Walter Georg Kühne

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Photo-request.svg
 Image wanted 
BW

Walter Georg Kühne (* 26. February 1911 in Berlin , † 16th March 1991 ) was a German vertebrate - paleontologist , noted for research on Mesozoic mammals , which he especially in lignite deposits was looking for. Kühne was a pioneer in this field.

Childhood, youth and family

He was born during the imperial era as the son of the painter, draftsman and graphic artist Walter Kühne (1875–1956) from Jamlitz in Niederlausitz .

Walter Georg Kühne first visited the reformed educational free school and work community Sinntalhof near Brückenau in Lower Franconia , founded in 1920 by Ernst Putz , Gertrud (1889–1977) and Max Bondy , after which the free school community Wickersdorf near Saalfeld in the Thuringian Forest , which also includes his both siblings Wolfgang (* 1902) and Marianne (* 1907) left. In 1915/16 his father worked there as a drawing teacher. Kühne remained friends with Putz all his life. At Easter 1925, Walter Georg Kühne moved to the school by the sea on the North Sea island of Juist founded by Martin Luserke , where he passed his school leaving examination in the spring of 1930 , with Gerhard Bry , among others .

Kühne married Adelheid Zauleck (born November 25, 1912), called Heidi, from Weidenau, with whom he had a child.

Professional development

In 1938 Kühne dealt with medieval church bells, about which he wrote an article for a German travel magazine. At the end of the 1930s, however, he fled the National Socialists to Great Britain. After a find in southern England in 1939 he described Oligocyphus ( Tritylodontidae ). At the beginning of the Second World War , he inspired the paleontologists of the University of Cambridge , to whom he presented tusks of mammoths he had discovered himself . Found in Wales in the 1940s, he was the first to describe Morganucodon , one of the oldest mammals. In 1946 he described the Triassic gliding lizard, named after him Kuehneosaurus , after it was found in south-west England .

After the war he returned to Germany, where he studied. In 1949 he received his doctorate from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn. In 1958 he completed his habilitation at the mathematical and natural science faculty of the Free University in Berlin, where he founded the Institute for Paleontology in the same year .

In 1959 he found the first indications of the rich Jurassic mammal site Guimarota near Leiria in Portugal , which his student Bernard Krebs later explored extensively from 1973 onwards.

Honors

The genus of early mammals Kuehneotheria and the species of the dinosaur Alocodon kuenei are named in his honor, as is the Triassic gliding lizard known as Kuehneosaurus .

Works

  • Thread reliefs of medieval church bells. In: Atlantis - Lands, Peoples, Travel. Martin Hürlimann (Ed.), Volume X, Issue 8, Leipzig / Zurich 1938, pp. 461–465.
  • The tritylodontid reptile oligocyphoid . Inaugural dissertation, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn 1949
  • The Liassic Therapsid Oligocyphus , London, British Museum 1956
  • Rhaetian triconodonts from Glamorgan. Their position between the classes Reptilia and Mammalia and their importance for Reichart's theory , Paläontologische Zeitschrift, Volume 32, 1958, No. 3/4, pp. 197-235 (= habilitation thesis, July 12, 1958)
  • History of discovery, report on the work performed, procedure, technique and generalities , in: Friedrich-Franz Helmdach u. a., Contribuição para a fauna do Kimeridgiano da mina de lignito Guimarota (Leiria, Portugal), Memórias dos Serviços Geológicos de Portugal, Direçcâo Geral de Minas e Serviços Geológicos de Portugal (publisher), Lisbon 1968
  • Paleontology and Dialectical Materialism . VEB Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena 1979
  • Paleontology and dialectis . Series: Documenta naturae, 62nd Chancellor, Munich 1986
  • Quo vadis, paleontology? Paleontological essays by Walter Georg Kühne 1943–1990 . Series: Documenta naturae, 113. Rolf Kohring and Thomas Schlueter (eds.), Munich 1997

See also

literature

  • Michael E. Schudack (Ed.): Contributions to paleontology. In memory of Walter Georg Kühne . Series: Berliner geoscientific treatises A, 134. Free University of Berlin, Department of Geosciences (Ed.), Berlin 1991. ISBN 978-3-927541-35-1 .
  • Margarete Schilling : Figural incised drawings on historical bells: Graphite rubbings by Charlotte and Walter G. Kühne. Volume 1, Volume 2 and Volume 3. Apolda 2004 (without ISBN)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gudrun Fiedler, Susanne Rappe-Weber, Detlef Siegfried (eds.): Collecting - opening up - networking: youth culture and social movements in the archive . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2014. ISBN 978-3-8470-0340-3 , p. 168.
  2. ^ Logbook of the Schule am Meer Juist, entry from March 25, 1930.
  3. ^ Rolf Kohring: Walter Georg Kühne, 1911-1991 . In: News Bulletin of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. Ed. 153 (1991), pp. 46-47
  4. ^ William J. Cromie: Oldest mammal is found . In: Harvard Gazette, May 24, 2001
  5. ^ Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska / Richard L. Cifelli, / Zhe-Xi Luo: Mammals from the Age of Dinosaurs. Origins, Evolution, and Structure . Columbia University Press, New York 2004. ISBN 0-231-11918-6 , p. 169
  6. ^ Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska: Walter G. Kühne . In: Pursuit of Early Mammals. Life of the Past. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 2013. ISBN 978-0-253-00824-4 , pp. 74-77
personal data
SURNAME Kühne, Walter Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 26, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 16, 1991