Gustav Carl Laube

1839 – 1923 

Gustav Carl Laube, a geologist and palaeontologist born in Teplice. His work was devoted not only to the geology of West Bohemia and the Ore Mountains, but together with Jan Krejčí and Antonín Frič he was also involved in the geological mapping of Bohemia. His name is also associated with the Austro-Hungarian North Pole expedition and with the Czech discovery of a fossilised Andrias giant salamander - Andrias bohemicus.

 

Fundamental for the work of Gustav Laube is the place and time in which he was active – i.e. northwest Bohemia, or the Ore Mountains with their mysterious depths rich in precious metals, the band of thermal springs in the foothills of the Ore Mountains, the Podkrušnohorská pánev basin filled with Tertiary sediments, from which every day the miners bring baskets full of fossils. The time in which he studied and was an active scientist is the time when the old descriptive geology was changing into modern geology. Ideas about the origins of rocks were becoming established, as was the awareness that geological time meant more than 6000 years back to the biblical flood. Last but not least, Laube was a man living on a geological cusp (the cusp of the West Bohemian crust fault) and a cultural one: his attitude is nationalist-minded German, but also Czech. He is also a German-speaking and writing author, the rector of the German part of Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague (in 1893–1894), and also a collector of Ore Mountains folklore. He named his salamander find Andrias bohemicus – i.e. outright Bohemian. He even attributes it a greater age than other European findings, on the grounds that our Czech salamander is smaller in size, yet older and more original. (The debate around the discovery of this fossil in Břešťany near Teplice (in 1897) was also one source of inspiration for Čapek’s War of the Newts.)

Gustav C. Laube thus became one of the fathers of European geologists, in areas to which he had a close affinity. He focused on topical questions that suggested themselves to him. Besides describing the origin of spa springs and the formation of the Ore Mountains, he also studied the discipline of what we would nowadays term hydrogeology. In 1879 underground waters broke through into the Dölinger mine and as a result the Pravřídlo thermal spring disappeared from the Teplice spa. Laube, together with others, was called upon to resolve the matter, now comparable, for example, with a situation where an internet connection or the power grid goes down – the social urgency of the matter is implied by contemporary debates in the press. Laube, together with a team of scientists and engineers, succeeded in resolving the problem and the springs were again located as predicted, on the basis of the hydrogeological conditions. Thanks to his know-how, Laube later drew up proposals for supplies of drinking water to various towns and cities, including Prague. 

The enormous number of fossils that came from the mining areas of the brown coal basin provided Laube with some exemplary study material. As these materials were archived in the Teplice Regional Museum, Ústí nad Labem Municipal Museum and in the National Museum in Prague, at least records, or even actual fossils, have been preserved from the Tertiary period. The Tertiary sediments were located above the strata of brown coal and were gradually fully mined out; they are very rare in Bohemia, as most of them were carried away by erosion during the Quaternary period, and so it may be said that in the aforementioned museums, thanks to Laube and contemporary geologists and collectors, we now possess the only comprehensive record of the Tertiary.

Laube was highly versatile and his interests varied depending on the current needs of research. Although some early descriptions of the origin and formation of the Ore Mountains have become more of a matter of historical interest in era of modern-day geology, his Geological Excursions to the Thermal Regions of Bohemia (published in German in 1884) are still worthy of attention. Laube was also part of the 1st Austro-Hungarian North Pole expedition of 1869/70 (together with Julius von Payer, also a native of Teplice). Although that expedition was not a huge success, as the north-east passage it set out to find proved to be impossible, it was accompanied by some incredible experiences – from the viewpoint of the modern reader perhaps comparable to the expedition of “the Bohemian Karel Němec”, penned by the creators of the Czech luminary Jára Cimrman. As the geologist on the North Pole expedition Laube remained on the Hansa; the boat had become trapped in the ice and was crushed by the growing icebergs. The crew was forced to move to an ice floe and set up a temporary dwelling there. Despite these troubles, Laube thoroughly mapped what he was able to. He made the most out of the minimum of equipment and information. This also is testimony to his conscientious nature!

 

 

References

Krajské muzeum v Teplicích:  Gustav Carl Laube, Sborník k 150. výročí narození, Teplice 1989.

Hurník, S.: Zavátá minulost Mostecka,  Regionální museum v Mostě 2001. s. 3-8.

Stella, M.; Lelková, I.: Andrias scheuchzeri a Andrias bohemicus (nejen) v české vědě a kultuře, in Dějiny věd a techniky, XLIII/2010, č. 4, s. 225- 247.

MZ