Reinhard Maack received his schooling in Herford, Germany,
and joined the printing works of his uncle, Wilhelm Maack, in Luedenscheid.
However, his thirst for adventure led him to undergo a year of practical
training in surveying at the Prussian Cadastral Service and to travel to German
South West Africa (now Namibia), arriving at Swakopmund in 1911. As a surveyor
in the service of the colonial government he assisted in the primary
triangulation of especially the coastal regions and surveyed various farms and
reserves. When World War I (1914-1918) broke out he joined the Schutztruppe
(colonial forces), but became a prisoner of war. He managed to escape and spent
time wandering in the Kalahari before returning to South West Africa under a
false name.
During February and March 1917 Maack and his colleague A.
Hofmann undertook a private expedition to the Brandberg, but did not reach its
highest point. The next year Maack and three others returned to the mountain
and on 2 January that year succeeded in reaching the summit of Koenigstein, the
highest point in Namibia at 2573 m above sea level. Theirs was the first
recorded successful climb of this peak. On the way back Maack discovered the
rock shelter (named Maack shelter in his honour) that contains the famous
'white lady of the Brandberg' and other rock art. A few years later he described
the geology and topography of the region in 'Der Brandberg. Ein Beitrag zur
Landeskunde von Suedwestafrika' (Zeitschrift
der Gesellschaft fuer Erdkunde zu Berlin, 1923). An extract from his diary of his second expedition to the Brandberg was later published in the Journal of the South West African Scientific Society (1959/60, Vol. 14, pp. 5-38). His photos and
descriptions of rock art in Namibia were published by H. Obermaier and H Kuehn
in Germany in 1930.
In 1919 Maack undertook another expedition, this time to map
the Tsondab River from Ababis to where it disappears in the Namib dune field. His
account of the geology and geomorphology of the area was published as 'Die
Tsondab-wueste und das Randgebirge von Ababis in Deutsch-Suedwestafrika' (Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft fuer Erdkunde
zu Berlin, 1924). He distinguished clearly between older and younger Namib
dune sands, being the first person to do so. In between his expeditions he
lived in Swakopmund where he became known as a landscape painter.
In 1920 Maack and W.B. Volkmann* were employed by the Otavi Minen und Eisenbahn gesellschaft
to report on the mining potential of the Kaokoveld, especially with regard to
gold, iron and copper. After his return he was employed at the trigonometric
survey office in Windhoek, but returned to Germany in 1921 to continue his
studies. However, in 1923 he went to Brazil to work as a mining engineer and
geological surveyor in the Minas Gerais area.
He returned to Germany in 1928 to study geography and
geology at the Friedrich-Wilhelmsuniversitaet in Berlin but once again
interrupted his studies to return to Brazil to work on the diamond fields at
Rio Tibagi. With the idea of settling permanently in Brazil he developed a
coffee plantation near Curitiba, which in due course made him financially
independent. He was particularly interested in the similarity between the
stratigraphy of the Parana basin in Brazil and the Karoo in South Africa, and
became an early supporter of the theory of continental drift. In 1936 he
returned to Germany to complete his studies. Back in Brazil he was interred
during World War II (1939-1945). After his release in 1944 he was appointed as
geologist at the Museum of Parana and later as director of geological and
petrographic services at the Institute for Biological and Technological
Research. In 1946 he published an important monograph on the geology of the
Vila Velha area near Curitiba, followed during the next 17 years by five papers
in German or Portuguese on continental drift and the stratigraphy of those
portions of the former Gondwanaland in southern Africa and Brazil. Also in 1946
he was appointed as professor of geology and palaeontology (later physical
geography) at the University of Parana in Curitiba. The Rheinische
Friedrich-Wilhelmuniversitaet in Bonn awarded him a doctoral degree in 1946 for
a thesis on the Gondwana glaciation of the Upper Carboniferous. He became internationally
known as a geologist during the years 1952 to 1968, when he travelled widely
and attended various scientific conferences. In 1957 he again visited the
Brandberg in Namibia and in 1960 accompanied Dr Henno Martin on a trip to the
Kaokoveld. He published an extensive monograph on the physical geography of
Parana in 1968, and his last book, Kontinentaldrift
und Geologie des suedatlantischen ozeans, in 1969.
Maack was an honorary member of the German Geographical Society and received its Karl Ritter
silver medal in 1959. He was awarded the
Jose Bonifacio de Andrade e Silva gold medal of the Geological Society of
Brazil in 1967.
