Otto Tetens

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Otto Tetens (left) with Mataafa Josefo , 1902
Memorial plaque on the house, Seestrasse 25, in Bad Saarow

Otto Peter Harens Tetens (born September 26, 1865 in Rendsburg ; † February 15, 1945 in Teplitz-Schönau ) was a German scientist with a focus on astronomy .

Life

Otto Tetens, son of a Rendsburg police master, studied various natural sciences in Tübingen , Munich , Berlin and Kiel from 1883 . He then worked at the private observatory of Miklós Konkoly-Thege in Ógyalla (1888) and at the Bothkamp observatory near Kiel (1888 to 1891). In 1891 he received his doctorate in Kiel. From 1893 Tetens worked at various scientific institutions, e.g. B. the Deutsche Seewarte Hamburg , until he accepted an assistant position at the observatory of the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Universität in Strasbourg in 1898 .

From 1902 to 1905 he built the Geophysical Observatory Apia in German Samoa on behalf of the Royal Scientific Society of Göttingen , of which he was the first director. This institution is still in the same place today ( Mulinuu peninsula , Upolu island ). He was inspired by his uncle Alfred Tetens , a Hamburg captain from Wilster , who told him about his travels and expeditions in the South Seas. After his return, Tetens initially stayed in Göttingen in order to process his records from the last few years before he accepted a position at the Royal Observatory in Kiel in 1906 .

Tetens worked from 1909 as the main observer at the aerological observatory in Lindenberg near Beeskow and headed, among other things, the area of ​​meteorological kite flights. In 1931 he was retired there. He lived in Bad Saarow am Scharmützelsee until his death (1945) and was married to Dorothea Heimrod, daughter of an American diplomat. His house still exists in the spa gardens of Bad Saarow, an impressive clinker brick building, planned and designed by Saarow architect Ernst Kopp , whose father Emil Kopp planned the train station and the mud bath.

Photographs

The photographs Tetens took during his years in Samoa are of great ethnological and cultural historical value. A small number of them - like his diary - are now in the possession of the Übersee-Museum in Bremen , the greater part is in the possession of his descendants, who have rediscovered the prints and negatives after 100 years. An exhibition of 62 selected photographs took place in 2004 in Hattingen (Museum Bochum, Wasserburg Haus Kemnade ) under the title Samoa 1904 , which was repeated in Apia in 2005 .

Fonts (selection)

  • with Franz Linke : The meteorological registrations of the Samoa observatory from 1902-1906 . In: Results of the work of the Samoa Observatory of the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen 1, 1910
  • with Franz Linke: The climate of Samoa . In: Results of the work of the Samoa Observatory of the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen 4, 1910
  • About the safety of the pilot sights using a single theodolite . In: Results of the work of the Royal Prussian Aeronautical Observatory at Lindenberg 6, 1911, pp. 183–190
  • Rubber pilot balloons . In: Results of the work of the Royal Prussian Aeronautical Observatory at Lindenberg 6, 1911, pp. 191–206
  • Aerological observations during the 18./19. May 1910 expected passage of the earth through the tail of Halley's comet . In: Results of the work of the Royal Prussian Aeronautical Observatory at Lindenberg 6, 1911, pp. 219–255

literature

  • Christiane Niggemann (Ed.): Samoa 1904. People, landscape and culture in the South Pacific a hundred years ago. Photos by Otto Tetens in Samoa 1902–1905 . Arkana-Verlag, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-923257-05-8 .
  • Felix Lühning. "... An exquisite ornament and advantage". History of the Kiel University Observatory and its predecessors 1770–1950. Two centuries of work and research between limits and possibilities . Wachholtz, Neumünster 2007 (habilitation thesis, Department of Mathematics at the University of Hamburg 2002).
  • Hans Steinhagen : Lindenberger Himmelsjäger - miniatures around the observatory . Arkana-Verlag, Göttingen 2011, p. 70 ff.
  • GG Angenheister : History of the Samoa Observatory from 1902–1921 . In: H. Birett (Ed.): On the history of geophysics: Festschrift for the 50th anniversary of the founding of the German Geophysical Society. Springer-Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York 1974, p. 43 ff.

Web links

Commons : Otto Tetens  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Tetens, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tetens, Otto Peter Harens (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German natural scientist
DATE OF BIRTH September 26, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Rendsburg
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1945
Place of death Teplitz-Schönau