Franz Zimmermann (1890–1959) – paleobotanik, geolog, muzealnik

Abstract

Franz Zimmermann (1890–1959) – paleobotanist, geologist, museologist.A b s t r a c t. This article presents the short biography of Franz Zimmermann – the German paleobotanist, geologist and museum curator from Wa³brzych. His great collections and publications are a significant input in exploring of Devonian and Carboniferous fossil flora. In 1920 he started his work as a teacher in the Mine School (Niederschlesische Bergschule). Since 1927 he was taking care of the famous geological collection and he created the most valuable macrofossils collections of the Devonian and Carboniferous flora. In 1926 as a member of the Wałbrzych Museum Association (Waldenburger Museumsverein e.V), he was co-creating the Museum in Wałbrzych (Heimatmusem), where he was a curator of the geological-paleontological section. As a correspondent of the Prussian Geological Office in Berlin he was publishing his scientific papers independently or in cooperation with Prof. Walther Gothan. After the second world war his collection has been disposed to the Museum of the Polish Geological Institute in Warsaw, while he became the employee of the local station of the Polish Geological Institute in Szczawno Zdrój. In the years 1948–1956 he created another great collection of Carboniferous macrofossils (ca 4000 specimens), which was one of the biggestachievement of the Lowersilesian science in the 1950s. He was undisputed authority for the group of the Polish scientists like Halina Żakowa and others. He elaborated the guide through the Sudetes Mountains for the summit of the Polish geologists in 1948. He conducted studies and published papers about vegetation of the Lower Carboniferous. Upper Carboniferous fern seeds and the floristic boundary between the Early and Late Carboniferous. His informal student and successor, Eufrozyn Sagan, became Wałbrzych museologist. In 1957 Franz Zimmermann left Poland, but his guide on how to identify plants and a synthesis of the knowledge about Carboniferous flora of the Lower Silesian Coal Basin, was not published in spite of finished text. His collections, reduced to a large extent, is currently stored and exhibited in the Lowersilesian Section of the PGI-NRI in Wrocław and the State Geological Museum.