Bartz, Fritz b.April 8, 1908;Themar,Thuringia d.June 2l, 1970; Spreitenbach, Switzerland
German geographer and professor who became famous for his work on the North American fishing industry.
Fritz Bartz studied geography, biology, and Volkswirtschaftslehre (political economy) at the universities of Berlin, Vienna, Kiel, and Bonn.
Fascinated by the travels of Sven Hedin, Bartz decided to write his dissertation on the fauna of Tibet and the Himalayan region. He received his doctoral degree for his thesis Das Tierleben Tibets und des Himalaya-Gebirges (The Animal Life of Tibet and the Himalaya Mountains) in 1935. Afterward, Bartz went to the United States, first as a scholarship recipient and then as an instructor of geography. He taught from 1935 to 1939 at Stanford University in Palo Alto, at Reed College in Portland, and at the University of California at Berkeley. When World War II broke out in 1939, Bartz was on a trip through East Asia (Japan, Korea, Manchuria, and northern China). He returned to Germany via Siberia.On extensive travels along the western coast of North America between Mexico and the Bering Strait, including long stays in Alaska and British Columbia, Bartz gathered the material for his Habilitationss- chrift (postdoctoral degree). This thesis was published in 1942 under the title Fisch- grunde und Fischereiwirtscha.fi an der West-
kttste Nordamerikas (Fishing Grounds and the Fishing Industry of the West Coast of North America). In the following years, Bartz published several books and articles on the fishing trade in the Pacific and on the geography and culture of North America. In 1949 he received an honorary professorship of economic geography at the University of Bonn, though he took a guest professorship in 1950—1951 at Berkeley and also taught at the University of Minnesota. In 1959 he was appointed chair of geography at the University of Freiburg, where he taught until he died.
Bartz traveled repeatedly to the Americas: in 1953 he embarked on a journey from Florida to eastern Canada; in 1966 he traveled to South America; in 1967 he visited the United States again; and in 1969 he toured Central America, Mexico, and Canada. In addition, research led him to the Orient, East Asia, South Africa, and Oceania. He reflected upon his worldwide travels in the three-volume handbook Die groβen Fischereiraume der Welt (The Great Fishing Areas of the World, 1964—1965). Volume 3 is dedicated to the Americas.
Besides his main field of research, the fishing industry, Bartz also dedicated himself to other topics, such as agrarian and economic geography and the research of cultural landscapes, in which the North American subcontinent stood again and again at the center of his interests. He published a geographical introduction on Alaska in 1950 and an urban-geographical study of the settlement density in the San Francisco Bay region in 1954.
Heinz Peter Brogiato
References and Further Reading
Bartz, Fritz. San Francisco-Oakland Metropolitan Area. Dubuque, IA: W. C. Brown, 1968.
Schott, Carl. “Fritz Bartz.” Geographische Zeitschrift 58 (1970): 241-250.