Franciszek Rzechulka (1887–1973) – from mining to geology
Journal Title: Studia Historiae Scientiarum - Year 2014, Vol 13, Issue
Abstract
Franciszek Rzechulka lived and worked in the Upper Silesia in a period of intensive development of coal -mines as well as during changes caused by political and economic factors. After leaving the primary school in Bytom, the secondary school in Zabrze and finally the technical mining school in Tarnowskie Góry, he received the degree of a mining -technician and took up work at first in the mine Szomberg in Bytom. Two years later he moved to Wodzisław Śląski near Rybnik, married Amalia Schücke (of German descent) and began work as a mining -foreman in the coal-mine Emma. For the first years of his employment in this mine he had been acutely interested in geological structure of coal -deposits, particularly in the diversification of rocks accompanying coal -layers and the occurrence of fossils, which facilitate the identification and correlation of these layers. Shortly, he acquired the experiencevery helpful in the geological research. After the First World War a part of the Upper Silesian Coal Basin became part of Poland. In a short time the newly created State Geological Institute in Warsaw (1919) organized the small Silesian department localized in Dąbrowa Górnicza, working at the beginning under the management of a geologist, Arnold Makowski, and later – Stanisław Doktorowicz -Hrebnicki. In 1925–1935 the former undertook geological research in the region of Rybnik, using mostly the help of Franciszek Rzechulka, who knew a lot of outcrops very hopeful in these investigations. The results of the research were published in several reports (Makowski 1930–1934). During the Second World War Franciszek Rzechulka worked in the mining -firm Lignoza in Katowice, but just after the war he came back and settled in Radlin near the Emma Mine. He was employed at once in the Regional Management of Coal -Industry in Rybnik both as a mining -technician and also as a person of great geological knowledge and experience. Few years later he participated in a “course for geologists in the mining -exploitation services”. It is noteworthy, that in this part of Upper Silesia no even one geologist worked at that time. In 1951 Franciszek Rzechulka, promoted to an older specialist of the Mine Surveying and Geological Department in Rybnik, set out to make up a geological and palaeontological collection from mines, boreholes and outcrops of the surrounding region. The sampled material was washed by him on a sieve, to collect small fossils, microfossils and minerals from the remained material. A little microscope was very helpful in this activity. Selected specimens or sets of specimens were protected be-tween two glass -plates stuck together with the Canada balsam. The whole unique collection gathered by him in this way counts about a thousand of such examples. For a few years it was stored and partly exposed in the aforementioned Department in Rybnik and in 1977 it was transported to Krakow and placed in the Chair of Stra-tigraphy and Regional Geology of the Academy of Mining and Metallurgy. The collection became delivered in January 2015 to the Upper Silesian Branche of the Polish Geological Institut in Sosnowiec. During the last decade of his activity Franciszek Rzechulka often consulted Polish and German publications about geology and mining. From this period two hand-written notebooks proving the scope of his interests, were preserved. Most often he perused a Polish monthly “Przegląd Geologiczny” as well as a German journal “Glückauf”. Finally, in the middle of the year 1958, after 52 years of employment he stopped working and retired. At the farewell he left to his friends an atlas with the coats of arms of the Hanseatic states, with a dedication „Ad memoriam! F. Rzechulka 15.VII.1958”. He then left Poland to move to his children working as doctors in Germany. He died in the year of 1973 in the Federal Republic of Germany
Authors and Affiliations
Stefan ALEXANDROWICZ
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