Theodor Wilhelm (Theo) Kassner, geologist and plant collector,
was the son of Friedrich Wilhelm Kassner, farmer, part-time mayor and notary,
and his second wife, Christiane Emilie Pauline Hainich. He was a headstrong,
impulsive and devil-may-care youngster, ran away from home at the age of 17 and
worked his way via Hamburg and England to South Africa to seek his fortune. In
1890 he collected plants in the vicinity of Cape Town and Tulbagh. Thereafter
he worked on the Barberton goldfields and in 1899 published a Geological sketch map of the De Kaap
goldfields, scale 1:30 000. This was the first geological map of the
goldfields and included the Barberton region.
From Barberton he moved to the Witwatersrand where he worked for
some time as a mine manager. In December 1893 he travelled to Lydenburg and
back with the botanist F.R. Rudolph Schlechter*, colleting insects. During the
Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) he was in England, for on 18 July 1900 he married
Alice Caroline Rowbotham in London and they went on a seven month honeymoon and
business trip to France, Italy, Austria and Germany. In 1902 he published a
book in London, Gold-seeking in South
Africa: A handbook of hints for intending explorers, prospectors, and settlers.
With a chapter on the agricultural prospects of South Africa. It contained
much information about all the gold reefs in the country, with practical
instructions on how to prospect and mine for gold.
Early in 1902 Kassner met with the director of the British
Museum in London, who wanted him to collect plants, insects and fossils in
Africa. Towards the end of January 1902 he left for East Africa and went on a
prospecting expedition in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), returning to Johannesburg
and his family in October that year. He then continued his prospecting and
mapping work, mainly on the Witwatersrand and westwards to Potchefstroom and
Klerksdorp, and compiled several maps: Geological
map of the west Witwatersrand goldfields (1903), Geological map, showing the relationship of the East, Central and
Western Witwatersrand, and Geological
map of the southern Transvaal goldfields.
Kassner and his family returned to Europe late in 1904 and
settled in Cologne, Germany. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical
Society (FRGS) in March 1907, came to South Africa again in August, and in
November that year set out with a scientific party on a walking expedition of
sixteen months, from southern Africa to Egypt. The party included 'university
men of known ability' in geology, zoology, botany, analytical chemistry,
entomology, natural history, and astronomy, and the venture came to be known as
the 'Kassner Expedition'. They travelled from South Africa to Bulawayo by
train, arriving on 9 December 1907, and met Father Goetz* there. The train
journey continued to the Victoria Falls. From present Zambia they travelled on
foot, with carriers, but the other members of the expedition soon abandoned the
enterprise and Kassner continued on his own. He collected plants in the Cape
Colony, Transvaal, Zimbabwe, and countries further north and published an
account of the journey in the form of a book, My journey from Rhodesia to Egypt, including an ascent of Ruwenzori and
a short account of the route from Cape Town to Broken Hill and Lado to
Alexandria (London, 1911). In June 1910 he set off on a similar journey to
the less explored parts of the Congo, returning to his family in Britain in
April 1911. The next year he published another book, Die Zukunft Afrikas:
Ratschlaege fuer die Kolonisation (The future of Africa: Suggestions for
colonization; Leipzig, 1912).
The family lived in Germany during World War I (1914-1918) and
in 1921 returned to Johannesburg where Kassner took up prospecting again and
went into business as a consulting geologist. During 1924-1925 he worked for
the South African Phosphates Exploration Syndicate at their phosphate mine near
Bandolierkop, Limpopo, and in 1933 was still involved in phosphate mining (and
cotton farming) in the area. In 1927 he and J.F. Ludorf signed a prospecting
contract with the municipality of Pietersburg (now Polokwane) in regard of the
farm Weltevreden No.140. During the nineteen-thirties he prospected also for
phosphates in Mozambique, for asbestos near Carolina, and for uranium in
Gordonia, and was involved in the opening up of the gold fields in the
Heidelberg district. In July 1937 he attended the 17th International
Geological Congress in Moscow. Two years later he visited the United States and
Canada, returning to Johannesburg when World War II (1939-1945) broke out.
Plants collected by Kassner are housed in the Bolus Herbarium,
University of Cape Town; the National Herbarium, Pretoria; the herbaria of the
Botanical Museum, Berlin; the Royal Botanical Gardens, Edinburgh; the Natural
History Museum, London; Kew Gardens; the University of Zurich; and others. The
species Periglossum kassnerianum was
named after him by Schlechter. His geological specimens were presented to the
University of the Witwatersrand, some probably after his death and others after
the death of his son Felix.
