Vincenz Brehm

Vincenz Brehm (born January 1, 1879 in Duppau , Bohemia , † May 18, 1971 in Lunz ) was an Austrian biologist and animal geographer.

Life

When Hof came into view, Brehm knew that he had fled the gray Eger again for some time.

The garden of the Munich Hofbräuhaus am Platzl, which had not been standing for long (1887), was a popular destination for Brehm from 1900.

The National Socialists “veroschkliviert” (disgraced, from Czech. Ošklivý “ugly”) from 1938 Linz with their “ Hermann Göring Works ”, said Brehm.

His father (whose family came from Chiesch ) was a notary in Duppau, Tachau , Bad Königswart , Elbogen . The mother came from Mies ( Stříbro ). Vincenz graduated from Eger (with distinction) . Then he took a degree in natural sciences and mathematics in Innsbruck. He wrote his dissertation in 1902 on the plankton of the Achensee . After that he was a high school teacher in Pettau , Elbogen and Eger, where he lived from 1910 to 1940, although he did not like this city. In his free time he enjoyed spending time in Munich, Tyrol and Lunz - as a freelancer at the biological station , he worked on plankton crabs (especially Onychura , Copepoda and Ostracoda ) here from 1906 (and soon worldwide ). He was only once in Vienna - on business in 1922 - and found it inhospitable and "cold".

Like many of his contemporaries, mechanistic Darwinism failed to satisfy him - he was a vitalist and enthusiastic supporter of Hans Driesch . The expansion of natural history or biology classes by the National Socialists filled him with anger and aroused his ridicule, as he did not believe in their “hereditary biology” at all and could not finally retire in 1939 due to a lack of specialist teachers, but for another year Was "compulsorily" obliged. He had long intended to move to the pension in Kufstein (halfway between Innsbruck and Munich), but in 1940 no more apartments could be found there.

He was - not least through comparisons of the distribution areas of copepods such. B. Boeckella - soon became a follower of Wegener's theory of continental drift and had a larger manuscript about it ready for printing when he left Eger for the last time in November 1944 (towards Lunz). He left this manuscript lying around - out of spite, as it were, against the National Socialists, who had evoked this situation - together with his valuable stamp collection, which would have saved him and his wife Grete (1890-1959) from the poverty that followed. Both were lost despite the efforts of Czech colleagues. It was not until 1953 that he received his pension in arrears. In the 1960s he experienced the beginning of " plate tectonics " with satisfaction . B. the acceptance of the " Gondwana ", for which he already had his animal-geographical "evidence".

As an author, Brehm - a nephew of Bruno Brehm , who remained intellectually alien to him - wrote two secondary school textbooks , two introductions to limnology (1925, 1930) and numerous specialist articles (over 250 are documented). He would have liked to come out with a biography of Lola Montez and a guide through the Munich pub and entertainment scene , but the former was snatched away from him and he lost his interest in the latter after 1938, as he reports in his autobiography from 1952.

It was not his job to keep type material for his numerous new descriptions of “Entomostraken”, ie “low” Crustacea . However, since there were still samples in Lunz that could contain possible lectotypes , the Prague limnologist Vladimir Kořinek arranged for this material to be transferred to the British Museum of Natural History in London in 1988 .

literature

• Franz Ruttner , Friedrich Kiefer: Prof. Dr. V. Brehm 80. In: Internatl. Rev. tot. Hydrobiol. 44, 1959, pp. 133f.
• Heinz Löffler : Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Brehm on his 90th birthday. In: Internatl. Rev. tot. Hydrobiol. 54, 1969, p. 467f. Brehm was co-editor of this magazine for decades.
• Agnes Ruttner-Kolisko: Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Brehm †. In: Arch. Hydrobiol. 68, 1971, pp. 293-301.

Web links

• Literature by and about Vincenz Brehm in the catalog of the German National Library
• Autobiography of V. Brehm ( From my life ): Website of the former Biological Station Lunz ( Memento from September 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive ): → The Institute → Stories from the early days.