Werner Paeckelmann

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Werner Paeckelmann (born February 23, 1890 in Elberfeld (today in Wuppertal ), † April 3, 1952 in Waldheim ) was a German geologist and paleontologist .

Life

Werner Paeckelmann was born as the sixth child of the senior teacher Hermann Paeckelmann in Elberfeld (today Wuppertal ). The father died when Paeckelmann was ten years old. His interest in geology was awakened by his teachers Waldschmidt and Schmidt, father of Hermann Schmidt , with whom he was to become a lifelong friend.

In 1909 he began studying geology at the University of Marburg . Paeckelmann spent a semester in the Swiss and French Alps . In 1913 he did his doctorate under Emanuel Kayser in Marburg with a thesis on the Upper Devonian of the Bergisches Land , which, due to its quality, was published as booklet 70 of the Geological State Institute's treatises . In the doctoral thesis, 310 fossils were described , including initial descriptions of 20 species. In the spring of 1914 he passed the first state examination for higher education.

Work at the Prussian Geological State Institute

Invitation to the unveiling of the Fuhlrott memorial plaque

Immediately after completing his doctorate, he was hired on April 1, 1913 “on probation” together with Wilhelm Kegel at the Prussian Geological Institute . At first he mapped the measuring table sheets Marburg and Niederwalgern together with Kayser . In 1914 he joined the German Geological Society .

During the First World War he was used as a driver due to an injury from childhood . In 1918 he was an officer in charge of a motor vehicle unit in Asia Minor and Dobruja . The observations he made there and later trips to this area led to a number of publications on the geology, paleontology and petrography of Constantinople and Dobruja.

Between 1920 and 1930 he mapped the Elberfeld , Barmen , Velbert , Hattingen and Mettmann measuring tables in the Bergisches Land . He summarized his experiences with the fossils of the Lower Carboniferous in the five-part work "The Fauna of the German Lower Carboniferous". Paeckelmann passed his second state examination in geology in 1922. In the following year he was one of the founders of the Society for Speleology and Speleology . In 1924, he and the Barmer teacher Karl Hamacher wrote the " Geological Wandering Book for the Bergisch Industrial District ". In the same year he was appointed district geologist. On the occasion of the honor of Johann Carl Fuhlrott , Paeckelmann gave the celebratory lecture on the geology of the Neandertal in 1926 . In 1925, Paeckelmann began his mapping in the eastern Sauerland in the vicinity of the Ostsauerland main saddle. In 1936 six table sheets - Adorf , Alme , Madfeld , Marsberg , Mengeringhausen and Brilon - were published. In 1930 Werner Paeckelmann was appointed professor. A serious, protracted illness, together with persistent paralysis, led to a lengthy break in his professional activity in 1933.

Work during National Socialism

In the first years of National Socialist rule , Paeckelmann initially continued his field activities. In 1937 he played a key role in the selection of the locality for establishing the Silurian - Devonian border in the Ebbe -Sattel. After the Prussian State Geological Institute was dissolved in 1939 and transferred to the Reich Office for Soil Research , which later became the Reich Office for Soil Research, Paeckelmann worked as a government geologist. After the outbreak of World War II and the occupation of Poland , Paeckelmann initially took over the Polish geological survey on behalf of the Reich Office for Soil Research and, among other things, assessed the raw material deposits there .

His main focus of work increasingly shifted from geological surveying to expert work. In addition to advice on the groundwater extraction , for the dams - and highway construction , he worked as part of the efforts of the Nazis to raw material self-sufficiency increasingly with issues of deposit genesis and raw material resource estimates. Among other things, he examined the non-ferrous metal deposits in Ramsbeck , the copper ore deposits in Marsberg, the iron ore deposits in Brilon and Warstein as well as the gold deposits near Korbach . The last raw material report - on the productivity of the Celestine deposits near Giershagen - is dated May 1945. He published the last major scientific work by Paeckelmann on the characteristics of Devonian spiriferids in 1944.

After the end of National Socialist rule , Paeckelmann began to rebuild the Berlin office with some geologists from the former Reich Office for Soil Research who had remained in Berlin. Until his arrest, Paeckelmann was deputy chairman of the German Geological Society after the war and was instrumental in ensuring that the work and publication activity continued on a modest scale immediately after the war. In November 1946 all former Reich official geologists were dismissed.

Arrest and death

On December 27, 1946, Werner Paeckelmann was arrested in East Berlin and interned in the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp . His colleague Wilhelm Haack was also arrested a short time later. In early 1950 he was transferred to the Waldheim prison and charged. The content of the indictment and the reasons for the verdict have not been disclosed. The court sentenced Paeckelmann to 15 years in prison in Waldheim, where he died on April 3, 1952 as a result of flu . His grave is unknown.

Mapping units

A number of geological mapping units in the Devonian go back to Werner Paeckelmann - based on his extensive experience of the terrain - which he was the first to describe: Schwelmer, Eskesberger and Dorper Kalk as well as Velberter, Mergelberger and Adorf layers. In particular, its facies division of the Middle and Upper Devonian reef limestone complexes found widespread use in the subsequent period in the Rhenohercynic and became the standard for the division of reef limestone development.

Private

In 1920 Paeckelmann married Hanna Döring, the niece of the department director of the Prussian Geological State Institute Henry Schröder. With her he had three children, of whom only the eldest son survived the Second World War . His wife died shortly after he was arrested.

Trivia

Werner-Paeckelmann-Weg in the north park of Wuppertal
Slab sandstone outcrop on Werner-Paeckelmann-Weg

In 2007, a working group from the Sedanstrasse high school in Wuppertal, with the support of the North Rhine-Westphalia Foundation for Nature Conservation, Heritage and Cultural Preservation, created a geological educational trail through Wuppertal-Barmen, which is called "Werner-Paeckelmann-Weg".

Selected Works

During his work in the Geological State Service, Werner Paeckelmann submitted a total of 19 geological measuring table sheets, 57 publications and 183 expert opinions and reports as main author or co-author. In addition, he made the geological-tectonic overview map of the Rhenish Slate Mountains in 1926 on a scale of 1: 200,000.

  • The Oberdevon of the Bergisches Land . Dep. Kgl. Prussia. geol. L.-Anst., New Series 70, Berlin 1913, 356 S. (Dissertation)
  • The central Devonian mass limestone of the Bergisches Land . Dep. Kgl. Prussia. L.-Anst. New series 91, Berlin 1922, 112 pp.
  • The geological structure of the area between Bredelar, Marsberg and Adorf on the northeastern edge of the Rhenish Slate Mountains . Jb. Pruss. geol. L.-Anst., 49, Berlin 1928, pp. 370-412.
  • About the relationship between facies and tectonics in the Devonian Sauerland . Z. dt geol. Ges., 82, Berlin 1930, pp. 590-598.
  • The copper ore deposits of Stadtberge in Westphalia . Glückauf, Volume 66, Essen 1930, pp. 1096–1105.
  • The trunk area of ​​the northeastern Sauerland . Jb. Pruss. geol. L.-Anst., 52, Berlin 1931, pp. 472-519.
  • Explanations for sheet 4618 Adorf . Geol. Kt. Prussia a. adjacent. German countries 1: 25,000, Berlin 1936, 66 pp.
  • The geological structure and deposits of the Ramsbeck ore district . Berlin 1937
  • The trunk area of ​​the northeastern Sauerland . Jb. Pruss. geol. L.-Anst., 52, Berlin 1932, pp. 472-519
  • The Flinzschiefer of the Bergisches Land and their relationship to the mass limestone . Decheniana , 101, Bonn 1942, pp. 108-116
  • Expert opinion on the supply of the municipality of Bredelar with drinking water from the tunnel of the Charlottenzug mine , Berlin 1930, 6 pp.
  • Report on the Cölestin occurrence near Giershagen , Berlin May 8, 1945, 5 pp.
  • with Fritz Kühne: Explanations for sheet 4518 Madfeld . - Geol. Kt. Prussia a. adjacent. German countries 1: 25,000, Berlin 1936, 79 pp.
  • with Fritz Behrend: The geological structure and the deposits of the Ramsbeck ore district , Archive for Deposit Research 64, Berlin 1937

literature

  • Egon Wiegel: Werner Paeckelmann and his work. Jb. Naturwiss. Wuppertal Association, Issue 44, Wuppertal 1991, pp. 135-144.
  • Hans Udluft: Werner Paeckelmann † . Geol. Jb., 67: VII-XVIII, Hannover 1953.
  • Wolfgang Schmidt: Marburg and paleontology . Geologica et Palaeontologica, 7, Marburg 1973, pp. 1-22.
  • Hermann Schmidt: Werner Paeckelmann † . Journal of the German Geological Society, Volume 104, Berlin 1952, pp. 549–552.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Hermann Schmidt: Werner Paeckelmann † . Journal of the German Geological Society, Volume 104, Berlin 1952, pp. 549–552.
  2. ↑ Hans Udluft: Werner Paeckelmann † . Geol.Jb., 67, VII-XVIII, Hannover 1953.
  3. ↑ Jochen Farrenschon, Béatrice Oesterreich, Sven Blumenstein and Michael Holzinger: Geological map of North Rhine-Westphalia, 1: 25,000, sheet 4519 Marsberg , Krefeld 2008, p. 157f.
  4. ↑ a b c d Egon Wiegel: Werner Paeckelmann and his work . Jb. Naturwiss. Wuppertal Association, Issue 44, Wuppertal 1991, 135 - 144
  5. ↑ NRW Foundation: Geopfad hiking trails through geological history , accessed on July 31, 2014
  6. ↑ Hans Joachim Hybel (Ed.): Geopfad. Wuppertal-Barmen, Werner-Paeckelmann-Weg. Geology and human history along the way . Meyer Druck, Wuppertal 2007, ISBN 3-00-007388-4
personal data
SURNAME Paeckelmann, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geologist and paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 23, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Elberfeld (now part of Wuppertal )
DATE OF DEATH April 3, 1952
Place of death Waldheim