Albrecht Penck
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Albrecht Penck (25 September 1858 – 7 March 1945) was a German geographer and geologist and the father of Walther Penck.


Biography

Born in Reudnitz near
Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
, Penck became a university professor in
Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...
, Austria, from 1885 to 1906, and in
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
from 1906 to 1927. There he was also the director of the Institute and Museum for Oceanography by 1918. He dedicated himself to geomorphology and
climatology Climatology (from Greek , ''klima'', "place, zone"; and , ''-logia'') or climate science is the scientific study of Earth's climate, typically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of at least 30 years. This modern field of study ...
, and he raised the international profile of the Vienna school of physical geography. With Eduard Brückner, he coauthored ''Die Alpen im Eiszeitalter'', a work in which the two scientists identified the four ice ages of the European
Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...
( Gunz,
Mindel The Mindel () is a river in Bavaria, southern Germany. The Mindel originates west of Kaufbeuren, in the Allgäu region, and flows generally north. It flows into the Danube (right tributary) in Gundremmingen, east of Günzburg. The towns Mindelhe ...
,
Riss The Riss (german: Riß) is a small river in Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany, right tributary of the Danube. Its source is in Upper Swabia, between Bad Waldsee and Bad Schussenried. It flows north, through the town of Biberach an der Ri ...
,
Würm The Würm is a river in Bavaria, Germany, right tributary of the Amper. The length of the river is , or including the ''Steinbach'', the main feed of Lake Starnberg. It drains the overflow from Lake Starnberg and flows swiftly through the villag ...
); these being named after the river valleys that were the first indication of each glaciation. In 1886, he married the sister of the successful
Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
n regional writer Ludwig Ganghofer. In 1945, Penck died in Prague. In Vienna, he taught the Polish geographer Eugeniusz Romer and Ukrainian geographer Stepan Rudnytsky, who led the ethnographic efforts at the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920). Penck arranged for the posthumous publication of his son's work ''Der Morphologische Analyse'' in 1924. However he did not take any stance for or against his son's theories on geomorphology. In 1928, Penck taught as a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley led by Carl O. Sauer. Albrecht Penck was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1905 and awarded the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1914.


Legacy

The glacier of Penckbreen in Wedel Jarlsberg Land at Spitsbergen, Svalbard is named after him. Since 1958 the "Albrecht-Penck-Medaille" is awarded by the '' Deutsche Quartärvereinigung'' for accomplishments associated with Quaternary science. In memory of Penck, the painter and sculptor Ralf Winkler adopted the nom de plume A. R. Penck in 1966.


Works

* ''Morphologie der Erdoberfläche''; 2 vols, 1894 * (with Eduard Bruckner) ''Die Alpen im Eiszeitalter''; 3 vols, 1909 * ''Summit accordance, Die Gipfelflur der Alpen'' (1919) * With geographer Eduard Richter, he was editor of the ''Atlas der Österreichischen Alpenseen'' (Atlas of the Austrian Alpine Lakes, 1895). * International Map of the World


Further reading

* Hanna Bremer: ''Albrecht Penck (1858–1945) and Walther Penck (1888–1923), two German Geomorphologists.'' In: ''Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie'', Vol. 27, 1983, pp. 129–138. * Richard J. Chorley, Robert P. Beckinsale & Antony J. Dunn: ''The History of the Study of Landforms or the Development of Geomorphology, Vol. 2., The Life and Work of William Morris Davis'', London 1973. * Nicolas Ginsburger: ''"La guerre, la plus terribles des érosions". Cultures de guerre et géographes universitaires. France, Allemagne, Etats-Unis (1914-1921)"'' [archive], unpublished PhD, Université de Paris-Ouest-Nanterre-La Défense, 2010, 1682 p. * Nicolas Ginsburger: ''"Der Berliner Geograph Albrecht Penck im Ersten Weltkrieg: Die Mobilmachungen eines Akademikers (1914-1920)"''. In: ''Acta Historica Leopoldina'',75, 2019, pp. 151–163. * Michael Heffernan: ''Professor Penck's Bluff: Geography, Espionage and Hysteria in World War I.'' In: ''Scottish Geographical Journal'', Vol. 116, no. 4, 2000, pp. 267–282. * Norman Henniges: ''"Sehen lernen": Die Exkursionen des Wiener Geographischen Instituts und die Formierung der Praxiskultur der geographischen (Feld-)Beobachtung in der Ära Albrecht Penck (1885-1906).''] In: ''Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Geographischen Gesellschaft'', Vol. 156, Wien 2014, pp. 141–170
(online)
* Norman Henniges
''"Naturgesetze der Kultur“: Die Wiener Geographen und die Ursprünge der „Volks- und Kulturbodentheorie“''
In: ''ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies'', Vol. 14, 4, 2015, pp. 1309–1351. * Norman Henniges: ''Die Spur des Eises: eine praxeologische Studie über die wissenschaftlichen Anfänge des Geologen und Geographen Albrecht Penck (1858-1945).'' (= ''Beiträge zur regionalen Geographie.'' Vol. 69), Leibniz-Institut f. Länderkunde, Leipzig 2017, , 556 p
(online)
* Norman Henniges: ''Albrecht Penck''. In: Ingo Haar, Michael Fahlbusch (eds.): ''Handbuch der völkischen Wissenschaften'', 2nd ed., Berlin 2017, pp. 570–577. * Alexander Pinwinkler: ''„Hier war die große Kulturgrenze, die die deutschen Soldaten nur zu deutlich fühlten …“ Albrecht Penck (1858–1945) und die deutsche „Volks- und Kulturbodenforschung“.'' In: ''Österreich in Geschichte und Literatur.'' Vol. 55, 2011, pp. 180–191. * Ingo Schaefer: ''Der Weg Albrecht Pencks nach München, zur Geographie und zur alpinen Eiszeitforschung.'' In: ''Mitteilungen der Geographischen Gesellschaft in München.'' Vol 74, 1989, pp. 5–25. * Hans-Dietrich Schultz: ''„Ein wachsendes Volk braucht Raum.“ Albrecht Penck als politischer Geograph.'' In: Bernhard Nitz, Hans-Dietrich Schultz, Marlies Schulz (eds.): ''1810–2010: 200 Jahre Geographie in Berlin'' (= ''Berliner Geographische Arbeiten.'' Vol. 115). Berlin 2010, pp. 91–135. [2nd ed. 2011, pp. 99–153.] * Hans-Dietrich Schultz
''Albrecht Penck: Vorbereiter und Wegbereiter der NS-Lebensraumpolitik?''
In: ''E&G Quaternary Sci. J.'', Vol. 66, 2018, pp. 115–129. * Steven Seegel: ''Map Men: Transnational Lives and Deaths of Geographers in the Making of East Central Europe'', University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2018.


Citations


References

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External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Penck, Albrecht 1858 births 1945 deaths German geographers German geomorphologists 19th-century German geologists German climatologists Quaternary geologists Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Humboldt University of Berlin faculty Academics of the University of Vienna Scientists from Leipzig