Hermann Klaatsch

Hermann August Ludwig Klaatsch ( born March 10, 1863 in Berlin, † January 5, 1916 in Eisenach ) was a German physician, anatomist and anthropologist comparative. He also emerged as Prehistorical and Ethnographikasammler.

Life

Hermann Klaatsch came from a reaching back to the 17th century family of doctors. His father, August Hermann Martin Klaatsch (1827-1885), had dedicated as a student of the eminent scientist Johannes Peter Müller, from 1833 professor of anatomy, physiology and pathology in Berlin and founder of modern physiology, originally of comparative anatomy, which he also 1850 received his doctorate. External circumstances related, however, that he turned to the practical career. He and his wife Julie Klaatsch, born Schwendler (1829-1895), he had three children: Clara Klaatsch, married by Gossler (? 1857 - ), Hermann Klaatsch ( 1863-1916 ) and Julie Klaatsch, married von Hake ( 1867-1910 ).

Hermann Klaatsch went to the Royal Wilhelms -Gymnasium in Berlin and began the age of eighteen to study medicine at the University of Heidelberg, Carl Englemann, whose influence led him to in the first semesters, to devote himself to comparative anatomy. 1885 was Klaatsch the medical state and the Doctor degree from the University of Heidelberg and then accepted the invitation Heinrich Wilhelm Waldeyer, the one-time leading comparative anatomist, an assistant at the Anatomical Institute in Berlin to take over. This place has held up Klaatsch, 1888. Subsequently, he was again summoned by Charles Gegenbaur to Heidelberg to take over a vacant assistant position at the local Institute of Anatomy. On July 26, 1890 Klaatsch habilitated at the University of Heidelberg as a lecturer in human anatomy. 1895 he was appointed extraordinary professor of human anatomy at the University of Heidelberg. In 1896, he retired again but from the Institute of Association and devoted himself entirely to his private studies and lectures. In the following years were also several trips to France, Belgium, Croatia and England, where he pursued also anthropological and palaeolithic issues, as well as a cruise to Spitsbergen, which he used to study the pelagic fauna.

From 1904 to 1907 took Klaatsch at the suggestion of his friend and professional colleague, the Heidelberg anthropologists and Urgeschichtlers Otto Schoetensack a three-year trip to Australia, which concerned the issue of Anthropogenesis should be primarily on Australian soil. After significant paleoanthropological discoveries in Europe ( Neanderthals ), but also in Asia ( Java Man ), is Schoetensack had increasingly thought about that continent could be considered as a whole the country of origin of mankind. He took the view that the Australian continent was the original home of the human race. Klaatsch the final judgment Schoetensacks about the origin of humanity in Australia although never completely closed in itself, however, seized the opportunity to examine the example of the Australian Aboriginal issues closer to the process of the Incarnation and to clarify if possible. Since Schoetensack could not make the long trip for health reasons themselves, the two scientists agreed that Klaatsch should tour the fifth continent and collect evidence for the local origin of mankind. Financially supported by the Frankfurt mine shareholder and principal owner of the Lancelot - tin mine in North Queensland, Franz Egon Clotten, traveled Klaatsch from in February 1904.

In the first year traveled Klaatsch Queensland (Brisbane, Cairns, Cooktown and Cape York Peninsula ) and became friends with the eminent doctor, ethnologists and Security Officer of Aborigines, Walter Edmund Roth on. Then came Klaatsch to Sydney, where he remained for five months. He then traveled to Melbourne, Warrnambool, Adelaide and traveled via Albany to Western Australia. Along the west coast he came to Broome, from where he took a trip to Bali and Java. Weakened by malaria, he came in May 1906 Back to Broome, Australia. From there he traveled via Wyndham and Derby to Darwin in the Northern Territory and also spent two weeks on Melville Iceland. From Darwin he traveled via Sydney to Tasmania. The stay on the island he interrupted for a scientist conference in Adelaide in January, 1907. In February 1907, he departed from Australia and arrived by sea voyage across the Pacific as well as via Canada and the United States on April 3, 1907 back to Germany.

As evidence for the emergence of humanity in Australia could find so hard and Klaatsch templates simultaneously requests from German ethnographic museums to collect ethnographic objects for their collections, Klaatsch went during his journey more and more for the collection of ethnographic objects. Thus he came in contact with Aborigines in remote areas of Australia. He made notes and drawings and collected a total of more than 2000 ethnographic objects of the Australian Aborigines, which he sent from Australia in several tranches to the museums in Germany.

After his return in April 1907 Klaatsch was appointed as an associate professor of Anthropology and Ethnology at the University of Breslau. As an independent associate professor in Breslau Klaatsch was assigned to the Institute of Anatomy and thus the medical faculty. Known are its comparative anatomical studies on primates as well as his work on tribal and racial history. He also made a significant contribution to the first description of the designated Homo heidelbergensis mandible of wall.

1902 appeared the treatise formation and development of the human race in outer space Kraemer and humanity. Klaatsch was one of the scientists who early took the view that humans could not have evolved from apes. The " detour" through the tree and climbing animal would have a corresponding adjustment requires, which would have left their mark on the human anatomy.