Otto Semper

Johann Otto Semper (born September 13, 1830 in Altona , † March 9, 1907 in Wiesbaden ) was a German businessman, conchyliologist and paleontologist .

Live and act

Otto Semper was a son of the factory owner Johann Karl Semper (born March 14, 1796 in Hamburg ; † February 5, 1881 in Altona) and his first wife Elisabeth, née Heyne (born April 6, 1803 in Altona; † October 2, 1834 there ). The brother Karl Semper came from this marriage . From the second marriage of the father to Louise, née Reincke (born February 1, 1811 in Altona; † April 28, 1877 ibid) came the stepbrother Georg Semper , the stepsister Johanna Marie (1845-1918), who in 1878 the philosopher Richard Louis Henri Avenarius married and the stepbrother Carl August (1849-1915).

Semper's father had owned the Paap-Sempersche wool yarn factory since May 1, 1822. Since 1651, this company consisted of a stocking factory created by Ewert Boehmer and Dierck Willemsen Paap and the woolen yarn factory founded by Johann Wilmsen Paap. Otto Semper initially worked in his father's company. After the November constitution , he joined the so-called Schleswig-Holstein Committee. Here he wanted to organize the resistance of the inhabitants of Schleswig against the annexation by Denmark and for the independence of Schleswig-Holstein under the Duke of Augustenburg.

On December 17, 1859, Semper married in Altona Mathilde Juergens (s) en (* January 19, 1838 - February 17, 1920), with whom he had three sons.

After his father's death in 1881, Semper ran the company together with his brother Georg. In 1890 they both expanded the factory and chose a new location in Bahrenfeld. Otto Semper did not want to share responsibility for the resulting financial risk and therefore withdrew from the company.

Scientific work

In his spare time, Semper studied extensively recent and fossil mollusks . In doing so he created a very large collection of paratypes . He developed this with the curator of the Godeffroy Museum and his brother Carl Gottfried. He also used long trips to collect exhibits. In his will he bequeathed his collection to the Natural History Museum and the Altona Museum . The Mineralogical Department of the Natural History Museum recorded 28,000 fossils, most of which came from the Tertiary . The zoological department took over about 30,000 recent mollusks, among which were all typical objects. These exhibits were lost during the Allied air raids on Hamburg in the summer of 1943. After the end of the war, the Altona Museum handed over the around 30,000 numbers stored there to the Zoological Museum .

Based on his collection, Semper worked scientifically. He mostly dealt with the north German paleontology and stratigraphy. In doing so, he created some authoritative works that made it possible to correctly structure Tertiary deposits in northern Germany. He also dealt with recent molluscs in the region, for example door snails around Altona and mollusks in the Baltic Sea.

literature

• Herbert Weidner: Semper, Otto . in: Schleswig-Holstein Biographical Lexicon . Volume 2. Karl Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1971, pp. 220-221