“Walking, Drawing, Designing: Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell’s Drawing Stick and Eighteenth-Century Landscape Gardens”

In this online exhibition, historian Christian Kehrt describes how polar researcher Alfred Wegener (1880–1930) focused on gaining detailed knowledge about the origins of Greenland’s weather and climate conditions and the dynamics of its ice sheet. His expedition diaries, which are at the core of this online exhibition, are a crucial document for anyone interested in the history polar expedition. His dense and well-preserved diaries allow for a detailed look into everyday life, continuities, and changes in polar exploration in the first half of the twentieth century.

Copyright information

“The Wegener Diaries: Scientific Expeditions Into the Eternal Ice” was created by Christian Kehrt (2013) under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported International license. This refers only to the text and does not include image rights. Please click on an image to view its individual rights status. Thumbnails of the following images appear on the exhibition landing page:

The Wegener Diaries: Scientific Expeditions into the Eternal Ice

This virtual exhibition sheds light on Alfred Wegener’s expeditions to Greenland between 1906 and 1931. Its main focus is on the diaries Wegener wrote during his explorations, which offer unique insights into the manifold challenges man and material faced in Greenland’s extreme environments. You may choose to read the diaries in their original state, or browse the expeditions individually and read transcribed and translated excerpts by clicking on the individual chapters.

This version, published in 2020, includes minor updates to the original 2013 virtual exhibition. PDFs of the virtual exhibition, as well as original scans and transcripts of the Wegener Diaries, can be found at the exhibition’s PDF Depot.

Christian Kehrt

About the author

Kehrt, Christian

Christian Kehrt works in the fields of environmental history, military history, and the history of science and technology. He studied history and philosophy in Tübingen and Stony Brook, NY. His PhD “Moderne Krieger. Die Technikerfahrungen deutscher Militärpiloten, 1910–1945” deals with flying experiences of military pilots in the age of the two world wars. It was completed as part of the postgraduate research program “Technology and Society” at the Technical University Darmstadt and received the Werner-Hahlweg-Prize for military history, the Georg-Agricola Prize and the prize for young scholars of the German Society for Aeronautics and Astronautics. As a postdoc he worked at the Deutsches Museum in Munich on a project on the origins of nanotechnology. In 2009/10 he was a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Center for Environment and Society. Currently he is pursuing a habilitation project on polar exploration in the period of the Cold War at the Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg where he holds a position as a research associate.

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Biography of Alfred Wegener

Historian Christian Kehrt presents a short biographical profile of geologist and polar explorer Alfred Wegener, with historic photographs. Wegener’s diaries from his three Greenland expeditions (1906–1931)—digitized, transcribed, and translated—are the focus of this Virtual Exhibition.

The Wegener Diaries: Scientific Expeditions into the Eternal Ice

This virtual exhibition sheds light on Alfred Wegener’s expeditions to Greenland between 1906 and 1931. Its main focus is on the diaries Wegener wrote during his explorations, which offer unique insights into the manifold challenges man and material faced in Greenland’s extreme environments. You may choose to read the diaries in their original state, or browse the expeditions individually and read transcribed and translated excerpts by clicking on the individual chapters.

This version, published in 2020, includes minor updates to the original 2013 virtual exhibition. PDFs of the virtual exhibition, as well as original scans and transcripts of the Wegener Diaries, can be found at the exhibition’s PDF Depot.

Christian Kehrt

About the author

Kehrt, Christian

Christian Kehrt works in the fields of environmental history, military history, and the history of science and technology. He studied history and philosophy in Tübingen and Stony Brook, NY. His PhD “Moderne Krieger. Die Technikerfahrungen deutscher Militärpiloten, 1910–1945” deals with flying experiences of military pilots in the age of the two world wars. It was completed as part of the postgraduate research program “Technology and Society” at the Technical University Darmstadt and received the Werner-Hahlweg-Prize for military history, the Georg-Agricola Prize and the prize for young scholars of the German Society for Aeronautics and Astronautics. As a postdoc he worked at the Deutsches Museum in Munich on a project on the origins of nanotechnology. In 2009/10 he was a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Center for Environment and Society. Currently he is pursuing a habilitation project on polar exploration in the period of the Cold War at the Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg where he holds a position as a research associate.

Browse the exhibition

Original Footage: Alfred Wegener’s German Greenland Expedition, 1930–1931 (1936)

Commenting actual film footage from Alfred Wegener’s last Greenland expedition, literary historian Dorit Müller describes the content and context of this unique material.

The Wegener Diaries: Scientific Expeditions into the Eternal Ice

This virtual exhibition sheds light on Alfred Wegener’s expeditions to Greenland between 1906 and 1931. Its main focus is on the diaries Wegener wrote during his explorations, which offer unique insights into the manifold challenges man and material faced in Greenland’s extreme environments. You may choose to read the diaries in their original state, or browse the expeditions individually and read transcribed and translated excerpts by clicking on the individual chapters.

This version, published in 2020, includes minor updates to the original 2013 virtual exhibition. PDFs of the virtual exhibition, as well as original scans and transcripts of the Wegener Diaries, can be found at the exhibition’s PDF Depot.

Christian Kehrt

About the author

Kehrt, Christian

Christian Kehrt works in the fields of environmental history, military history, and the history of science and technology. He studied history and philosophy in Tübingen and Stony Brook, NY. His PhD “Moderne Krieger. Die Technikerfahrungen deutscher Militärpiloten, 1910–1945” deals with flying experiences of military pilots in the age of the two world wars. It was completed as part of the postgraduate research program “Technology and Society” at the Technical University Darmstadt and received the Werner-Hahlweg-Prize for military history, the Georg-Agricola Prize and the prize for young scholars of the German Society for Aeronautics and Astronautics. As a postdoc he worked at the Deutsches Museum in Munich on a project on the origins of nanotechnology. In 2009/10 he was a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Center for Environment and Society. Currently he is pursuing a habilitation project on polar exploration in the period of the Cold War at the Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg where he holds a position as a research associate.