Otto Schoetensack's grave in forest section B, row 1, of the Heidelberg mountain cemetery

Schoetensack's health deteriorated more and more. He was barely able to give his scientific lectures to a larger audience. Otto Schoetensack died at the age of 62 on December 23, 1912 in Ospedaletti , a town on the Italian Riviera, near Sanremo , where he had hoped for relief from his progressive respiratory disease.

Otto Schoetensack's wife Marie, b. Schneider outlived her husband by 26 years. She died in Heidelberg in 1938. Marie Schneider was buried in the Heidelberg Bergfriedhof , in forest section B (WB), row 1. On the occasion of the death of their mother, their sons August and Otto Schoetensack had their father's bones transferred from the Italian cemetery in Ospedaletti to Heidelberg. Here Otto Schoetensack, back at the place of his most successful research days, was reburied in the mountain cemetery next to his wife Marie.

See also

• Museum of the Electoral Palatinate of Heidelberg , prehistory and early history of Central Europe

Honors

• In 1909 Otto Schoetensack was awarded the title of titular professor by the University of Heidelberg .
• In 1909 Otto Schoetensack became a corresponding member of the Anthropological Societies of Brussels , Florence , Moscow and Paris .
• Otto Schoetensack was a member of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory .

Publications (selection)

• with Eduard Krause: The megalithic graves (stone burial chambers) of Germany . In: Journal of Ethnology . Volume 25, 1893, p. 105.
• About the meaning of the “stool” burial . In: Journal of Ethnology . Volume 33, 1901, p. 522.
• The lower jaw of Homo heidelbergensis from the sands of Mauer near Heidelberg. A contribution to human paleontology. Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig, 1908 (digitized online) - Gutenberg eText

literature

• Wolfgang Schoetensack, Jürgen Schoetensack: The life of Prof. Dr. Otto Schoetensack . In: Günther A. Wagner, Karl W. Beinhauer (eds.): Homo heidelbergensis von Mauer. The appearance of man in Europe. Universitätsverlag C. Winter, Heidelberg 1997, ISBN 3-8253-7105-0 , pp. 62-71.
• Günther A. Wagner, Karl W. Beinhauer (eds.): Homo heidelbergensis von Mauer. The appearance of man in Europe. Heidelberg: HVA, 1997, ISBN 3-8253-7105-0
• Günther A. Wagner u. a. (Ed.): Homo heidelbergensis. Key find in human history. Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-2113-8
• Homo heidelbergensis. 100 years return of the lower jaw of Mauer. Special issue 2/2007 of the journal Palaeos - Menschen und Zeiten , ed. from “Homo heidelbergensis von Mauer e. V. “, Mauer, 2007, ISSN  1863-1630
• Gerfried Ziegelmayer:  Schoetensack, Otto. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , p. 436 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Homo heidelbergensis  - Collection of images, videos and audio files