ALBERT

Description: During Leg ANT-XXIII/9 on the 31st March 2007 the German research vessel Polarstern mapped a significant bathymetric feature with its swath sonar system at the north-west margin of the Kerguelen Plateau. Due to the fact, that the feature was discovered just a month after the third IPY 2007/2008 has started, it was named after Graf Wilczek who, together with Carl Weyprecht, had promoted the first IPY. The undersea feature name proposal was officialy accepted by the GEBCO Sub-Committee on Undersea Feature Names (SCUFN) at its 20th meeting in late July and was added to the GEBCO Gazetteer of UFN (http://www.iho.shom.fr/COMMITTEES/GEBCO/SCUFN/scufn_intro.htm). ______________ Graf Hans Wilczek (Notation of the name from the book of Wilczek's daughter Elisabeth Kinsky- Wilczek). The Austrian naval hero Tegetthoff in 1871 planned an expedition to the southern hemisphere. The geophysicist G. Neumayer (1826-1909) already was selected as its chief scientist. Also the naval officer Carl Weyprecht (1838-1881) and the mountaineer Julius Payer (1841-1915) were to participate. Because of the sudden death of Tegettoff the project came to a halt and eventually was cancelled. By support of the well known geographer August Petermann (1822-1878) Weyprecht and Payer made a voyage into the Barents Sea which made them believe having seen the "open polar sea". An additional undertaking to confirm and to extend the find was obvious. At this stage of the affair count Hans Wilczek (1837-1922) got involved. He not only fostered a new expedition with a considerable sum of money, but he participated in commanding a support vessel to Novaya Zemlya. Wilczek managed to get home but the expedition vessel under Weyprecht's command became imprisoned in the pack for two years and at least had to be abandoned. After an adventurous trip back to civilisation Weyprecht changed his mind in what he considered the best way of polar research. Together with Wilczek in 1875 he started the promotion of international station-based polar exploration - the IPY was born. Wilczek guaranteed the constitution of an Austrian station on Novaya Zemlya and was ready to winter over there personally. Because of several political and other obstructions the beginning of the IPY was delayed till 1882. Wilczek's friend Weyprecht had passed away already. The command of the Austrian station, eventually erected on Jan Mayen, was given to Emil v. Wohlgemuth (1843-1896). Wilczek financed the main part of the Austrian IPY participation. Wilczek is described as honest and popular. On the one hand acquainted with the most prominent persons of his days, he respected everybody and had many relationships with scientists and artists. There is a kind of autobiography under the title: Hans Wilczek erzählt seinen Enkeln Erinnerungen aus seinem Leben (Hans Wilczek tells his grandchildren reminiscences from his life); edited by his daughter Elisabeth Kinsky-Wilczek, Graz 1933, 502 p. The book is available in an English version: Happy Retrospect - the Reminiscences of Count Wilczek 1837-1922, Bell and Sons, London 1934, 295 p.

Description: The first International Polar Year (IPY) was an international effort to perform continous meteorological and geophysical observations over a time period of two years (1882-1883). Eleven nations established twelve research stations in the Arctic along with thirteen auxilary stations. Two stations were operated on the southern hemisphere (South Georgia and Tierra del Fuego). The data were published in 26 volumes on 8700+ pages of reports, descriptions, tables and graphs in total. The list of meteorological parameters includes temperature, wind, pressure, clouds, precipitation, evaporation, humidity and radiation. In the light of Global Change and the intensification of observations and continous measurements in both polar regions, long-time series increase in importance. The observations of the first IPY from the 19th century enable us to extend the data from the 20th century even more back into the past. In the occasion of the fourth IPY (2007-2009) WDC-MARE decided to digitize the complete set of meteorological data in full hourly resolution and publish it in its reports and make it available in Open Access via the data library PANGAEA.

Description: Eduard Dallmann, of Blumenthal on the lower Weser, went to sea at the age of 15 in 1845. He took command of his first ship, the whaling vessel Planet, in 1859 on a whaling voyage to the sperm whaling grounds in the Pacific and to the Sea of Okhotsk. Over the period 1864–66 he commanded the Hawaiian vessel W.C. Talbot on trading voyages to the Alaskan and Chukotka shores of the Bering and Chukchi seas. On 17 August 1866 he sighted and landed on Ostrov Vrangelya (Wrangel Island), a year prior to its sighting by Thomas Long, credited by many with the first sighting. For the following three years he commanded the whaling ship Count Bismarck on a whaling cruise to the tropics, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the Bering and Chukchi seas. In 1873–74 he made the first Antarctic whaling voyage aboard Groenland, and discovered and charted the west coasts of Anvers, Brabant, and Liège islands, as well as many smaller islands and straits including Bismarck Strait. He spent the 1875 whaling season as expert consultant, still aboard Groenland, on the Davis Strait and Baffin Bay whaling grounds. Then, to complete his career in polar waters, from 1877 to 1883 he made annual attempts to haul freight to the mouth of the Yenisey River, to be exchanged for grain cargoes brought down that river by barge. Of the seven attempts, only four were successful, the rest being foiled by ice conditions in the Kara Sea, and on the basis of this record, Baron von Knoop, the Russian entrepreneur who was financing the operation, decided to cut his losses. This ended Dallmann's career in polar waters.

Description: Die deutsche Polarforschung, die sich über Dekaden in Kooperation mit dänischen Partnern entwickelt hat, kann 2018 ihr 150-jähriges Jubiläum feiern. Eine großzügige und international sichtbare deutsch-dänische historische Ausstellung zur Grönlandforschung sollte ausgerichtet werden, die geeignet sein wird, in Deutschland und Dänemark eine breite Öffentlichkeit anzusprechen. Der Focus läge auf der geowissenschaftlichen Erfassung Grönlands und der Grönlandsee, aber auch kultur- und sozialwissenschaftliche Aspekte sollten gebührend berücksichtigt werden. Die enge Kooperation deutscher Wissenschaftler mit grönländischen und dänischen Partnern bei der Bearbeitung der grönländischen Natur- und Besiedelungsgeschichte zwischen dem 19. und 21. Jahrhundert gilt als ein Juwel internationaler Synergien im Rahmen der Polarforschung. Beachtlich ist auch: Bereits ab 1732 siedelten deutsche Missionare in zunehmender Zahl an Grönlands Westküste und trugen bis zum Jahre 1900 erheblich zum Verständnis und zur Verbreitung der Kenntnis über ihre Wahlheimat bei. Die den Europäern weitgehend unbekannte grönländische Ostküste zu explorieren war ein wichtiges Motiv deutscher Polarforschung 1868. Später wurde Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) mit seiner Teilnahme an zwei dänischen Expeditionen ein wichtiger Protagonist der deutsch-dänischen wissenschaftlichen Beziehungen. Mit eigenen Untersuchungen hat er die besondere geowissenschaftliche Bedeutung des grönländischen Inlandeises herausgestellt, die auch in jüngster Zeit bei deutsch-dänischen Kooperationen insbesondere bei den Kernbohrungen auf dem Inlandeis ihren Niederschlag fand.