biology

Karl Beurlen

Karl Beurlen is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Karl Beurlen rather than just read about it. In short: Karl Theodor Beurlen (17 April 1901 – 27 December 1985) was a German paleontologist. Beurlen was a prolific researcher on invertebrate paleontology, and is credited with publishing over 200 papers, with important contributions to the paleontology and stratigraphy of both Germany and Brazil.

Key takeaways

Karl Beurlen belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Karl Beurlen to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Karl Beurlen from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Karl Theodor Beurlen (17 April 1901 – 27 December 1985) was a German paleontologist. Beurlen was a prolific researcher on invertebrate paleontology, and is credited with publishing over 200 papers, with important contributions to the paleontology and stratigraphy of both Germany and Brazil. He held several important positions in geological societies and institutions in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. Beurlen's paleontological legacy is overshadowed by his political conviction in national socialism. Beurlen was an associate member of the SS as early as 1931, co-founded a Nazi-aligned scientific journal (the ZGN) in 1935, and was named to the Reichsforschungsrat (Reich Research Council) in 1939. During the Second World War, Beurlen served as the director of the Palaeontological Museum, Munich. Beurlen's belief that the Luftwaffe would protect German cities from Allied bombings during the war, and his aggressive refusal to move the museum's collections to safety outside of the city, is today blamed for the near-total destruction of the museum's paleontological collection in the 1944 bombing of Munich. The destroyed fossils included several scientifically important specimens, including the original material of Spinosaurus and Aegyptosaurus. Beurlen was dismissed from his positions after the war, and worked as a paleontologist and geologist in Brazil in 1950–1969. He retired in 1969 and returned to Germany, where he wrote a series of popular science books on geology and paleontology.

Biography

Early life and career Karl Theodor Beurlen was born in Aalen on 17 April 1901. He was the son of an elementary school teacher. Beurlen's interest in natural science began at an early age, and by the time of his school years he collected and identified plants, beetles, and butterflies. Beurlen's paleontological interest was influenced by his grandfather's interest in the subject. In his later life, Beurlen claimed that he had chosen to pursue natural science "with a heavy heart", since he was also interested in linguistics and philosophy. Beurlen attended University of Tübingen. He completed a PhD in 1923, in invertebrate paleontology. Early in his career, Beurlen worked as an assistant of Edwin Hennig, with whom he published a dissertion on ammonites. Beurlen then worked as an assistant at the University of Tübingen. After his marriage in 1925, Beurlen worked at the University of Königsberg. Beurlen was a prolific author of paleontology papers, having published more than 200 papers on a variety of groups, including ammonites, decapods, and echinoids. In 1934, Beurlen was appointed to the board of the Geological-Paleontological Institute of the University of Kiel. Beurlen was a proponent of orthogenesis (a now discredited hypothesis on evolution) and saltational evolution. He used the term metakinesis (coined by Otto Jaekel) to describe sudden changes of development in organisms. He also invented the term palingenesis as a mechanism for his orthogenetic theory of evolution. Beurlen's 1923 paper Form and Function in Organic Development was the first fully fledged theory on saltational evolution published by a German paleontologist.

Political involvement Beurlen became an associate member of the SS in 1931, and joined the NSDAP in 1933. In his unpublished autobiography, Beurlen claimed the he had "unwillingly been drawn into political activities". During Beurlen's time at the University of Kiel, the president of the university was Karl Lothar Wolf (president 1933–1935), who encouraged national socialism among the staff. Beurlen, Wolf, and other likeminded staff founded a new scientific journal in 1935, the Zeitschrift für die gesamte Naturwissenschaft: einschliesslich Naturphilosophie und Geschichte der Naturwissenschaft und Medizin (or ZGN). "Gesamte Naturwissenschaft" ("the entirity of natural science") was understood by the founders to apply to "Aryan science", and Beurlen envisioned the journal as one that would conform to the lived experiences of the German people. From 1937 onwards, the journal was under the direction of the "Reich Student Leader" Gustav Adolf Scheel. Although Beurlen was no longer actively involved with running the project at that time, he continued to serve as a member of the editorial board. Under Scheel, the journal was officially branded as a "kampforgan" (platform; organ of struggle) for "all active scientists in the fight against all influences alien to the German race and for a science that is rooted in the German soul". In a 1936 opinion piece in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Geologischen Gesellschaft, Beurlen wrote that geology should be considered the first among equals of the natural sciences, since geology provided the foundation that allowed the formation of the Lebensgestaltung (German lifestyle), and for the development of the Lebensraum (German territory). Beurlen further believed that geology should serve as the basis of local natural history education, since it united geography and folklore in such a way that it emphasized the unity of Blod und Boden ("blood and soil").

Career in Nazi Germany

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Karl Beurlen

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Karl Beurlen claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Karl Beurlen before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Karl Beurlen ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Karl Beurlen

In research: Karl Beurlen appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Karl Beurlen in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Karl Beurlen is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1901 births, 1985 deaths, German paleontologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Karl Beurlen outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Karl Beurlen in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Karl Beurlen means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Karl Beurlen out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Karl Beurlen in simple terms?

Why does Karl Beurlen matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Karl Beurlen?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Karl Beurlen.