Jean Vogt 1929–2005: His Life as a Seismologist, Geologist, Geographer, and Historian - Historical Seismology: Interdisciplinary Studies of Past and Recent Earthquakes - page 3

Keywords Jean Vogt · biography · historical seismology · earthquake catalogues

1 Strasbourg 1929-1951

Jean Emile Auguste Vogt was born on 13 March 1929 in Strasbourg, Alsace
(France), in a Protestant family, eldest of two brothers. His family had roots in
Northern Alsace and in nearby Southern Palatinate. He attended primary and sec-
ondary school in Strasbourg where his father served in the fiscal services. He used
to go during holidays to his grandparents' home town, Wissembourg in Northern
Alsace; he would later recall with humour that his ancestors in this city owned a
match factory, which led him sometimes to be deliberately inflammatory (Boehler
2005; Vogt 1997). During World War II, from 1940 to 1944, Alsace being de facto
annexed by Germany, the schools were totally Germanized. This allowed Jean Vogt
to master the German language, including the unusual German handwritten script
(this Sutterlin script, in use until the mid-20th century, was similar to the old Gothic
or Fraktur handwritten scripts). These circumstances were determinative in letting
him become later an expert of German archives.
At the University of Strasbourg, he graduated in 1951 in Geography (Vogt 1951),
a discipline considered then as belonging to the humanities. The Strasbourg school
of geography was led by several young and dynamic teachers, including Jean Dresch
(specialized on North Africa), Pierre Monbeig (specialized on Brazil and South
America), and the geomorphologist Jean Tricart. They adhered to the new geog-
raphy development, partly of Marxist inspiration. Under their influence, especially
that of Tricart, Jean Vogt discovered the power of combining field work and archive
investigation (Vogt J 1999). Between 1952 and 1954, he published not less than nine
articles on various topics such as geomorphology, soil erosion, and agrarian history.
In his work on soil erosion and agricultural techniques (Vogt 1953), he presented the
results of extensive research in several state archive depositories in France, Luxem-
bourg, and in three German towns (Speier, Wertheim, Donaueschingen). This early
performance demonstrated the ability of Jean Vogt to explore historical archives
in order to enlighten numerous geographical or geological problems. The French
Strasbourg Geographical Institute was founded in 1919 by Henri Baulig (Masutti
2002), and it succeeded to the German Geographisches Seminar, created by Georg
Gerland in 1875, followed by Karl Sapper in 1910 (Vogt H 1999). Sapper and Baulig
were both geomorphologists, and the Strasbourg Geographic Institute developed as
a world leader in this field. Gerland considered Seismology as a branch of Geogra-
phy; this led him to the foundation of the German Central Seismological Station in
Strasbourg in 1899, and more importantly to the foundation of the International Seis-
mological Association in 1904. Thus, interestingly enough, when Jean Vogt moved
to the field of seismology in 1975, he followed the same path as his predecessor
Georg Gerland.