Richard Lepsius (geologist)

Richard Carl Georg Lepsius (born September 19, 1851 in Berlin , † October 20, 1915 in Darmstadt ) was a German geologist .

Richard Carl Georg Lepsius (portrait of the photographer Wilhelm Weimer); Source: Archive of the Technical University of Darmstadt

Richard Lepsius was one of the most important geologists in Germany in the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. He had a lasting impact on regional and applied geology.

Life

Lepsius was born the son of the famous Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius . His mother was Elisabeth Klein (1828–1899).

Richard Lepsius started school on October 19, 1859 at the Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Berlin, where he also passed the Abitur in 1870. Even as a primary school student, he was still in full swing in Switzerland. In 1870 Lepsius began studying natural sciences in Geneva, interrupted by medical services during the war. He then studied at the University of Göttingen (with Karl von Seebach , Wolfgang Sartorius von Waltershausen and Wöhler) and did his doctorate with Ernst Wilhelm Benecke at the University of Strasbourg on the Jura formation in Lower Alsace in 1875 (other teachers: Groth, Karl Heinrich Rosenbusch , Karl Friedrich Schimper and further studies in Berlin, among others with Justus Roth ).

He completed his university studies with study trips, including 1873 to England under the leadership of Wright and John Leckenby and in 1875 to Tyrol with Heinrich Ernst Beyrich . As early as 1876 he completed his habilitation at Heidelberg University on the Röth and Muschelkalk in the Southern Alps.

In 1876 Lepsius was appointed to teach mineralogy and rock theory at the Polytechnic University of Darmstadt , and at the same time he became inspector of the geological and mineralogical department at the Grand Ducal State Museum in Darmstadt . In 1877 he was appointed associate professor. In the same year he married Dora Curtius (born January 18, 1854 in Berlin, † February 14, 1931 in Darmstadt); her father was the classical philologist and archaeologist Ernst Curtius (1814-1896).

In 1879 Lepsius went on another study trip to Sardinia. In 1882 he was appointed full professor and in the same year founded the Geological State Institute in Darmstadt based on the Prussian and Saxon model and became its first director. Research trips to Greece followed in the 1880s . Lepsius served as Rector of the Technical University of Darmstadt from 1893 to 1895 during the construction phase of the main building of the University, which he inaugurated as Rector in 1895. His rectorate speech dealt with the "Rhine and its floods". In 1888 he was accepted into the Leopoldina . In 1895 he was promoted to Privy Councilor. This was followed by investigations of the sources in Bad Nauheim as a provisional member and consultant for Bad Nauheim, appointed to the secret upper mountain ridge and lecturing council at the Grand Ducal Ministry of Finance (department for forest and cameral administration) on August 30, 1899.

Lepsius was also one of the "most active members" of the Upper Rhine Geological Association founded in 1871 . Between April 25, 1877 and April 21, 1881 he served as "Secretary" (this was synonymous with the chairman) and further as chairman between April 19, 1900 and April 14, 1909 (Wittmann, 1958). His liberal political stance became clear in 1899 when he signed a petition to the Tsar along with around 1,000 other academics from Europe calling for Finland 's constitutional rights to be returned.

At the end of his career, Lepsius dealt more and more with questions of the Ice Age, mistakenly believing only in an ice advance. Richard Lepsius published a total of around 70 papers, including the textbook “The Geology of Germany” and the first “correct” geological map of Germany.

Services

With the appointment of Richard Lepsius in 1876 as a teacher of mineralogy and geology, geoscientific research in Darmstadt took off enormously. Immediately after his appointment, Lepsius was also appointed inspector of the geological and mineralogical department at the Grand Ducal State Museum in Darmstadt. His predecessors in this office were the mint master Fehr and the zoologist and paleontologist Johann Jakob Kaup . In 1882 Lepsius also became the founding director of the Grand Ducal State Geological Institute. This meant that all three geological facilities in Darmstadt were in one hand.

Lepsius took advantage of the opportunities and energetically advanced the geological exploration of the country. He worked stratigraphically, regional geologically and hydrogeologically as well as petrographically. In addition, he was open to the world, was a good mountaineer (high-altitude tours in Switzerland as a primer), was enthusiastic about Greek classical music (the University of Athens appointed him Dr. hc in 1912) and gained numerous trips to Hessen and Germany addition to meaning.

In addition to his three positions as professor, collection inspector and state office director, “His Royal Highness the Grand Duke graciously deigned on July 19, 1893, Professor Dr. Lepsius on a proposal to appoint the teachers Council "Director of the Institute of Technology . The teachers' council was made up of the full-time and associate professors. From 1895/96 the university director was given the title of rector. Lepsius held this office until 1895 and expanded the new representative main building on October 28, 1895, in which the geology department was finally given centrally located rooms. At the inauguration, Lepsius spoke “about the methods of teaching at the technical university” , thus highlighting a pedagogical and didactic topic (Lepsius, 1895).

As early as 1888, Lepsius was able to raise the teaching material fund for excursions, because rising railroad prices made the students to create, and in 1891 geology got a servant, but not an assistant. As director of the state office, Lepsius was finally able to get reinforcements, his employees were Karl Chelius (1857–1906) from 1890 and Gustav Klemm (1858–1938) and Alexander Steuer (1867–1936) from 1894 . Lepsius proved to be a tireless worker, he began two series of publications for the grand ducal Hessian geological institute. This was initially the publication of the geological map ( geological map ) of the Grand Duchy of Hesse ( Grand Duchy of Hesse ) on a scale of 1: 25000 (the first published in 1886 the Messel / Roßdorf (near Darmstadt) and 1891 the Darmstadt / Mörfelden sheet , both by C. Chelius mapped), and then the series of treatises (the first volume in 1884 deals with the geological survey of the Grand Duchy that has been started (by Lepsius himself) and gives a chronological overview of the geological work carried out so far (by Chelius)). Finally, he also took over the geological reports in the memo sheet of the Geography Association, which contains interesting annual reports on the progress of geological work in Hesse. From 1894 to 1897 Lepsius published the first modern geological map of Germany (in 27 sheets), and his textbook "Geologie Deutschlands" appeared in several deliveries from 1887 to 1913.

Publications (selection)

• Contributions to the knowledge of the Jura formation in Lower Alsace. Engelmann, Leipzig 1875 (dissertation).
• Western and Southern Germany (= geology of Germany and the adjacent areas. Vol. 1). J. Engelhorn, Stuttgart 1887-1892, 800 pp.
• Northern and Eastern Germany (= geology of Germany and the adjacent areas. Vol. 2). J. Engelhorn, Leipzig 1910, 548 pp.
• Silesia and the Sudetes (= geology of Germany and the adjacent areas. Vol. 3, 1st delivery). W. Engelmann, Leipzig and Berlin 1913, 194 pp.
• Halitherium Schinzi, the fossil siren of the Mainz basin. A comparative anatomical study. (= Treatises of the Middle Rhine Geological Association. Bd. 1, Lfg. 1 and 2). Bergstrasse, Darmstadt 1888.
• Geological map of the German Empire. 27 sheets. Justus Perthes, Gotha 1894–1913.
• About the methods of teaching at the Technical University, speech given at the ceremony in the auditorium to celebrate the inauguration of the new building of the Grand Ducal Technical University in Darmstadt on October 28, 1895 by the Rector Professor Dr. Richard Lepsius, Privy Councilor. Bergstrasse, Darmstadt 1895.

literature

• G. Klemm: In memory of Richard Lepsius. In: Note sheet of the Geography Association and the Großh. Geological State Institute in Darmstadt for 1915 , pp. 5–22 (with list of publications by Lepsius).
• A. Control: Richard Lepsius. In: Geographical Monthly Report , December 1915, p. 481.
• Otto Wittmann: History of the Upper Rhine Geological Association 1871-1958. In: Jber. U. Mitt. Oberrh. geol. Association NF 40, 1958, pp. 1-76.
• Klaus Fahlbusch: Hundred years of Richard G. Lepsius: Geological map of the German Empire (1: 500,000). In: Reports of the Federal Geological Institute 35, 1996, pp. 103-105 ( [4] ).
• Stephan Kempe, Anne Schnitzspan, Klaus Fahlbusch: The history of the geological institutes in Darmstadt. In: W. Rosendahl & A. Hoppe (Ed.): Applied Geosciences in Darmstadt. (= Series of publications by the German Geological Society, issue 15.) 2002, pp. 295–313.

Web links

• Literature by and about Richard Lepsius in the catalog of the German National Library
• Richard Lepsius in the Hessian biography

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Rector's speech .
2. ↑ Member entry of Richard Lepsius at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on April 5, 2015.
3. ↑ Allemagne
4. ↑ [1]
5. ↑ [2]
6. ↑ [3] ; [ Archived copy ( memento of the original from November 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ], Fahlbusch 1996