Wilhelmy, Herbert b. February 4, 1910; Sondershausen, Thuringia d. February 1,2003;Tubingen, Baden- Wurttemberg
German geographer who extensively explored and studied the colonization of tropical forests, as well as urban geography, in South America. Starting in 1928, Wilhelmy studied geography, geology, and ethnology, and also German philology and English language and literature at the universities of Gieβen, Bonn, Vienna, and Leipzig.
He received his doctorate at the University of Leipzig in 1932 with a morphological study of western Bulgaria. In the same year he took a position as an assistant to Oskar Schmieder at the University of Kiel. By 1936 he had finished his second doctoral thesis (Habilitation) entitled “Sofia. Wand- lungen einer Groβstadt zwischen Orient und Okzident ” (Sofia: A Changing City between the Orient and Occident). In 1939 he was appointed a university lecturer and in 1942 he was named an extraordinary professor at the University of Kiel. Only in 1954 did he become a full professor, when he was appointed professor of geography at the University of Stuttgart. Four years later he was offered the chairmanship of the Geography Department at the University of Tubingen. Encouraged by Oskar Schmieder, Wilhelmy chose South America as his main area of interest. In the course ofnumerous exploratory trips (1936—1937, 1952, 1956-1957, 1959, 1966, and 1969), he visited almost all of the South American countries: Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. At first Germans in South America and the problems of the colonization of the tropical forests were the primary focus of his research (Deutsche Acker- bausiedlungen im sudamerikanischen Grasland, Pampa und Gran Chaco [German Agricultural Settlements in the South American Grasslands, the Pampas and Gran Chaco, coauthored with Schmieder and published in 1938] and Siedlung im stid- amerikanischen Urwald [Settlement in the South American Tropical Forest], Hamburg, 1949). However, starting in the 1950s he turned also to urban geographical problems (Stidamerika im Spiegel seiner Stadte [South America as Reflected in its Cities, 1952] as well as the comprehensive volume Die Stadte Sti.dam.erikas [The Cities of South America, two volumes coauthored with Axel Borsdorf, 1984-1985]).
Starting in the late 1950s, he emphasized more and more regional geographical works; first in the form of teachers aids; for example, materials on the La Plata countries (1958, 1959), Brazil (1959, 1963), Argentina (1959, 1963), and the Amazonian lowlands (1963), but then also for purposes of scientific regional geography of the La Plata countries, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay (1963). His last large work, which received recognition far beyond the field of geography, was Welt und Umwelt der Maya (World and Environment of the Maya, 1981) and analyzed, using the example of the tropical ecosystem shaped by the Mayans, the space-time interrelationship of man and nature.Ute Wardenga
See also Argentina; Brazil; Paraguay References and Further Reading Schroder, Karl-Heinz. “Herbert Wilhelmy zum 60. Geburtstag.” In Beitrage zur Geographie der Tropen und Subtropen. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Herbert Wilhelmy. Eds. Helmut Blume and Karl Heinz Schroder. Tubingen: Universitat, Geographisches Institut, 1970, pp. 1-19.