Friedrich Wilhelm Erich Kaiser studied in the natural
sciences and mathematics at the universities of Marburg, Munich and Bonn and
worked as an assistant at the Institute for Mineralogy, University of Bonn,
from 1894 to 1900. In 1897 he qualified as Doctor of Philosophy (D Phil) at the
University of Bonn with a thesis on Versuche
ueber das zusammenfliessen zweier fluessigkeitsmassen. That same year he
became one of the university's private lecturers. However, in 1900 he was
appointed at the Prussian Geological Institute in Berlin, while he also
lectured at the Berlin Bergakademie
(School of Mines). He carried out geological-agronomic surveys in the
Rhinelands, prospected for minerals, and conducted pioneering studies on the
erosion of building stone. In October 1904 he became professor of mineralogy at
the University of Giesen, where he remained (with some interruptions) until
October 1920. During this period he described the petrographic collections made
by Heinrich Lotz* in German South West Africa (now Namibia).
In 1914 Lotz invited Kaiser to come to Namibia to continue
his studies in the field. He arrived in July that year, but a few months later
World War I (1914-1918) broke out, with the result that he served as an officer
in the German Schutztruppe (colonial
forces) in Namibia until September 1915, when the German troops surrendered to
South African forces. During this period he collected information on the
diamond deposits of the territory in his spare time and subsequently continued
his geological and topographical studies of the southern Namib in collaboration
with P.F. Werner Beetz*. Their results were eventually published in Kaiser's
monumental work Die Diamantwueste
Suedwestafrikas (2 vols, 1926). This work included reports by petrographers
and palaeontologists who had studied the specimens sent to Germany by the two
field workers. It also dealt with underground water, desert formation, and the
effects of desert winds. Other publications by Kaiser on the geology of Namibia
and South Africa, numbering more than 30, included the following: "Ueber
Diamanten aus Deutsch-Suedwestafrika" (Centralblatt
fuer Mineralogie, Geologie und Palaeontologie, 1909); "Die
Suedafrikanischen Diamant Vorkommen" (Oberhessische
Gesellschaft fuer Natur- und Heilkunde, 1912); "Studien waehrend des
Krieges in SWA" (Zeitschrift der
Deutschen Geologischen Gesellschaft, 1920); "Kaolinisierung und
Verkieselung als Verwitterungsvorgaenge in der Namibwueste,
Suedwestafrikas" (Zeitschrift fuer
Kristallographie, 1923); "Surface geology in arid climates" (Transactions of the Geological Society of
South Africa, 1927); and "Die junge terrestre Sedimentation in Sued-
und Suedwestafrika" (Zeitschrift
fuer Praktische Geology, 1929).
Kaiser returned to Germany after the war and in October 1920
was appointed professor of general and applied geology at the University of
Munich, a post he held until his death in 1934. He returned to southern Africa
in 1927, visiting the diamond fields at Alexander Bay and the manganese
deposits near Postmansburg. Two years later he came down south for the last
time, to attend the Fifteenth International Geological Congress in Pretoria. At
this time the University of Cape Town conferred on him an honorary Doctor of
Science (DSc) degree. He also used the opportunity to travel to Southern
Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), and Namibia.
Kaiser was co-editor of the Zeitschrift fuer Kristallographie for some time, and from 1922
co-editor of the Neues Jahrbuch fuer
Mineralogie, Geologie und Palaeontologie. A terrestrial mollusc, Dorcasia kaiseri, was named after him.
He was married to H. Rauff.
