Dr. Katrin Kleemann was awarded the prestigious Ritter Memorial Fellowship for the German Maritime Museum (DSM) / Leibniz Institute for Maritime History in Bremerhaven and spent a month conducting research at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. There - 9,000 kilometers away from Bremerhaven - the environmental historian came across a cog and began researching an underwater canyon.
Looking out of the window, Dr. Katrin Kleemann saw palm trees, a pier whose end disappears into the fog, and surfers plunging into the waves of the Pacific. For four weeks, she swapped her desk in the DSM office with a view of the North Sea for the Pacific setting in La Jolla in the San Diego area. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which is part of the University of California San Diego (UCSD), invited Kleemann for a research stay. The Ritter Memorial Scholarship, worth USD 30,000, is awarded every two years and gave the DSM scientist access to the institution's archives and libraries.
At the Maritime Museum in San Diego, Kleemann was initially surprised by a very familiar sight: "On the BERKLEY, a steamship from the 19th century, there was an exhibition of ship models. One of them looked very familiar to me, I recognize it everywhere, even almost 9,000 kilometers away from Bremerhaven - a model of the Bremer Kogge," says Kleemann happily. The exhibit was made in 2009 and brings the history of shipping far away from the Hanseatic region to life.
In La Jolla, Kleemann combed through the institute's libraries and archives. In relation to her research topic at the DSM on the history of the German Maritime Observatory, Kleemann hoped to gain insights in California into the extent to which international networks and data exchange existed until the decline of the observatory in 1945 - and with which partners. The weather institution was the institution that supported seafarers with knowledge about the natural conditions of the sea and meteorological phenomena. Global weather data was collected, especially under its founding director Georg von Neumayer before the start of both world wars, and there was a worldwide network with other institutes. "I could not prove any direct exchange between Scripps and the observatory. However, the observatory was strongly oriented towards international collaborations:
There was an exchange of research reports and results. I was given the tip to look for the Seewarte stamp in books at other research institutions and libraries," says Kleemann. In this way, the environmental historian hopes to find further publications from the institution, which was destroyed in the Second World War and removed from storage during the attack.
After exchanging ideas with other researchers and the constant view of the pier and the Pacific, Kleemann made another discovery: "Just off the coast in La Jolla there is an undersea canyon that drops away steeply. I took a close look at the model and will be working with researchers in California to investigate how a canyon of this kind can form and how knowledge about it has been produced over the course of history," says Kleemann. The canyon is a biotope in which numerous coral species colonize. The topic complements Kleemann's Seewarten project perfectly. She is therefore delighted with the new contacts and ideas she has gained. “The observatory is not very well known in the USA.” Perhaps that will now change.
Dr. Katrin Kleemann
k.kleemann@dsm.museum
https://www.dsm.museum/en/press-area/from-the-north-sea-to-the-pacific
Katrin Kleemann an der Pier.
Quelle: Katrin Kleemann
Copyright: DSM / Katrin Kleemann
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Geschichte / Archäologie, Meer / Klima, Umwelt / Ökologie
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Forschungsprojekte
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