Otto Schoetensack

Otto Karl Friedrich Schoetensack ( born July 12, 1850 in Stendal, † December 23, 1912 in Ospedaletti, Liguria, Italy ) was a German anthropologist and prehistorians, in 1908 the lower jaw of Mauer scientifically described and named as Homo heidelbergensis. Later paleoanthropologists used this species name to refer to the European descendants of Homo erectus, that is for fossils of the Homo genus from the time that lived about 600,000 to 200,000 years ago.

Life

Family and Youth

Otto Schoetensack was the youngest of five sons of Stendal school teacher Heinrich August Schoetensack (1812-1891) and his wife Julie Schoetensack, born stranglers. The scientific areas of interest of Schoetensacks father were linguistics and history. Schoetensack Otto married in 1878 Marie Schneider, the daughter of a doctor from Ludwigshafen am Rhein. The marriage produced two sons, the legal scholar August Schoetensack (1880-1957) and the jurist Otto Schoetensack junior (1883-1963), established lawyer in his parents' house in Heidelberg, flowers road 1

In 1867, Otto Schoetensack left as Sekundaner high school and began a year later, an apprenticeship as a druggist in Hamburg. This practical training taught him the basics of his later success as an entrepreneur its chemical plant in Ludwigshafen am Rhein.

Career as an entrepreneur

In the fall of 1877 Schoetensack founded the company " Hofmann & Schoetensack oHG", it " Hofmann Chemical Factory formerly u Schoetensack AG " was in the same year with headquarters in Mannheim and the plant in Ludwigshafen forth. The share capital of the company amounted to 900,000 marks. The company employed 200 workers in production. The company supplied including large amounts of ether to the Mannheim entrepreneurs (Boehringer Mannheim). Schoetensacks company was a manufacturer of chloral hydrate, chloroform and gallic acids.

The company prospered, but since no adequate precautions to protect against chemicals had been taken, legal regulations and sufficient knowledge of the toxic relationships here on, there was not yet in the late founding years, the economic success brought regrettable, serious consequences for Schoetensacks health. Otto Schoetensack increasingly suffered from respiratory affections. A chronifizierende bronchitis was added, so that he was forced to sell his industrial enterprises. Financially secure, to Schoetensack now henceforth devoted his main interests in science.

Career as a research

1883 Otto Schoetensack went with his wife and two sons to Freiburg im Breisgau. He now began mid-thirties, a study of mineralogy, geology, anthropology, paleontology and complementary sciences. 1885 Otto was Schoetensack Museum of the University of Freiburg Dr. phil at Freiburg University with a dissertation on The Nephritoide the Mineralogical and Ethnolographisch - prehistoric. doctorate, after which it the University of Freiburg transferred the management of the museum in 1886.

1888 Otto moved Schoetensack enriched with profound knowledge, his family moved to Heidelberg. Schoetensack employed increasingly the genesis of higher life, the history of Homo sapiens, where the man come home. As a paleontologist, he turned his attention to the sedimentary rocks in the sand pits around. Thus situated on the one near the wall, mine Graf Rain. The owner of this pit, Mr. Roesch, he was on friendly terms. Otto Schoetensack allowed to monitor the pit and saw to it that the workers carefully circumvented with the finds, and these reported him immediately in Heidelberg.

1904 Schoetensack habilitated at the scientific- mathematical faculty of the University of Heidelberg for prehistory of man with a thesis on The mammalian fauna of the Neolithic. This work was a scientific analysis of his explorations of the sediments and fossils of the surrounding, fossils bearing sand pits substantially.

The finding of the lower jaw of Mauer

The discovery that Schoetensacks crowned scientific career, contributed to the fall of 1907: On 21 October, in the sand pit Graf Rain at wall by the worker Daniel Hartmann a fossil mandible recovered ( lower jaw of wall). The next day Schoetensack was taught.

The nearly 20 -year-long systematic monitoring of fossils bearing sand pit had paid off and Schoetensack could, however, after intensive research and support including by Hermann Klaatsch prove that it was the lower jaw of a member of the genus Homo in the fossil finds. He named the fossil of the species as a reminiscence of the locality and his adopted home of Homo heidelbergensis. In his scientific masterpiece - The lower jaw of Homo heidelbergensis from the sands of Mauer near Heidelberg. A contribution to the paleontology of the people. - He made up a year later together his findings and theories. The work was worldwide with the Schoetensack known, is still considered exemplary Fund description. Schoetensack let the reference of a surveyor to the centimeter measured.

Last years

Schoetensacks health deteriorated more and more. He was barely able to keep his scientific presentations to a larger audience. Otto Schoetensack died at the age of 62 years, on December 23, 1912 in the Italian Ospedaletti, a town on the Italian Riviera, located near Sanremo, where he had hoped for relief from his progressive respiratory disease.

Otto Schoetensacks wife Marie, nee Schneider survived her husband by 26 years. She died in 1938 in Heidelberg. Marie Schneider was at the Heidelberg Mountain Cemetery, in the Forest Department B ( WB), Series 1, buried. Her sons August and Otto Schoetensack left at the mother's death, transfer the bones of her father by the Italian Cemetery in Ospedaletti to Heidelberg. Here Otto Schoetensack was back at the place of his most successful researchers time, reburied on Mount cemetery on the side of his wife Marie.

The Schoetensacks lived in their time in Heidelberg in Flower Street 1 in a house that they had acquired in 1888. Otto Schoetensack to honor, a bronze plaque was attached to this house.

Honors

Publications (selection)

• With Eduard Krause: The megalithic tombs (stone grave chambers ) in Germany. In: Journal of Anthropology. Volume 25, 1893, p 105
• About the importance of the " stool " funeral. In: Journal of Anthropology. Volume 33, 1901, p 522
• The lower jaw of Homo heidelbergensis from the sands of Mauer near Heidelberg. A contribution to the paleontology of the people. Publisher of Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig, 1908 ( digitized online) - Gutenberg eText