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 Ludwig Ganghofer (7 July 1855 – 24 July 1920) was a German writer who became famous for his homeland novels. Biography He was born in Kaufbeuren, Bavaria, the son of forestry official August Ganghofer (1827–1900). His younger sister Ida (186 ...

. In 1945, Penck died in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

. In Vienna, he taught the Polish geographer

Eugeniusz Romer Eugeniusz Mikołaj Romer (3 February 1871 in Lviv ( pl, Lwów, german: Lemberg) – 28 January 1954) was a distinguished Poles, Polish geographer, cartography, cartographer and geopolitics, geopolitician, whose maps and atlases are still hig ...

and Ukrainian geographer Stepan Rudnytsky, who led the ethnographic efforts at the

Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920) The Paris Peace Conference was the formal meeting in 1919 and 1920 of the victorious Allies after the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers. Dominated by the leaders of Britain, France, the United States and ...

. 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 The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

led by

Carl O. Sauer Carl Ortwin Sauer (December 24, 1889 – July 18, 1975) was an American geographer. Sauer was a professor of geography at the University of California at Berkeley from 1923 until becoming professor emeritus in 1957. He has been called "the d ...

. Albrecht Penck was elected a member of the

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences ( sv, Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien) is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special ...

in 1905 and awarded the Founder's Medal of the

Royal Geographical Society The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), often shortened to RGS, is a learned society and professional body for geography based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical scien ...

in 1914.

Legacy

The glacier of Penckbreen in

Wedel Jarlsberg Land Wedel Jarlsberg Land is the land area between Van Keulenfjorden and Hornsund on the southwestern part of Spitsbergen, Svalbard. The area is largely covered with glaciers, and is completely within the Sør-Spitsbergen National Park. Named aft ...

Spitsbergen Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norw ...

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), also known as Spitsbergen, or Spitzbergen, is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. North of mainland Europe, it is about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. The islands of the group range ...

is named after him. Since 1958 the "Albrecht-Penck-Medaille" is awarded by the '' Deutsche Quartärvereinigung'' for accomplishments associated with

Quaternary science Quaternary science is the study which represents the systematic study of the Quaternary Period commonly known as the ice age. The Quaternary Period is a time period that started around 2.58 million years ago and continues today. This period ...

. In memory of Penck, the painter and sculptor Ralf Winkler adopted the nom de plume

A. R. Penck Ralf Winkler, alias A. R. Penck, who also used the pseudonyms ''Mike Hammer'', ''T. M.'', ''Mickey Spilane'', ''Theodor Marx'', "''a. Y.''" or just "''Y''" (5 October 1939 – 2 May 2017) was a German painter, printmaker, sculpt ...

in 1966.

Works

* ''Morphologie der Erdoberfläche''; 2 vols, 1894 * (with

Eduard Bruckner Eduard Model Accessories is a Czech manufacturer of plastic models and finescale model accessories. Formed in 1989 in the city of Most, Eduard began in a rented cellar as a manufacturer of photoetched brass model components. Following the suc ...

) ''Die Alpen im Eiszeitalter''; 3 vols, 1909 * '' 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 The International Map of the World or IMW (also called the Millionth Map of the World, after its scale of 1:1 000 000) was a project to create a complete map of the world according to internationally agreed standards. It was first proposed by th ...

* 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)"'' rchive 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. nd 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

* *

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