Otto von Gruber

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Otto Heinrich Franz Anton Gruber , since 1915 Knight von Gruber (born August 9, 1884 in Salzburg , Austria-Hungary , † May 3, 1942 in Jena ), was a German geodesist and pioneer of photogrammetry . He was one of the sons of the hygienist Max von Gruber .

life and work

After military service from October 1, 1905 as a one-year volunteer with the 11th Field Artillery Regiment in Würzburg and studying mathematics, physics and geography in Berlin, Würzburg and Munich, he became an assistant at the Physics Institute of the Technical University of Munich in 1911 . He gained his first experience of surveying glaciated areas in the Ötztal Alps . With the work Der Hochjochferner, which he began as a student in 1907 , he received his doctorate on December 19, 1911 with magna cum laude in Munich.

During the First World War , von Gruber was first deployed on August 3, 1914 as leader of a munitions column of the 7th Field Artillery Regiment and then from October 24, 1914 was initially an employee, then leader of a photogrammeter squad on the Western Front and in Macedonia. In 1915 he was awarded the Military Max Joseph Order and, associated with it, raised to the personal nobility. During the war, the main focus was on evaluating aerial photographs of enemy positions and transferring these data to maps for the artillery, for which his unit used an equalization device designed by Sebastian Finsterwalder , a so-called "basic image judge". In the summer of 1917, back on the western front, Otto von Gruber had at the XVII. Army Corps , also known as "Gruppe Oise", supervising the enemy artillery batteries among themselves. In doing so, he not only relied on aerial photographs, but also evaluated the reports from the infantry, the light and sound measurement squads, the spies and the prisoners. Since the targeting of the Prussian artillery by circling aerial observers proved to be unreliable - the German pilots were shot at by enemy fighter planes and then had to flee - von Gruber decided to demand quick aerial photographs before and after the fire. With the help of a stereo comparator developed by Carl Pulfrich in 1901, he was able to precisely identify the new hits and the success of the bombardment using the flashing method, even on many old shell craters.

After the end of the war, Otto von Gruber evaluated the geographic data material of the Pamir expedition of the German and Austrian Alpine Association of 1913 and submitted this work in 1919 with the title Topographical Results of the Pamir Expedition of the Germans a . Austrian Alpine Club in 1913 as a habilitation thesis . Otto von Gruber held his habilitation lecture on "The stereo autograph and its significance for science and technology" on February 4, 1920 at the Technical University of Munich. He then gave lectures there on applied mathematics and geodesy. But since he did not hold a professorship, he had to supplement his income from July 1920 by taking mathematics lessons at the Theresien-Gymnasium . After working as an external employee of Carl Zeiss and the associated Stereographik GmbH Munich and as scientific director at the consortium Luftbild GmbH - Stereographik GmbH Munich since 1919 , he went entirely to Zeiss in Jena in 1922 , where he started developing optical Equipment for photogrammetry was entrusted.

In June 1926 Otto von Gruber was appointed to the position of director of the Geodetic Institute at the Technical University of Stuttgart as the successor to Ernst von Hammer, who died on September 11, 1925 , but remained active as a research assistant for Zeiss. He held the professorship in Stuttgart, where he introduced photogrammetry into the curriculum, until March 1930. A year earlier, health problems had become increasingly noticeable due to the double burden. So he sold his house in Stuttgart and returned to Zeiss in Jena, where he took over the scientific management of the departments for geodetic instruments and image measuring devices until his death. Gruber's successor as director of the Geodetic Institute at the Technical University of Stuttgart was Leo Fritz from Hanover.

His achievements in evaluating aerial photographs of the Arctic voyage of the airship "Graf Zeppelin" in 1931 and the German Antarctic Expedition in 1938/39 were honored. He succeeded in producing accurate maps from these aerial photographs without existing control points on the ground and despite insufficient accuracy in the navigation of the respective aircraft. Based on his experience with the surface structures of glaciers , he discovered that two particularly noticeably smooth ice surfaces in the Wohlthat massif were water bodies that were frozen all year round, which he called Obersee and Untersee . This observation was confirmed on site in 1969 by a Soviet Antarctic expedition.

Six months after the National Socialist seizure of power , Otto von Gruber ran into difficulties for a short period of time because he refused to cast a vote in the Reichstag election or referendum on November 12, 1933 . Von Gruber was taken into police custody in Jena , and the local NSDAP representatives demanded that he be released because of "political activities". However, at the instigation of the Zeiss management, he was soon released again and was employed again in his old position at the company. As a result of the excitement, however, he was left with a heart neurosis . Otto von Gruber had been suffering from urinary bleeding since 1927, which doctors initially attributed to malaria . However, this was a misdiagnosis. Otto von Gruber died of bladder cancer in Jena on May 3, 1942 .

Awards and honors

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Helmut Gruber (Ed.): Ridge walks. Memoirs of Wolfgang Gruber (1886–1971). Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2018, p. 295f. A detailed description of the blinking process can be found in Lieuwe Evert Willem van Albada: Scientific applications of photography. 1st part: Stereo photography - Astrophotography - The projection system. Verlag der H. Lindemanns Buchhandlung, Stuttgart 1992, pp. 87f.
  2. ↑ https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz24159.html
  3. ↑ http://www.gis.uni-stuttgart.de/institute/history/
  4. ↑ Helmut Gruber (Ed.): Ridge walks. Memoirs of Wolfgang Gruber (1886–1971). Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2018, p. 467.
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Torge: History of geodesy in Germany. Verlag Walter de Gruyter , Berlin 2009, p. 284.
  6. ↑ H. Schmift-Falkenberg: German Contributions to the cartography of Antarctica . (PDF; 2.7 MB). In: Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of ISPRS , Rio de Janeiro, ISPRS XXV / A4, 1984, pp. 433–449 (English)
  7. ↑ K. Brunk: Cartographic work and German naming in Neuschwabenland, Antarctica Archived from the original on June 26, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 382 kB) In: German Geodetic Commission, Series E: History and Development of Geodesy . 24 / I, 1986, pp. 1-24. Retrieved August 20, 2010. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / 141.74.33.52
  8. ↑ Helmut Gruber (Ed.): Ridge walks. Memoirs of Wolfgang Gruber (1886–1971). Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2018, pp. 474, 506 and 604f.
  9. ↑ The Otto von Gruber Award (English) accessed on February 22, 2019
  10. ↑ Gruber line in OpenStreetMap
  11. ↑ Gruberzeile. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  12. ↑ Table of contents of the Jena Yearbook on Technology and Industrial History 2003
personal data
SURNAME Gruber, Otto von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gruber, Otto Heinrich Franz Anton (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geodesist
DATE OF BIRTH August 9, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Salzburg
DATE OF DEATH May 3, 1942
Place of death Jena