Oskar Schmieder

Oskar Schmieder (* January 27, 1891 in Bonn, Germany; † February 12, 1980 in Schleswig) was a German geographer. He spent his early career with Carl O. Sauer at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was an Associate Professor from 1926 to 1930.

Life

Schmieder studied georgaphy at the University of Bonn, University of Königsberg and the University of Heidelberg. His dissertation on glacial forms of the Sierra de Gredos was supervised by Alfred Hettner. He then undertook his first field trip to Latin America, but cancelled his trip soon to participate in the First World War.

His first travel to Latin America was crucial for his later career. After his Habilitation in Bonn in 1919, with a lecture on Latin America, he became a professor of mineralogy at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, from 1920 to 1925. His interest in cultural geography awoke primarily at the University of California at Berkeley where he worked with Carl O. Sauer as a Visiting Professor (1925) and Associate Professor (until 1930). During this time, he taught courses in regional geography visited by Julian Steward, among others

Back to Germany in 1930, he became a professor of geography at the University of Kiel, where he continued his work on Latin America with his disciple and assistant Herbert Wilhelmy. He soon adopted the then dominating nationalist/national socialist mode of thinking, became an admirer of the colonial policies of Fascist Italy, contributed to national socialist Lebensraum research, and became a member of the NSDAP in 1941. After a period at the University of Halle, he went back to Kiel. In the 1950s, he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Karachi and the University of Chile. Schmieder was a convinced representative of Länderkunde regional geography

Selected Works

• Die Sierra de Gredos, Dissertation, 1915.
• Die Cordillera del Chani, 1922.
• The East Bolivian Andes South of the Rio Grande or Guapay (University of California Publications in Geography, Volume II), 1929
• The Pampa, a Natural or Culturally Induced Grass-land? (University of California Publications in Geography, Volume II), 1929
• The Historic Geography of Tucuman (University of California Publications in Geography, Volume II), 1929
• The Brazilian Culture Hearth (University of California Publications in Geography, Volume III), 1929
• Wandlungen im Siedlungsbilde Perus im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, 1929
• The settlements of the Tzapotec and Mije Indians, state of Oaxaca, Mexico (University of California Press), 1930.
• Länderkunde Südamerikas, 1932.
• Länderkunde Nordamerikas: Vereinigte Staaten und Canada, 1933.
• Länderkunde Mittelamerikas, Westindien, Mexico und Zentralamerika, 1934.
• Die Neue Welt, 2 Bände, 1962–1963.
• Die Alte Welt, 2 Bände, 1965–1969.
• Alexander von Humboldt. Persönlichkeit, wissenschaftliches Werk und Auswirkung auf die moderne Länderkunde, 1964
• Lebenserinnerungen und Tagebuchblätter eines Geographen, 1972.