Alfred Wegener

Alfred Lothar Wegener was born in 1880 in Berlin in a pastor's family. He spent his childhood and youth, nevertheless, in Zechlinerhütte near Rheinsberg. He spent his school time at the "Köllnisches Real-Gymnasium" in Berlin-Neukölln. After successful high school graduation he studied from 1900 to 1904 physics, meteorology and astronomy in Berlin, Heidelberg and Innsbruck.

In 1905 he was conferred a doctorate in astromomy by Julius Bauschinger at the Friedrich's Wilhelm University of Berlin. He found his first employment in the same year as an assistant in the aeronautic observatory Lindenberg near Beeskow.

From 1906 to 1908 he went as a participant of the Danish expedition under the direction of Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen on his first Greenland journey. After his return he became an assistant lecturer for meteorology, practical astronomy and cosmic physics at the Philipps University of Marburg. In 1909/10 he worked on his book "Thermodynamics of the atmosphere" in which he also used numerous results of the Greenland expedition.

At the beginning of 1912 he introduced to the public for the first time his considerations for the continental movement. During the years from 1912 to 1913 Wegener took part for the second time in an expedition to Greenland. The Danish expedition under Johan Peter Koch spent the winter for the first time on Greenland.

After his return he married Else Köppen, the daughter of his mentor Wladimir Köppen. After the wedding the pair moved to Marburg. At the beginning of the First World War Wegener was drawn as a reserve officer immediately, fought at the west front and was found after two times wound active service-unsuitable. He was assigned to the army weather service and informed as a meteorologist among other things officers who should lead airships. In this time he also worked on his main work "The Origin of the Continents and Oceans" which appeared in 1915 the first time as a book.

In 1919 Wegener was appointed the leader of the department "meteorological research" of the German naval observatory ("Deutsche Seewarte") in Hamburg, which is why the Wegener family resettled to Hamburg. In 1921 he was appointed to the extraordinary professor to the university of Hamburg. Three years later Wegener received the call on the chair of meteorology and geophysics at the Karl Franzens University in Graz, Austria. There he turned first to physics and the optics of the atmosphere as well as the study of the Tromben (cyclones).

Then he focused again upon the scientific evaluation of his second Greenland expedition (ice measurements, atmospheric optics etc.) and published in 1929 the fourth edition of "The Origin of the Continents and Oceans". In the same year he proceeded together with his employees Johannes Georgi, Fritz Loewe and Ernst Sorge on his third Greenland expedition to find the most favourable place for the rise of the main expedition planned in the subsequent year in the Greenlandic ice sheet. On this expedition the thickness of the mainland ice and the all-year weather should be measured from three firm stations.

However, the expedition itself ran unhappily: Caused by strict budgetary politics of the government of Brüning less financial means than intended were available for the household of the imperial Ministry of the Interior also responsible for the science and with it for the household of the emergency community of the German science and for the budget of the expedition clearly. The hope, to receive other money, was low.

 The pressure for success on Wegener as an expedition leader was huge consequently. Besides, by unfavourable ice relations with the landing on the west coast it came to a time delay of 38 days which could not be made up in the following again. In addition, the research station "Eismitte" (in the essentials a cave dug in the ice) could not be equipped completely and be supplied with food; a fact which made overwintering there a difficult project.

In view of this situation Wegener undertook it himself to supply this station with additional food and fuel. Wegener died on the way back of "Eismitte" presumably about 16th of November, 1930. On the 12th of May, 1931 the searching expedition lead by Ernst Sorge and Karl Weiken found Wegener's gravesite which had been put on by his Greenlandic companion, Rasmus Willumsen, carefully. Only heart failure could be assumed as a cause of Wegener's death, as Willumsen and with him Wegener's diary remained missing.