Philipp Fauth

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Philipp Fauth

Philipp Johann Heinrich Fauth (born March 19, 1867 in Bad Dürkheim , † January 4, 1941 in Grünwald near Munich ) was a German elementary school teacher and astronomer . He was best known for his observations on the moon .

Live and act

Fauth was an ambitious amateur astronomer who closely observed the moon, Saturn, Mars and Jupiter. He made numerous cards. But his real life's work, the large lunar map on a scale of 1: 1,000,000 with a diameter of 3.5 m, was only left in the draft. His son Hermann Fauth was only able to complete the final artwork in the 1950s, thus making the 22 large sheets ready for printing. They were published in October 1964 as "Philipp Fauth's Lunar Atlas" by the Olbers Astronomical Society in Bremen and represent the last, largest and best lunar map that a single researcher has ever created on the basis of visual observations. Today it is considered a rarity.

Observatory

In 1890 Fauth built his first observatory on the Lämmchesberg , in the south of Kaiserslautern . Through his lectures and first publications, he was in contact with leading astronomers at home and abroad. In 1895 Fauth moved the Kaiserslautern observatory to the Kirchberg near Landstuhl , five years before the Bismarck Tower was built there . For his new and larger telescope, the famous "Schuppmannsche Medial", a larger observatory was built in 1911, south of the previous one.

Philipp Fauth came to Munich in 1923. In 1930 he brought up his observatory and built it in Grünwald, 14 km south of Munich.

In the places Kaiserslautern, Landstuhl and Bad Dürkheim streets were named after Fauth. The International Astronomical Union in London also recognized his achievements by naming a double crater of the moon 40 km south of the great Copernicus (1923) with the name Fauth .

World ice theory

At the beginning of the 20th century, Fauth came into contact with Hanns Hörbiger , an Austrian engineer , physicist and amateur astronomer who, while observing the moon in 1894, wanted to have intuitively recognized that the entire surface of the moon was covered by a kilometer-thick layer of water ice . From this knowledge Hörbiger developed a theory of the origin of the world, the world ice theory . Hörbiger's 800-page main work Glazial-Kosmogonie , published in 1912, was restructured and revised by Fauth and published in 1913 under the name Hörbiger's Glazial-Kosmogonie .

The world ice theory was rejected by the professional world immediately after its creation because it does not stand up to any scientific consideration. Today it is considered a pseudoscience . In the 1920s and 30s, however, it gained popularity among laypeople.

time of the nationalsocialism

Since some leading National Socialists , including Heinrich Himmler , were staunch supporters of the world ice theory, the world ice theory experienced an upswing during the time of National Socialism . In 1938, Fauth was appointed professor by Himmler . However, he did not take on a teaching position at a university . Fauth was a member of the NSDAP and worked as a scientist and SS officer for the SS Ahnenerbe . In order to save his life's work when the war broke out, Fauth sold his instruments and his library to the SS-Ahnenerbe . In return, he was assured of safe storage. There were plans to set up " SS observatories", but these were abandoned after the outbreak of World War II .

Publications (selection)

  • Publication about the planets Jupiter and Mars, 1898
  • Signpost in the sky , 1904
  • What we know about the moon , 1906
  • Simple celestial science , 1908
  • Hörbiger's Glacial Cosmogony , 1913
  • Our moon , 1936
  • Lunar fate. How he came and goes down
  • The moon and Hörbiger's ice theory , 1925

literature

Web links

Commons : Philipp Johann Heinrich Fauth  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 145.
personal data
SURNAME Fauth, Philipp
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fauth, Philipp Johann Heinrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German elementary school teacher and astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH March 19, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Dürkheim
DATE OF DEATH January 4, 1941
Place of death Grünwald