Adametz, Lotte

Leonhard Weidinger — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 20:14:38 +0000

Adametz, Lotte Leonhard Weidinger Mon, 05/17/2021 - 09:12

Lotte Adametz

25 July 1879 Vienna – 3 June 1966 Vienna

actually Karoline Adametz

After completing commercial college, Karoline Adametz, known as Lotte, worked from 1898 to 1945 in the Geological-Palaeontological Department of the Naturhistorisches Museum (NHM) in Vienna. She was also attended geology and palaeontology lectures at the Technische Hochschule and University of Vienna. She worked in the NHM from 1902 in auditing the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic study collections. Between 1904 and 1913 she conducted extensive research on collection objects on behalf of Ernst Kittl (1854–1913), head of the Geological-Palaeontological Department. One of her tasks was to arrange the objects in according to their taxonomy. Until the death of Josef Bayer (1882–1931), director of the Prehistoric and Anthropological Department, she also took part in his excavations and study trips in her free time. Bayer named her in his will as sole heir. In the following years she gave several objects from his estate to the Geological-Palaeontological Department. Like her sister Emilie, who also worked at the NHM, she was a supporter of National Socialism even before the annexation and was in contact with the illegal factory cell in the NHM. In March or April 1938 she applied for membership of the NSDAP, which was granted in April 1940. In 1938 she inventoried and labelled fossils that Irma Bondy had sold to the NHM on behalf of her brother-in-law Fritz Illner in preparation for her flight as a result of persecution. On Adametz's initiative, the Geological-Palaeontological Department terminated its collaboration in summer 1939 with the Panstwowy Intsytut Geologiezny in Warsaw. Also in 1939, for antisemitic reasons, she successfully urged the geologist Fritz Kautsky to rename the holotype Erycina Suessi described him and named after the geologist Eduard Suess, to Erycina Backlundi. In 1941 she organized the transport of hundreds of selected items from the expropriated geological, zoological and mineralogical collections of Missionshaus St. Gabriel in Maria Enzersdorf to the NHM. From 1941 she led the salvaging work as a result of the war and functioned unofficially as the deputy of Friedrich Trauth, head of the Geological-Palaeontological Department.

In the course of denazification, Lotte Adametz was permanently pensioned in August 1945 with backdated effect from March 1938 and her salary cut. After adoption of the National Socialist Act in 1947, she was classed as a minor offender and also appealed against the reduction in payment. The appeal was allowed on 18 December 1951. After retiring and until her death, she was active in the Geological-Palaeontological Department of the NHM and in several scientific associations, such as the Geologische Gesellschaft. The Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended on 7 December 2007 that the collections expropriated from St. Gabriel and held by the NHM should be restituted. And on 18 October 2019 it recommended the restitution of Fritz Illner's fossils to his legal successors.

Keywords

Museum employee

NSDAP membership

Marcus Rößner

2 November 2020

Publications about the person / institution

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Missionshaus St. Gabriel, 7.12.2007, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Missionshaus_StGabriel_2007-12-07.pdf (3.12.2020).

Rupert Hirsch, Wale schwammen über Wien, in: Kreisbote, 19.5.1939, 3.

Brigitta Keintzel (Hg.), Wissenschafterinnen in und aus Österreich. Leben – Werk – Wirken, Wien 2002.

Othmar Kühn, Lotte Adametz, in: Mitteilungen der Geologischen Gesellschaft 59 (1966), 255–257.

Brigitta Schmid, Frühe Wissenschaftlerinnen am Naturhistorischen Museum Wien, Dissertation Universität Wien 2017.

Mathias Svojtka, Adametz, Karoline (Lotte), in: Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon ab 1815, 2011, URL: doi.org/10.1553/0x00280dbb.

Helmut Zapfe, Lotte Adametz †, in: Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums Wien 69 (1966), 11–13.

Publications by the person / institution

Lotte Adametz, Eine Mammutjägerstation, in: Die Umschau 29 (1925), 470–471.
Lotte Adametz, Kannibalen der Steinzeit, in: Die Umschau 32 (1928), 541–543.
Lotte Adametz, Ergänzungen zu dem vorhergenden Bericht von KYRLE und eine Zusammenfassung der alt- und jungpaläolithischen Höhenstationen Österreichs auf Grund der Ausgrabungen von Josef Bayer, in: XVIth International Geological Congress, Washington D. C. 1933 (1936), 1165–1169.
Lotte Adametz, Eine vielkantige Streitaxt aus dem Überschwemmungsgebiet der Traisenmündung, in: Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft Wien 67 (1937), 30–31.
Lotte Adametz, Über ein rätselhaftes Quecksilbervorkommen bei Haugsdorf im Weinviertel, N. Ö., in: Der Aufschluss 7 (1956), 33–36.

Lotte Adametz, Julius Pia, Ein rätselhaftes Quecksilbervorkommen bei Haugsdorf im Weinviertel, Niederdonau, in: Anzeiger der Akademie der Wissenschaften. Mathematisch-naturwissenschaftliche Klasse 79 (1942), 33–36.