Leitmeier, Hans

Susanne Hehenberger — Fri, 25 Nov 2022 11:21:56 +0000

Leitmeier, Hans

Susanne Hehenberger Wed, 12/07/2022 - 09:42

Hans Leitmeier

24 October 1885 Vienna – 8 June 1967 Vienna

Hans Leitmeier, son of a commercial clerk, received his doctorate in mineralogy from the University of Graz in 1908. He began his academic career in 1909 at the Mineralogical Department of the University of Vienna, where he took up the position of assistant in 1912 and habilitated in 1916. From 1921 he taught at the University of Vienna and received an extraordinary professorship there in 1929. In 1925 he was awarded the membership in the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. From 1925 to 1938 Leitmeier was secretary of the "volkstümliche Universitätskurse", which had been led and politicized by the German nationalist paleontologist and paleobiologist Othenio Abel (1875–1946) since 1922. Leitmeier can be attributed to the German nationalist anti-Semitic career network "Bärenhöhle" ("Bear's Den") around Abel at the University of Vienna, which significantly influenced the filling of professorial positions at the university. After separating from his first wife, the botanist Bertha Bennesch (1886–1974), Leitmeier married the divorced anthropologist Daisy Horwitz, née Solomonica, who had left the Jewish Community only a few days before, in early 1934. Because of this marriage, the mineralogist was retired by force after the "Anschluss" of Austria to the German Reich as of 31 May 1938. Leitmeier was thus cut off from the academic networks of the University of Vienna and from a scientific career. As of December 1938, he was no longer allowed to use the library and collection holdings or the laboratories of the university institutes. In particular, he had to abandon his research in the mountains of Hohe Tauern, which he was not to complete even after 1945. Since Leitmeier could not continue his scientific work during the Nazi period, he sold a total of 124 minerals from the Hohe Tauern to the Natural History Museum Vienna between 1941 and 1943.

After the end of World War II, Leitmeier was appointed full professor and director of the Department of Mineralogy and Petrography at the University of Vienna on 14 November 1945, which he was to preside over until his retirement in 1957. In 1946, the Austrian Academy of Sciences elected him a corresponding member. After his appointment as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Vienna in the academic year 1949/50, he campaigned for the reintegration of former National Socialists. Since 2009, Hans Leitmeier has been listed in the Memorial Book for the Victims of National Socialism at the University of Vienna. In 2021, the Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended that those minerals which Hans Leitmeier had sold to the Natural History Museum in Vienna be handed over to his heirs. On 8 September 2024, the heirs of Hans Leitmeier relinquished the fossil collection, which remained at the Natural History Museum Vienna.

Keywords

Nazi persecutee

Nazi asset expropriation

University professor

Thomas Mayer

16 June 2025

Publications about the person / institution

Beiratsbeschluss Hans Leitmeier, 5.11.2021, URL: provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Leitmeier_Hans_2021-11-05.pdf (21.11.2022).

Vera M. F. Hammer/Franz Pertlik, Hans Leitmeier (1885–1967). Akademischer Lehrer, Dekan, Forscher und Sammler an der Wende von der analytischen zur experimentellen Mineralogie, in: Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Mineralogischen Gesellschaft 160 (2014) 73–108.

Andreas Huber, Rückkehr erwünscht. Im Nationalsozialismus aus "politischen“ Gründen vertriebene Lehrende der Universität Wien, Wien 2016.

Roman Pfefferle/Hans Pfefferle, Glimpflich entnazifiziert. Die Professorenschaft der Universität Wien von 1944 in den Nachkriegsjahren, Göttingen 2014.

Klaus Taschwer, Geheimsache Bärenhöhle. Wie eine antisemitische Professorenclique nach 1918 an der Universität Wien jüdische Forscherinnen und Forscher vertrieb, in: Regina Fritz/Grzegorz Rossolinski/Jana Starek, Alma Mater Antisemitica. Akademisches Milieu, Juden und Antisemitismus an den Universitäten Europas zwischen 1918 und 1939 (= Beiträge zur Holocaustforschung des Wiener Wiesenthal Instituts für Holocaust-Studien (VWI) 3), Wien 2016, 221–242.

Klaus Taschwer, Braun-schwarze Beziehungsgeflechte. Zur Bedeutung antisemitischer Netzwerke im akademischen Milieu der Zwischenkriegszeit und zu ihren Nachwirkungen nach 1938 und 1945, in: Gertrude Enderle-Burcel/Ilse Reiter-Zatloukal (Hg.), Antisemitismus in Österreich 1933–1938, Wien-Köln-Weimar 2015, 769–784.

Publications by the person / institution

Selection:

Hans Leitmeier, Über die Entstehung der Kluftmineralien in den Hohen Tauern, in: Tschermaks mineralogische und petrographische Mitteilungen 1 (1950) 4, 390–413.
Hans Leitmeier, Mineralien des südlichen Venedigergebietes, in: Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Mineralogischen Gesellschaft 11 (1948–1949/1950), 115–122.
Hans Leitmeier, Sind die Ergebnisse geologischer und petrologischer Forschung in den Ostalpen unvereinbar? in: Jahrbuch der Geologischen Bundesanstalt 98 (1955), 33–66.
Hans Leitmeier, Die Probleme der Bildung der "Zentralgneise" in den Hohen Tauern und einiger Mineralparagenesen in den Ostalpen und die Bedeutung von Spurenelement-Analysen zu ihrer Lösung, in: Tschermaks mineralogische und petrographische Mitteilungen 5 (1956) 4, 303–334.