Walther Steinhäuser

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Walther Steinhäuser (born August 13, 1908 in Gießen ; † March 23, 1946 ) was a German geologist and cave explorer .

Steinhäuser studied in his hometown and received his doctorate from the University of Gießen in 1936 (dissertation: tertiary geological and volcanological studies on the southeastern Vogelsberg and on the Hessian ridge ). Since 1929 he was a member of the Giessen fraternity Franconia (student union) .

In 1937 he was employed as a geologist at the Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS in Berlin and initially headed the Karst and Speleology Department at the SS Ahnenerbe , which was founded in 1938 , until he was replaced in 1939 by cave researcher, mining engineer and teacher Hans Brand (an SS standard leader , later in Italy also with the SS Karstwehr troops ). The tasks included exploring the caves in Germany.

In 1938, Brand was the driving force behind the attempt by the Ahnenerbes and the SS to incorporate the Society for Speleology and Speleology, founded in 1923 by the manufacturer and naturalist collector Julius Riemer (1880–1958), into their own organization. Steinhäuser was supposed to be the leader, but Riemer resisted, especially to protect Benno Wolf (1871–1943 in the Theresienstadt concentration camp), who had Jewish ancestors and was therefore released as a judge in Berlin in 1933, but was a very well-known cave explorer. The affiliation finally succeeded in 1941 when the Reich Association for Karst and Cave Research was founded . Speleology was important to the war effort in the Second World War (relocation of industry underground, fighting partisans in the Balkans).

In 1940 Steinhäuser was a war administrator and consultant in the Wehrmacht High Command in Berlin. He died of diphtheria in 1946 .

literature

  • Michael H. Kater: The “Ahnenerbe” of the SS 1935–1945. A contribution to the cultural policy of the Third Reich . 4th edition. Oldenbourg, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-486-57950-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.academia.edu/4592174/Holger_Baitinger_Der_Glauberg_eine_Grabung_zwischen_den_Fronten._In_E._Schallmayer_Hrsg._Arch%C3%A4ologie_und_Politik._Arch%C3%A4ologische_Ausgrabungen_der_30er_und_40er_Jahre_des_20._Jahrhunderts_im_zeitgeschichtlichen_Kontext._Fundberichte_aus_Hessen_Beiheft_7_Wiesbaden_2011_57-74
  2. ↑ Hans Schneider; Georg Lehnert, Die Gießener Burschenschaft 1814 to 1936 , Görlitz 1942, p. 159
  3. ↑ International Geological and Mineralogical Calendar 1937
  4. ↑ He was deported there in July 1942. Brand vom Ahnenerbe personally confiscated his private library for caving.
  5. ↑ Friedhart Knolle, It began in the Harz Mountains - Julius Riemer, Dr. Benno Wolf und die Höhlenforschung, Mitteilungen Arbeitsgemeinschaft Karstkunde Harz, Volume 33, 2012, pp. 2–41, online
  6. ^ Journal of the German Geological Society, Volume 92, 1940, p. 611
personal data
SURNAME Steinhäuser, Walther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geologist and cave explorer
DATE OF BIRTH August 13, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH to water
DATE OF DEATH March 23, 1946