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Meteorology as Nationalism on the German Atlantic Expedition, 1925-1927 
 
 

Penelope K. Hardy 
hardyp1@xavier.edu 

Xavier University 
 

 

 

“. . . it is possible not only to give a powerful impetus to our own research 
activity, but at the same time to give thought to the views of our rivals and 
offer the world a new, permanent impression of the irrepressible German 
potential and scientific proficiency. . . . Our rivals may very well drive the 
German flag from the ocean by forcing us to give up our naval and 
merchant fleet, but they cannot stop us from rehabilitating it again and 
earning recognition for it through a great cultural act. An oceanographic 
expedition is thus equally in the interests of Germany and German science.” 

-- Fritz Spiess1 

 

 

Introduction 

 

In 1925, the naval research and survey ship Meteor left Germany on a two-year mission. Though 
owned by the German navy, led by naval captain Fritz Spiess, and crewed by naval personnel, 
Meteor was not a traditional warship, and its mission was not in line with traditional naval 
strategy. Instead of weapons, Meteor carried the tools of a team of scientists who would, with 
their naval colleagues, spend the next two years crisscrossing the Atlantic Ocean in the name of 
atmospheric and oceanographic science. At the same time, it served other purposes—individual, 
institutional, and political. Chief among these was a dedication to German nationalism in the 
wake of the country’s devastating Great War loss.  
                                                        
1 Spiess, The Meteor Expedition: Scientific Results of the German Atlantic Expedition, 1925-1927, trans. ed. 
William J. Emery (New Delhi: Amerind Publishing Co., 1985), 10-11. 



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The popular tendency is often to portray scientists—and for scientists to portray 
themselves—as either naively surprised by their work’s geopolitical ramifications or uneasily 
forced to compromise to gain patronage, even if scholars recognize these tropes as 
rationalizations.2 In the usual chronology, the emergence of this relationship in the earth sciences 
is sited in the twentieth century’s middle decades, when, as Matthew Henry has noted, “Cold 
War funding meant the emergence of new roles for scientists as agents of foreign policy, and the 
framing of their science as a symbol of a politically loaded technological superiority.” In the case 
of New Zealand, Henry instead sites that shift earlier, at the interwar intersection of meteorology 
and political power.3 

An examination of the Meteor expedition supports this earlier placement.4 The expedition 
was a joint project of the Reichsmarine—the Weimar-era Germany navy—and a coalition of 
scientists and their supporters. Planners from both these groups embraced nationalist goals from 
the expedition’s very conception. By cooperating to do science on, under, and above the Atlantic, 
they cooperated to regain prestige both for their constituent organizations and individuals, and 
for their nation on the world stage, goals that were reflected in every facet of the expedition—its 
science, its logistics, and its public relations. Their meteorological and oceanographic endeavors 
would lay symbolic claim to the Atlantic Ocean and the airspace above it, while participating in 
neocolonial efforts to replace the empire denied them after the war. As Sheila Jasanoff and other 
scholars have noted, “science and technology can be fruitfully studied as social practices geared 
to the establishment of varied kinds of structure and authority.”5 The Meteor expedition’s 
outcome thus represent a co-production of scientific knowledge of the ocean and the atmosphere 
and of a data-based German power over them, a metaphorical seizure of territory that would 
position German scientists as inheritors of a tradition of expeditionary science and place 
Germany back amongst the Great Powers scientifically. At the same time, this scientific 

                                                        
2 Chandra Mukerji has examined this murky compromise between patronage and control over research in the case of 
oceanographers and the United States government in A Fragile Power: Scientists and the State (Princeton, N.J. : 
Princeton University Press, 1989). 
3 Henry, “Australasian Airspace: Meteorology, and the practical Geopolitics, of Australasian Airspace, 1935-1940,” 
ch 12 in Climate, Science, and Colonization: Histories from Australia and New Zealand, ed. James Beattie, Emily 
O’Gorman, and Matthew Henry, 233-250 (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2014), 236. 
4 Arguably scientists had always been agents of foreign policy, at least in the expeditionary sciences. In his 
meteorological and oceanographic projects in the 1840s and 1850s, US Navy lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury 
certainly pursued linked scientific and political goals, though in a period where “scientist” was a less well-defined 
category. The British Challenger Expedition in the 1870s, jointly sponsored by the Royal Society of London and the 
Royal Navy, was clearly an imperial project. Penelope K. Hardy, “Every Ship a Floating Observatory: Matthew 
Fontaine Maury and the Acquisition of Knowledge at Sea,” ch 1 in Soundings and Crossings: Doing Science at Sea 
1800-1970, ed. Katharine Anderson and Helen M. Rozwadowski, 17-48 (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History 
Publications/Watson Publishing International) and Hardy, “Where Science Meets the Sea: Research Vessels and the 
Construction of Knowledge in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” (PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 
2017). 
5 Jasanoff, “Ordering Knowledge, Ordering Society,” Ch 2 in States of Knowledge: The Co-production of Science 
and Social Order, ed. Jasanoff, 13-45 (London: Routledge, 2004), 17. 



History of Meteorology 8 (2017)
 

 
 

 
 

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knowledge would lay the groundwork for the German military resurgence that would soon 
follow.  

 

Background 

 

Opportunities for scientists—and especially Europeans—to do science at sea were greatly 
curtailed during the Great War. This limitation was caused both by the problem of safety in an 
environment of unrestricted submarine warfare and by the massive redirection of resources—
both materiel and personnel—required by the participating countries’ war efforts. In Germany, 
following a model which would become standard for many nations later in the century, the navy 
enlisted the help of scientists to study conditions German warships and submarines were likely to 
encounter.6 Among these was Alfred Merz.  

Before the war, Merz had been a rising star in limnology, oceanography, and 
climatology, particularly interested in large-scale, ocean-atmosphere systems. He did graduate 
work in the Adriatic, then rose through the ranks at the Institut für Meereskunde (IfM)—the 
Institute for Oceanography—in Berlin, leading his students on field trips to local lakes and 
eventually the North Sea and Baltic, where he spent time developing instruments to measure 
temperature and current and dynamical methods to process the data. By 1915, he had developed 
a theoretical conception of tidal dynamics in the North Sea that allowed him to turn the few 
known statistics on tidal heights into precise tidal charts for the area at the Imperial Navy’s 
behest, a task that occupied him until 1918. While this work remained useful to science, in that 
his results proved the validity of his methods, its benefit to the war effort was obvious and 
immediate. At the same time, he continued thermometrical work close to shore in an effort to 
better understand the surface interface between air and water. The relationship thus developed 
with the navy led to the post-war establishment of a working group involving the IfM, of which 
Merz became director in 1921, and the Deutsche Seewarte—the German Hydrographic Office, 
sometimes called the Naval Observatory—in Hamburg, to continue North Sea tidal research.7 

The navy’s own resources and personnel had obviously been thoroughly enmeshed in the 
war effort. In its aftermath the service suffered both the actual losses of combat and those 
imposed by the punitive restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles. These losses stung, and they 
were aggravated in the early 1920s by Germany’s ongoing economic woes and by the loss of 
                                                        
6 For the relationship between the US navy and oceanographers, see Gary E. Weir, An Ocean in Common: American 
Naval Officers, Scientists, and the Ocean Environment (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2001). See 
also Mukerji, Fragile Power. 
7 Norbert Krebs, “Alfred Merz [Obituary],” Geographische Zeitschrift, 32. Jahrg. 1. H. (1926): 1-6; Reinhard 
Hoheisel-Huxmann, Die Deutsche Atlantische Expedition 1925-1927: Planung und Verlauf (Hamburg: Convent 
Verlag, 2007), 38. On the Deutsche Seewarte, see Heinrich Walle, though he ignores the shifts between military and 
civilian control during the World Wars, “Die Deutsche Seewarte,” Marine-Forum: Ausgabe A: offizielles Organ der 
Marine-Offizier-Vereinigung 10 (2004): 26-28.  



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political prestige under the new, republican government for a service whose officers had been 
solidly monarchist.8 Thanks in part to the large role naval troops had played in and the reactions 
of naval leadership to both the 1918 revolution that brought the Weimar government to power 
and the 1920 Kapp Putsch which attempted to overthrow it, public and government confidence in 
the navy remained low.9 Because the German Peace Delegation had considered renouncing all 
warships before the navy took things into its own hands and scuttled most of them at Skapa 
Flow, historian Keith Bird has argued that the Versailles Treaty’s severe restrictions may have 
paradoxically “saved the German navy from extinction.”10 By 1920, “[i]n government and 
civilian circles, a pronounced lack of faith in the navy’s ability to perform even the simplest task 
was quite widespread.”11 

The treaty restrictions severely limited the numbers and classes of ships the navy could 
operate, which orphaned some unfinished new construction in the slips. Such was the fate of new 
construction gunboat “C”, begun during the war but left unfinished, and now, because of the 
Versailles quotas, unfinishable as a warship. A quick-thinking naval hydrographer suggested 
commissioning it instead as a survey and research vessel, and the hull—moved hastily from the 
forfeited port of Gdańsk to Kiel—was finished accordingly, though much interior work was left 
to complete.12 At heart, though, the navy was still working strategically to counter the various 
indignities of Versailles. Though publically they appeared only to be shuffling survey ships—
they would complete and keep the new vessel in place of an older one allowed under 
Versailles—they consciously kept open the possibility of arming it in future. Many within the 
navy were also suggesting a large-scale trip abroad, to show the flag in as many ports as possible 
and thus project the image of a navy—and nation—that still mattered on the world stage. 

 

The Deutsche Pazifische Expedition 

 

With this desire in mind, oceanographer Gerhard Schott at the Deutsche Seewarte drafted a 
proposal for an expedition to the Pacific, aimed mainly at the navy’s flag-showing requirement. 
Science was a secondary concern; the proposed trip would fill gaps left in the observational 
record by earlier voyages. In its broad, observational approach and imperial ambitions, the 
planned voyage would thus have resembled that of the British HMS Challenger fifty years 
earlier. The navy asked Albrecht Penck, Merz’s mentor and his superior at the IfM, to comment 
on Schott’s proposal and perhaps suggest an alternative. Penck delegated the task to Merz. 
                                                        
8 Keith W. Bird, Weimar, the German Naval Officer Corps and the Rise of National Socialism (Amsterdam: B. R. 
Grüner, 1977), especially 141. 
9 Bird, Weimar, 9-10; 67-70. 
10 Bird, Weimar, 65. 
11 Bird, Weimar, 112. 
12 “Die Deutsche Atlantische Expedition auf dem Vermessungs- und Forschungsschiff “Meteor”: I. Bericht,” 
Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, 5/6 (1926): 1. 



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Merz agreed with the navy’s concern for German visibility on the world stage, though he 
framed the problem through his own experience as a scientist.13 Without funding, limited in their 
access to field sites thanks to the loss of colonies, and shunned from participation in international 
scientific endeavors, Merz warned that German scientists would appear to be out of touch with 
first-rate science, an image he feared would increasingly become reality as the lack of research 
opportunities took its toll.14 Addressing a major, interdisciplinary scientific problem on a global 
scale would prove Germans’ ability to do good science and do so in a very public way. The 
global ocean provided just such a problem, and was itself a field site from which Germany could 
not be excluded. Merz suggested a three-year program of observations organized around a series 
of inter-related questions which grew from his own scientific interests, including the origin of 
oceans and continents, the general circulation of water in the oceans and of air in the atmosphere, 
a better understanding of ocean tides, a clearer picture of the ocean’s bottom contours and of 
benthic tectonic activity, and a better understanding of the makeup of seawater. 

The navy liked Merz’s plan—though this preference may have laid the seeds for later 
contention between the IfM and Seewarte—and commenced planning. Of primary concern was 
the vast distances involved; the ship would need to be able to cruise between eight and nine 
thousand nautical miles before refueling. As currently configured, the former gunship “C”—now 
the research and survey ship Meteor—could not carry enough coal to fire its boilers over such 
distances. Pacific coaling stations were few and far between, so a naval shipyard was tasked with 
considering Meteor’s conversion to oil-fired boilers to handle the great distances involved. 
Unfortunately, such a change—exchanging boilers for diesel engine, tightening the coal bunkers 
to instead hold oil, and changing the rig on the auxiliary sails—would increase the still-ongoing 
construction costs by twenty percent, or three million extra marks. The hard-pressed post-war 
navy simply could not manage the sum, and the Weimar government did not share Merz’s and 
the navy’s sense of urgency for the task, given everything else left to rebuild in the war’s wake. 
The plan for a grand “Deutsche Pazifische Expedition” was dropped.  

 

The Notgemeinschaft Der Deutschen Wissenschaft 

 

In January 1924, Merz attended a meeting of the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen 
Wissenschaft—the Emergency Committee for German Science—chaired by Prussian minister of 
culture Friedrich Schmidt-Ott. The Notgemeinschaft was a non-governmental organization with 

                                                        
13 This account of Pacific expedition plan relies on Hoheisel-Huxmann, Deutsche Atlantische Expedition, 7-13. 
14 On the postwar exclusion of German scientists from international scientific efforts, see Daniel Kevles, “‘Into 
Hostile Political Camps’: The Reorganisation of International Science in World War I,” Isis 62 (1971): 47-60. On 
the impact of the loss of colonial field sites for German climatology, see Philipp Lehmann’s contribution to this 
issue: “Losing the Field: Franz Thorbecke and (Post)Colonial Climatology in Germany,” History of Meteorology 8 
(2017): 145–158.  



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a commitment to fund German science, formed in the war’s immediate aftermath by leading 
scientists of the Prussian Academy of Scientists who shared Merz’s fear that Germany was in 
danger of falling from the ranks of first-rate scientific powers. Schmidt-Ott echoed that fear, 
complaining that while he received many requests for support, they did not include any “really 
visionary ones.” Merz, no doubt disheartened by the failure of the proposed Pacific expedition, 
insisted such ideas existed, but scientists held no hope of getting them financed. When Schmidt-
Ott assured him funds could be found for the proper project, Merz pitched a version of the 
proposal he had offered to the navy.15 

Since the original project had foundered on the immense distances of the Pacific, the new 
proposal stayed in the Atlantic, a region better known but more easily reachable. A thorough 
study with a close network of stations could build on the long-term studies already accomplished 
and on Merz’s own work on large-scale atmospheric and oceanic circulation. The voyage could 
incorporate the work of other leading scientists, such as Alfred Wegener’s meteorology and Fritz 
Haber’s chemistry, and these three areas would contribute to understanding the biology of the 
Atlantic. The navy would no doubt be interested in pursuing hydrographical investigations, since 
they still wanted an excuse to send their new survey ship abroad, making the proposed 
expedition a broad effort to renew German relevance on almost every scientific front. Indeed, 
Merz’s proposal used the language of conquest. The Atlantic, he said, was “a free field for 
exploration” to which Germany “must set about laying claim.”16  

Schmidt-Ott was hooked, and asked Merz to write a formal proposal.17 Merz, worried 
after the earlier failure of earning a reputation with the navy as a “maker of empty projects,” first 
approached personal contacts in the navy seeking details of the ship’s capabilities and a frank 
appraisal of the plan’s likelihood to gain the support of naval leadership. With their 
encouragement, Merz worked up a preliminary proposal.18 

The prospect of sharing costs made the proposal more palatable to both navy and 
Notgemeinschaft. Over the next several months, they discussed expedition logistics, focusing 
largely on whether to make one long voyage or several short ones, with time at home in between. 
Advocates for the latter hoped time in between would allow not only processing of results but 
also refinement of methods and a redirection of efforts and focus based on those results. (They 
also feared participants’ performance would decline on a long duration mission.) Merz, though, 

                                                        
15 “Abschrift der Aufzeichnungen von Prof.Dr. A. Merz über die Verhandlungen bei der Planlegung der Deutschen 
Atlantischen Expedition,” N167-19, Auftrag Nr. 729, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany 
(hereafter BMF). 
16 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 7. German planning was co-incident with French meteorological voyages on the 
training ship Jacques Cartier and a British effort to establish a global network of ship-based meteorological 
observations. These no doubt influenced the German perception of a scramble for the Atlantic. Katharine Anderson, 
“Marine Meteorology: Observing Regimes and Global Visions, 1918-1939,” Soundings and Crossings, 213-244. 
17 “Abschrift der Aufzeichnungen,” N167-19, Auftrag Nr. 729, BMF. 
18 “Abschrift der Aufzeichnungen,” N167-19, Auftrag Nr. 729, BMF. 



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pressed consistently for one, unbroken trip, fearing—probably rightly—that if they once returned 
home, the funds for future legs would evaporate.19 He was eventually successful. 

Staffing the voyage required extensive discussion, tied obviously to the planning of the 
research agenda but also to jockeying between the institutions contributing plans and expertise to 
the voyage. In addition to the Notgemeinschaft, Merz’s IfM, the participating scientists’ 
universities, and the navy, this included the Deutsche Seewarte, which following the war had 
been removed from navy control and assigned to the Ministry of Transportation. Erich von 
Drygalski, the scientist who had led the German South Polar expedition on the Gauss in the late 
1880s and was now associated with the Academy of Science and the Geographical Society, was 
also invited to participate. Hugo Hergesell, who had developed methods for ocean-going 
meteorology aboard Prince Albert of Monaco’s yachts twenty years earlier, joined to plan the 
expedition’s meteorology.20  

As the Meteor’s overhaul already included seven cabins for scientists, Merz proposed a 
lead scientist, two hydrographers, two chemists, and two meteorologists. The ship’s doctor could 
double as an expedition biologist. The scientists would assist with sample collection, rather than 
restricting themselves to laboratory work, and naval personnel would train as lab assistants. Merz 
pushed for the selection of young, up-and-coming scientists who could be future leaders in their 
fields. Though the group debated inclusion of various sub-specialities, and these were tied to the 
coordination of specific scientific measurements and sampling in the work plan, the discussion 
was for the most part congenial. 21 Merz was eventually confirmed as expedition leader and 
given final authority to choose personnel, though he sought the input of the others on the 
suitability of men in their respective fields.22 In addition to Merz, four oceanographers, a 
biologist, a geologist, a chemist, and two meteorologists eventually embarked.23 

 

Making the Meteor 

 

The Meteor was 75 meters long, 4 meters in draft, and displaced 1200 tons. As originally 
planned, its middle deck would have bristled with side guns between superstructure and stern. 
Their absence left room to accommodate the scientific staff. The new “residential deck” 
contained nine scientific staterooms, a laboratory, and a drafting room.24 The ship was furnished 
with “beautiful functional interior decor done in the most beautiful wood.” It was decorated with 

                                                        
19 “Abschrift der Aufzeichnungen,” N167-19, Auftrag Nr. 729, BMF. 
20 Hardy, “Where Science Meets the Sea.” 
21 “Abschrift der Aufzeichnungen,” N167-19, Auftrag Nr. 729, BMF. 
22 “Abschrift der Aufzeichnungen,” N167-19, Auftrag Nr. 729, BMF. 
23“Die Deutsche Atlantische Expedition auf dem Vermessungs- und Forschungsschiff “Meteor”: I. Bericht,” 
Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, 5/6 (1926): 4. 
24 “Die Deutsche Atlantische Expedition . . . I. Bericht,” 6-7.  



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“[a]ttractive items,” including a piano and gramophone. Shipbuilders generally avoid wood on 
modern warships for fire safety reasons, but it was included here not just for the comfort of the 
scientists or to make the space esthetically pleasing over the cruise’s long duration, but also 
because of the ship’s ulterior mission, to show German pride abroad. The tastefully appointed 
interior allowed them to “exhibit this decor to the outside world” when officials and scientists of 
recently adversarial nations as well as German expatriates toured the ship in foreign ports. The 
efficacy of keeping up such appearances was later clear when “[i]n the foreign press our 
laboratory was termed ‘a wonder of a floating laboratory.’”25 

That wondrous laboratory, which had been “furnished according to the wishes of the 
individual scientists” provided chemical, biological, and geological workstations, as well as 
accommodations for two laboratory technicians. Each workstation was provided with fresh and 
salt water and electrical power, and the lab was well equipped with a chemical stove with fume 
extraction, three electrical centrifuges, microscopes—including a polarizing microscope, gas 
analysis equipment, geological elutriation apparatus, and a plethora of storage cabinets, racks, 
and containers. The nearby drafting room provided work stations for two oceanographers 
equipped for titration, room for the meteorological equipment, and a drafting and calculating 
table for cartographic and calculating work. This room also housed read-outs for the remote 
measuring anemometer, air thermometer, and water thermometer. A comprehensive map file, 
scientific expedition library, and a card file of known oceanographic data completed the 
equipment. 26 On the lower deck, a dark room was equipped to handle both still and 
cinematographic film, which would be used to study the flight of sea birds in slow motion, and 
also contained a recording apparatus for stereographic wave studies.27  

As presented later in Spiess’s official account, the expedition was a curious mix of rigor 
and resourcefulness. The participating institutions collaborated to procure instruments. Much of 
the naval equipment had come from an old cruiser, but this was largely obsolete and required 
supplementation or modernization. The navy procured the necessary ropes and cables, while 
oceanographic gear was arranged through the IfM. The Seewarte and the observatory in 
Lindenberg provided or procured meteorological equipment, the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute 
chemical equipment, and the State Zoological Museum in Hamburg biological equipment. 
Instruments developed for previous expeditions were improved, and the expedition members 
often developed instruments in their areas of expertise, a task no doubt helped by the long lead 
time and relatively early identification of team members.28 The larger equipment was 
manufactured ashore, typically by corporate—when possible German—makers. But the captain 
stressed their ability to improvise and make do. On a mission of such length and duration, and 
with resupply and repair limited by the financial resources of their sponsors, the Meteor 

                                                        
25 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 31-32. 
26 “Die Deutsche Atlantische Expedition . . . I. Bericht,” 6-7.  
27 “Die Deutsche Atlantische Expedition . . . I. Bericht,” 6-7.  
28 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 28.  



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personnel had to necessarily be self-sufficient. The ship carried its own machine shop for major 
repairs; a precision mechanical workshop for instrument crafting and repair was added for the 
expedition.29 A “well-trained precision mechanic” accompanied the expedition and was 
“responsible for maintenance of all scientific equipment and instruments.”30 A glassblowing 
lamp allowed repair of glass apparatus and the manufacture of new instruments, such as a special 
inspection tube for measuring water visibility depth from a small boat.31 

The upper deck held three motor lifeboats, four sounding machines of various types, a 
meteorological kite winch, and special anchoring equipment designed to hold the ship fast in 
deeper water than ever attempted. In addition to the kites, the ship could launch balloons, filled 
from hydrogen cylinders carried aboard, which could in turn be refilled with hydrogen 
electrolyzed from seawater.32 While no longer a gunboat, the ship carried a “wind gun,” designed 
to shoot smoke cartridges as high as 7500 m altitude, allowing observation of wind speed and 
direction when clouds made tracking pilot balloons impossible. The ship also carried small arms 
and harpoons, which were later used from a small boat in an attempt to catch a whale; at this the 
unpracticed crewmembers had no success.33  

If Meteor’s outfitting reflected the balancing act the navy was playing with the 
requirements of Versailles, it demonstrated as well the commercialization and corporatization of 
science in the first decades of the twentieth century. Where the earlier expeditions’ instruments 
had borne the names of individual designers, Meteor’s instruments often came from commercial 
makers and bore company names. These were, whenever possible, Germany companies. The 
photographic instruments and film were donated by the Aktiengesellschaft für Anilinfabrikation, 
better known as Agfa.34 Meteor carried two new echo-sounding devices. One was of completely 
German origin, developed by the Kiel-based Signalgesellschaft and thus named the Signal 
sounder. The other was a product of the Submarine Signal Corporation in Boston, Massachusetts, 
sold to the Atlaswerke in Bremen and renamed the Atlas sounder.35 

To back up and verify the echo sounders, Meteor carried two line sounders: a Thomson 
sounding machine, originally developed by Lord Kelvin in the 1870s, and a Lucas machine, 
designed in the 1880s. Meteor’s sampling lines used reversing thermometers and messenger-
operated sampling gear that would not have appeared unfamiliar to earlier expeditions. Merz’s 
home-grown tidal current meters, developed during his North Sea work, were deployed 

                                                        
29 “Die Deutsche Atlantische Expedition . . . I. Bericht,” 6-7.  
30 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 23.  
31 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 169; “Die Deutsche Atlantische Expedition auf dem Vermessungs- und 
Forschungsschiff “Meteor”: II. Bericht.” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, 5/6 (1926): 211. 
32 “Abschrift der Aufzeichnungen,” N167-19, Auftrag Nr. 729, BMF; Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 67. 
33 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 67, 155. 
34 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 393. 
35 Sabine Höhler, “Depth Records and Ocean Volumes: Ocean Profiling by Sounding Technology, 1850-1930,” 
History and Technology 18, no. 2 (2002): 140. 



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alongside their commercially-developed cousins.36 Thus for both technological and budgetary 
reasons, they had, as Spiess put it, “a strange combination of old and new on our ship. While on 
one side [it] had sailing arrangements and old model drive, on the other hand [it] had the most 
modern equipment on board: gyrocompass, radio direction finder, echo sounder—a mixture of 
the oldest and the latest.”37  

 

Assembling the expedition 

 

Meteor was finally placed in commission in November 1924, officially the first new German 
naval vessel completed since the war, but ten years and nine months after construction had 
begun.38 This long-delayed completion allowed many physical changes to the ship as it was 
adapted and readapted for its evolving mission. Alongside changes to the working and living 
accommodations, the propulsion systems evolved significantly. With the planned diesel 
conversion abandoned, the ship retained a coal-fired steam system supplemented by sail. In order 
to increase range, two of the four original boilers were removed, allowing enlarged coal 
bunkering capacity.39 A smaller, auxiliary boiler for in-port use would reduce coal consumption 
and allow downtime for main boiler maintenance. A diesel generator powered shipboard 
electrical systems to further reduce coal consumption. Two meters added smokestack height 
improved exhaust gas flow as well as conditions on deck, where ash and flue gases sometimes 
interfered with the scientists’ work. Propeller efficiency was improved. At the same time, the 
ship’s sailing rig was modified to a full-rigged forward mast with three square sails. When 
cruising range still fell short of requirements, a petty officer’s cabin was converted into an 
additional coal bunker, and storage space was found on deck for another 50 tons. Meteor now 
carried 440 tons of coal, providing a theoretical steaming range of 6800 nm.40 

The long lead time caused by the expedition’s shaky financial start allowed thorough 
preparation by scientists and naval personnel. Merz and his students had assembled every 
previous hydrographic observation they could find into a comprehensive card file, as well as 
preparing current maps and salinity and temperature sections from known data. Meanwhile, 
naval personnel received special training to allow them to undertake or assist with their own 
scientific assignments. Ship’s officers were responsible for astronomical and geomagnetic work, 
photography and cinematography, and the measurement of electrical potential. Ship’s personnel 
also operated the sonar equipment, rapidly becoming experts in the new technology. Senior non-
commissioned officers served as assistants and draftsmen for oceanographic work, chemistry, 

                                                        
36 Krebs, “Alfred Merz,” 1-6. 
37 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 63. 
38 Hoheisel-Huxmann, Deutsche Atlantische Expedition, 20. 
39 “Die Deutsche Atlantische Expedition . . . I. Bericht,” 9.  
40 “Die Deutsche Atlantische Expedition . . . I. Bericht,” 25-26. 



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and meteorological kite and balloon handling.41 Six non-scientist civilian employees also 
embarked, though their identities and roles are poorly recorded. They likely filled roles as 
assistants, mechanics, and “invisible technicians.”42  

Spiess reported consistent professional behavior and no strain between the various groups 
of personnel beyond that expected among any large number of human beings constrained to 
close quarters over an extended period. However, very little exists with which to check this 
claim. The Meteor Commission kept tight control on publications, reserving ownership of all 
output except the hydrographic products belonging to the navy.43 This was not unprecedented, 
but it meant this expedition did not spawn the flurry of unofficial accounts that followed the 
Challenger Expedition. 

The expedition suffered a major leadership challenge when, after the first leg of the 
journey, Merz fell ill. He tried to remain on board to supervise the oceanographic work from his 
sickbed, but was soon returned to Rio de Janeiro, the nearest port, for treatment at the German 
hospital. The expedition proceeded with Spiess in nominal command of both ship and science, 
until a telegram six weeks later informed them of Merz’s death. The scientists apparently asked 
Spiess to retain scientific leadership, a decision with which their backers in Germany eventually 
concurred.44 It is unclear if this arrangement had been discussed in advance. Despite Merz’s 
history of illness, the commission had let him evaluate his own fitness for the long voyage; 
perhaps, whether because of this history or simply because travel at sea and to foreign ports 
involved certain risks even for the healthy, they had established a continuity plan for the 
mission.45 It is also possible that the scientists could come to no consensus allowing one of them 
to step into a superior position, so the naval officer who already commanded the ship seemed a 
compromise. Either way, Spiess appears to have been a good choice. Though not a trained 
scientist, he had been involved in the planning from the beginning, and he understood the work 
and its goals. He conscientiously continued the scientific plan to the best of the ship’s ability, 
expressly considering Merz’s original instructions whenever modifications had to be made. 

 

 

                                                        
41 “Die Deutsche Atlantische Expedition . . . I. Bericht,” 7. 
42 “Die Deutsche Atlantische Expedition . . . I. Bericht,” 7. For invisible technicians, see Steven Shapin, “The 
Invisible Technician,” American Scientist 77, no. 6 (1989): 554-563. 
43 This policy is discussed in numerous places, among them Albrecht Penck to Spiess, 9 October 1925, N167-16, 
Auftrag Nr. 729, BMF. A four-page document outlining the principles under which the expedition results would be 
published was drafted after discussion amongst the principals; “Grundsätze für die Aufbau und Umfang des 
wissenschaftlichen Expeditions-Werkes der Deutschen Atlantischen Expedition,” N167-19, Auftrag Nr. 729, BMF. 
44 Spiess reports being approached by Hentschel and Reger, the “two oldest scientists,” Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 
130. The committee’s endorsement was conveyed by letter; Penck to Spiess, 9 October 1925, N167-16, Auftrag Nr. 
729, BMF. Penck also made sure the navy endorsed the plan; Penck to Spiess, 13 October 1925, N167-16, Auftrag 
Nr. 729, BMF. 
45 On Merz making the fitness decision, “Abschrift der Aufzeichnungen,” N167-19, Auftrag Nr. 729, BMF.  



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Doing science at sea 

 

Much of the scientific work of the expedition was organized around stations, as had become the 
standard for oceanographic work. These 300 sampling points were arranged along fourteen 
latitudinal cross-sections of the Atlantic, called “profiles,” ranging from about 20⁰N to below 
60⁰S. At the end of each profile, the ship would visit ports along the South American and 
African coasts, allowing time for replenishment and repair, but also crew leave, scientific 
expeditions ashore, visits with local scientific and political connections, and other activities. The 
profiles had been planned according to expected climatic conditions over the course of the two-
year expedition, visiting the furthest southern latitudes, for instance, during the southern 
hemispheric summer, and accounting for seasonal variations in the trade winds elsewhere. Echo 
sounding and some surface and meteorological work continued at and between stations.  

A typical station involved lowering numerous thermometers and sample bottles via a 
large winch on the aft deck; another winch forward was available as backup. Each carried 8000 
m of aluminum-bronze stranded wire rope, with a high tensile strength and an 830-kg breaking 
strength. The aluminum-bronze alloy meant the line required no grease to prevent corrosion. 
Sample bottles were spaced along the line at intervals, their number determined by the depth, and 
each could be triggered in sequence by a falling weight to capture seawater.46 Once preliminary 
contamination checks were done, the samples were secured for further analysis in port, where 
chlorine titration—conducted by one of the scientists or a crew member trained for the task—
allowed the calculation of salinity. The lines carried reversing thermometers, both pressure-
protected and unprotected, at the same points as the water samples. Once the line reached the 
desired depth, it would be left for twenty minutes for the thermometers to register accurately. A 
messenger weight sent down the line would then trigger both water sample capture and the 
thermometers’ reversal, locking the temperature reading at depth. The resulting temperature and 
salinity data together provided useful information about the movement of water throughout the 
ocean. Comparison of the protected thermometer with the unprotected, which was thus affected 
by pressure, provided a calculated depth based on the known effect of pressure on temperature 
and the regular increase of pressure with depth, which could double-check the sounding line. 
Thermometers could be calibrated in port with a bucket of ice water. To check that the water 
samplers closed at the desired depth, the resulting samples were analyzed for hydrogen ion 
concentration, which also varies regularly with depth. 47  

                                                        
46 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 94-5. 
47 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 96, 99. 



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A four-liter bottle at the bottom of the line was rigged to sample seawater with no contact 
with metal.48 These samples—1,282 in total—were intended to allow very precise measurement 
of the precious metal content of seawater, a pursuit which was central to Haber’s chemical 
program. He hoped gold could be distilled from seawater to erase the massive war reparations 
imposed by the victors at Versailles, which were wreaking havoc with the German economy.49 
Onboard analysis proved inconclusive, so the samples were shipped back to the Kaiser-Wilhelm 
Institute in Berlin, where further analysis proved Haber’s dream elusive. Sampling found the 
gold content of seawater to be about 10-9g/kg, or, as Spiess noted, “one hundred-thousandth part 
of a milligram” per kilogram of seawater. Distilling it would thus cost far more than it gained.50 
Seawater would not be the answer to Germany’s financial woes. 

To study the ocean bottom, a cylindrical steel tube containing a glass tube was attached to 
the 10-km piano wire of the Lukas sounder, and dropped into the sea with a sink weight 
sufficient to ram it into the bottom. A spring sensed contact and stopped the drum paying out the 
sounding line. The depth could then be read before retrieval. Unlike some earlier samplers, the 
weight was raised with the tube, allowing its reuse and obviating the need to haul disposable 
weights; Spiess calculated that over the course of the trip this saved the need to carry 12,000 kg 
of weights. The tube was closed on the bottom to prevent loss or contamination of the sample, 
thus retrieving not only bottom material but also the water in contact with it. When it reached the 
surface, the glass tube was removed from the steel one and sealed with rubber corks at each end. 
Bottom core samples averaged greater than 50 cm in length, with some exceeding 90 cm. The 
glass tube allowed observation of the sample’s stratification before it was removed and cut in 
half lengthwise, with half retained for analysis onboard and the other half secured in paraffin for 
analysis in Germany. In bottoms too sandy to successfully secure a core, a grab sampler enclosed 
a four-liter bottom sample in two bowl-like scoops. Color, oxidation, calcium content, and 
particle size analysis allowed the scientists to compare with surface plankton sampling and to 
integrate geology into their study of currents.51 

Because of the need for multiple water and temperature samples over great depths, a 
station usually involved the taking of three series of samples, in shallow, intermediate, and deep 
water. Merz had estimated each station would take ten to twelve hours, but with practice they 
averaged eight to nine, and as few as six when the weather was fine. Meanwhile the biologists 
performed net catches on the surface and in shallow water.52 

                                                        
48 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 94-5. 
49 Ralf Hahn, Gold aus dem Meer: Die Forschungen des Nobelpreisträgers Fritz Haber in den Jahren 1922-1927 
(Berlin: Verlag für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der Technik, 1999), 33. 
50 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 353-354. As Haber put it, “Die Aussicht auf eine Nutzbarmachung des Meerwassers 
zur Goldgewinnung ist geschwunden.” Quoted in Hahn, Gold aus dem Meer, 80. 
51 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 153. 
52 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 99. 



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137 

The bulk of biology work on the voyage consisted of plankton studies. Plankton counts 
were performed on the water samples gathered during the sounding series. Nanoplankton, 
especially, were too small to catch with even a fine silk net and thus had to be centrifuged from 
water samples and then counted and examined under a microscope. Over 1200 such samples 
were examined while at sea, demonstrating that plankton lived even at depths of 4000 or 5000 
meters, and their numbers were greatest where cold Antarctic water mixed with warm.53 

Larger plankton were captured from using one of two pumps which pulled from between 
50 and 100 meters depth. The water was discharged into a barrel, then filtered through a net of 
fine plankton gauze. Actual net catches were also made with the Lucas sounding machine and 
either an Apstein or Nansen net. The former filtered water through its funnel shape towards a 
measuring cylinder where plankton accumulated on a piece of parchment paper. The latter 
directed water towards a bottle; the apparatus was sent down open to a predetermined depth, then 
hauled up until a messenger closed it at a second predetermined depth. In both cases, the 
collected plankton were sent to the State Zoological Museum in Hamburg.54 This work, in 
concert with chemical and current studies, was intended to help explain the distribution of 
nutrients and of plant and animal life in the oceans and their relationship with oceanic currents.55 
In fact, the results showed from the paucity of nutrients in tropical surface waters compared to 
relatively high values below the thermocline that vertical mixing did not take place, helping to 
explain the lack of plankton in these nutrient-poor areas.56 Later, these results would contribute 
to the explanation of spring plankton blooms during seasonal upwelling near the poles. 

The biologists observed larger animals as well, though less thoroughly. Twice a day, they 
conducted a quantitative bird count in the ship’s aft quadrant. They also counted floating and 
moving organisms, such as jellyfish and weeds. Lookouts were trained to call the biologist 
immediately if any unusual plant or animal was sighted. Occasionally, the biologists also 
examined larger animals. For instance, while at anchor on the western side of the Mid-Atlantic 
Ridge during the second profile across the Atlantic, a 90-kg blue shark was caught and 
dissected.57 And as has been mentioned, slow-motion film studies were made of albatross in 
order to study their flight. 

 

Meteorology at sea 

Meteorology formed a major area of research both in its own right and in concert with the 
oceanographic studies, to elucidate the role of winds in the development of surface currents. The 

                                                        
53 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 124-5. 
54 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 124-7.  
55 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 124. 
56 Eric Mills, Biological Oceanography: An Early History, 1870-1960 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 
160. 
57 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 123. 



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138 

crew’s normal observations of meteorological conditions were recorded hourly in the ship’s 
logbooks and daily observation books. The embarked meteorologists made similar but more 
extensive observations of surface air pressure and temperature, atmospheric humidity, surface 
water temperature, cloud forms and coverage, surface wind direction and strength, evaporation 
rate, and visibility. These were taken regularly three times a day, at 7 AM, 6 PM, and 9 PM. 
Spiess noted the ship was equipped to observe as well as “the first class meteorological 
observation station on land.” Observations were radioed home as well as recorded. On the 
preliminary run, crewmen discovered the thermometer on the bridge read falsely high because of 
proximity to the metal bulkheads. A series of remote thermometers were set up for comparison, 
located on the bow, stern, and atop the foremast in order to be as far from heat sources as 
possible. All four were read in the drawing room.58 

The meteorologists also measured solar radiation with a pair of actinometers, though the 
deck of a ship proved less than ideal for instruments that must remain focused on the sun during 
a reading. The actinometers were also difficult to keep smoke-free on the coal-burning ship. One 
of the meteorologists constructed a recorder for measuring total radiation, which was placed on 
the aft deck.59 

Twice a day, unless cloud cover obscured visibility, the crew released and tracked pilot 
balloons to observe winds aloft. The large, rubber balloons, perhaps 1.5 meters in diameter, 
reached heights of up to 21,000 m before bursting. On cloudy days, the wind gun provided an 
alternative tool for visualizing and tracking the winds until its use was stopped because the 
vibrations it induced affected the ships thermometers.60  

For more detailed information, both kites and balloons could carry instruments aloft. 
Large box kites were launched from the aft deck using an electric motor and 10 km of piano 
wire, though the crew had to learn how to handle them in the small space available. The main 
kite carried a “meteorograph,” an instrument package which recorded temperature, air pressure, 
moisture, and wind velocity. As the main kite rose into the air, up to five or six auxiliary kites 
were attached to the line to provide additional lift, allowing the heavy package to ascend as high 
as 4 km. Kites were launched “in even slightly favorable conditions,” including on brightly 
moonlit nights, when they were tracked by searchlight. A smaller, hand-operated winch 
controlled them in the air and retrieved them to the deck. The kites were highly stable aloft, but 
difficult to retrieve in a strong wind, and they might sometimes dive into the sea at the last 
moment and be lost.61 

Paired balloons allowed study of meteorological conditions at higher altitudes. A fully 
inflated main balloon carried the meteorograph basket, while a secondary balloon filled with less 

                                                        
58 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 64-65. Quote on p. 64. 
59 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 66. 
60 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 66-7. 
61 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 67-9, 287. Quote on pg. 69. 



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139 

hydrogen tagged along for the ride. The gas within the balloons expanded with decreasing 
atmospheric pressure until the fuller balloon burst at about 20 km altitude. The second balloon, 
unable to keep the instruments aloft by itself, acted as a parachute to slow their descent and then 
as a beacon so the ship could retrieve the instruments.62 These flights were carried out less often 
than kite ascents, in part because tethered kites could safely ascend into clouds, whereas a heavy 
cloud cover that obscured tracking of the free-floating balloons could result in the loss of the 
instrument package. 

 

Sounding the ocean 

 

The most revolutionary of the investigatory technologies aboard Meteor was sonar, in the form 
of an echo sounder or fathometer. A navigational device to find depth using a sound pulse had 
been patented in Germany as early as 1912, and in the wake of the Titanic disaster inventors and 
maritime officials experimented with the same concept to measure distances horizontally or find 
objects (such as icebergs) in the water surrounding a vessel. The Great War’s interference in 
civilian shipping had retarded the spread of the navigational technology and obscured other 
experimentation beneath the cloak of military secrecy. By the 1920s, though, the US, France, and 
Britain all experienced some success in developing these tools and were deploying them in 
limited fashion aboard moving ships. An American warship had sounded a continuous profile 
across the Atlantic, and while the single resulting depth cross-section demonstrated such a feat 
could be accomplished, it hardly cast much new light on the topography of the Atlantic basin. In 
1923 the US hydrographic office published a bathymetric chart of the California coastline 
incorporating 5000 sonar measurements conducted by two warships over thirty-eight days, but 
while this represented a vast improvement both in area covered and in time and labor spent, it 
barely touched the rim of the vast Pacific.63 

With their two new, state-of-the-art sounders, the Germans hoped to provide the first 
comprehensive survey of the Atlantic. Both operated by emitting a 1050-Hz pulse, which 
reflected off the bottom and returned to the ship after a delay which depended on the depth 
beneath the ship’s keel. A receiving membrane on the hull detected the reflected signal. The 
sounding apparatus calculated the depth based on the delay, using a preset approximation of the 
speed of sound in seawater.64 Soundings could thus be conducted in any depth, in all weather, 

                                                        
62 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 53-54.  
63 Höhler, “Depth Records,” 136. “Echo Sounding: Test carried out by the U.S.S. ‘Stewart’ 20th to 29th June 1922’’, 
Hydrographic Review 1 (1923): 71 – 72. Gerhard Schott, “Tiefseelotungen mittelst Echolot,” Annalen der 
Hydrographie und Maritimen Meteorologie: Organ des Hydrographischen Bureaus und der Deutschen Seewarte 51 
(August 1923): 192-195. 
64 This was 1470 m/s for the Signal sounder, or 1490 m/s for the Atlas. Hoheisel-Huxmann, Deutsche Atlantische 
Expedition, 58. 



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140 

while the ship maintained speed. At every oceanographic station, an old-fashioned line sounding 
verified the echo sounding results.65 

In addition to the receiving membrane on the hull, a microphone also picked up the 
returning echo and conveyed it to listening naval personnel. Schott, at the Seewarte, believed 
automation that allowed the calculation of depth without human intervention, and thus 
elimination of the human ear from the process, rendered the method more objective and thus its 
results more accurate and trustworthy.66 The technicians doing the listening, though, found that 
with practice they could distinguish bottom type and topography based on differences in the 
reflected sound. They could also hear the reverberating echoes. Technicians soon learned to 
recognize the different sounds and patterns of reverberation returned from different bottom 
morphologies. On a flat bottom, the echo might repeat up to five times at regular intervals. But 
when the bottom was broken and irregular, the intervals were irregular and the repeated echoes 
might even overlap. 67 Retaining the human ear in the process thus led to results that might 
arguably be less precise in terms solely of depth measurement, but which provided additional 
layers of information granted solely through the employment of this expert sensory knowledge. 

The results were as good as could have been hoped. The two modern echo sounders 
performed flawlessly; they remained in continuous use during the thirty-month expedition with 
no technical difficulties, usually taking individual measurements every twenty minutes, and thus 
at two or three mile intervals.68 When the bottom topography seemed particularly interesting, the 
interval was shortened. The morphology thus charted often determined the location or interval of 
oceanographic stations, as it suggested the contours of ocean basins which could, when 
augmented with the thermal and chemical results gained by sampling, elucidate the movement of 
deep currents. The resulting charts of Atlantic topography represent a significant legacy of the 
expedition, and formed the basis for a three-dimensional, bottom relief model of the South 
Atlantic displayed in the Berlin Museum of Oceanography.69 

In addition, as historian Sabine Höhler has pointed out, the use of a sound moving 
through water to calculate distance rendered the water itself the medium of measurement, instead 
of the lines and weights of the previous generations of sounders. The properties of sea water that 
affected the behavior of sound within it thus became important objects of study for the purposes 
of their participation in this technology, rather than just as an end in itself.70 This would prove 
immensely important to the future direction of physical oceanography as a field, both rendering 

                                                        
65 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 151. 
66 Höhler, “Depth Records,” 134. Schott, “Messung der Meerestiefen durch Echolot,” Verhandlungen der Deutsche 
Geographentages 21 (1926). 
67 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 83. 
68 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 83. 
69 Höhler, “Profilgewinn. Karten der Atlantischen Expedition (1925–1927) der Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen 
Wissenschaft,” NTM International Journal of History & Ethics of Natural Sciences, Technology & Medicine 10, no. 
4 (December 2002): 234-246. 
70 Höhler, “Depth Records,” 122. 



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141 

the world’s blue water navies important patrons of oceanography and simultaneously guiding the 
direction of study as the field developed over the course of the next several decades. 

 

Nationalism at sea and ashore 

 

Historians have noted a push in the first few decades of the twentieth century towards 
internationalism in science, especially in European science. The ocean and atmospheric sciences 
in particular seemed highly suited for transnational work, as the winds and currents and their 
flora and fauna respected no national boundaries.71 Katharine Anderson points to marine 
meteorology in particular for its ability to “tell us much about global science in the first decades 
of the century,” both in terms of its organizational history and “as a conceptual ideal.”72 Post-
Great War, the formation of the League of Nations suggested a new internationalism on the 
political front, one which scientists might have been forgiven for imagining would be reflected in 
their own situation. 

However, just as the war had wrought major changes in European politics, the case for 
international science had also been complicated by the conflict, especially when it came to 
Germany. Along with their compatriots in other occupations, German scientists were dealing 
with a swirl of both concrete and emotional repercussions from the war. This included actual 
privation and hardship, amplified by the hyperinflation of the 1920s; in the case of scientists this 
meant a lack of funding opportunities, especially outside Germany, where German currency was 
not accepted because of its illiquidity. It also included censure and blame, or at least the 
perception of blame, from international peers and scientific bodies, who as a result did not invite 
German participation in international efforts.73  

Neither were German scientists above the emotional fallout of the war. Many of them had 
invested themselves fully in the war effort, in keeping with Haber’s claim that “[i]n wartime, the 
scholar belongs to his nation, in peacetime to mankind.”74 They suffered a wounded nationalist 
pride at the same rate as their peers in other professions. As a nation, Germans had lost a war, 
and they suffered now from restrictions on what had been favorite nationalist projects, such as 
                                                        
71 Elisabeth Crawford, “The Universe of International Science, 1880-1939,” in Solomon’s House Revisited: The 
Organisation and Institutionalization of Science, ed. Tore Frängsmyr (Canton, MA : Science History Publications, 
U.S.A., 1990), 251-269; Rozwadowski, “Internationalism, Environmental Necessity and National Interest in the 
Marine Sciences and Other Sciences,” Minerva 42 (2004): 127-149; Jacob Darwin Hamblin, “Visions of 
International Scientific Cooperation: The Case of Oceanic Science 1920-1955,” Minerva 38 (2000): 393-423; 
Rozwadowski, The Sea Knows No Boundaries: A Century of Marine Science under ICES (Seattle: University of 
Washington Press, 2002.)  
72 Anderson, “Marine Meteorology,” 213. 
73 Daniel Kevles, “‘Into Hostile Political Camps’,”47-60; Elisabeth Crawford, “Internationalism in Science as a 
Casualty of the First World War: Relations between German and Allied Scientists as Reflected in Nominations for 
the Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry,” Social Science Information 27, no. 2 (June 1988): 163-201. 
74 Quoted in Crawford, “The Universe of International Science,” 252. 



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the fleet Germany had worked so hard to maintain at the level of a world power, or the colonies 
they had scrambled to build abroad. Germany had been at the forefront of science, a leader in 
any number of fields. The lack of money, of colonial sites to accommodate their fieldwork, and 
of international goodwill meant they now risked falling behind in science, just when they had 
been so decisively removed from world power status politically. These concerns were reflected 
in every detail of the planning and execution of the Deutsche Atlantische Expedition, from the 
practical to the symbolic. 

From a practical standpoint, the ongoing devaluation of Germany’s currency was a 
constant backdrop to their work. This can be seen in Merz’s fears that a multi-stage expedition 
would be cancelled after the first leg, as he imagined returning home to find funding for the next 
sections had evaporated. During the expedition itself, supplies—from instruments to foodstuffs 
and even coal—were often shipped via German cargo line to their expected ports of call so they 
could be paid for in home currency, rather than spending scarce foreign currency or gold for 
these expenses abroad. 

From the more emotional standpoint, the planners and participants positioned themselves 
as inheritors and continuers of a great scientific tradition, and when possible, a specifically 
German tradition. This was not wholly without precedent. Certainly previous expeditions made 
similar nods to the footsteps in which they travelled, as Spiess did when he reported making a 
mid-ocean station on 10 August 1925 in the same location as Challenger had, or when they made 
another at the spot where over seventy years earlier the American USS Dolphin had recorded the 
deepest point ever sounded in the Atlantic.75 Neither was he out of line to do so; the use of sonar 
sounding to check Dolphin’s notoriously deep line sounding, thus reconfirming with new 
technology the inaccuracy of the original depth, was completely scientifically appropriate. That 
in doing so he claimed for German science some greater mastery over the hitherto imprecisely 
known depth was, however, symptomatic of an entire attitude of the expedition. When Spiess 
cited previous expeditions, he noted that (by his calculation) seven of the ten major expeditions 
preceding his had been German, including those of Gazelle, Möwe, and Planet, and he noted 
every time Meteor’s track or data intercepted these forerunners.76 When Meteor reached South 
Georgia Island in February 1926, ship’s personnel visited the site of the German 1882/3 
International Polar Year investigations, a visit Spiess described as a kind of pilgrimage. 
Appropriately to that purpose, they found many remains, though the station had mostly been 
destroyed.77 

This is not to say the Germans distanced themselves from the scientific work of non-
Germans. Spiess invoked the names of Challenger and Dolphin as tokens of power, proving 
Meteor’s worthiness for inclusion in the list of major expeditions and great ocean-going science. 

                                                        
75 Hoheisel-Huxmann, Deutsche Atlantische Expedition, 36; 89. 
76 “Die Deutsche Atlantische Expedition . . . I. Bericht,” [XVII] – 77. 
77 Hoheisel-Huxmann, Deutsche Atlantische Expedition, 47. 



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143 

Similarly, Merz visited Scandinavian researchers before the expedition, seeking their blessings 
for the plan, and the researchers welcomed already famous Swedish oceanographer Walfrid 
Ekman as a guest on the preliminary expedition, ostensibly to supervise the initial use of their 
water samplers and current meters, which were based on his designs, but clearly also seeking in 
his presence approbation for their efforts.78 If Germans did science that put them in the company 
of great expeditions and met with the approval of internationally known scholars, then they were 
a Great Power once more, in a way Versailles could not deny them. 

The displays of nationalist pride were not confined to the performance of science, 
however, though it is difficult to tell how much of its frank display is because of the hybrid 
nature of the expedition’s leadership, which left a career naval officer to write the official 
expedition account, or because that account was intended for the public rather than a scientific 
audience. Port calls for replenishment and refueling were intentionally scheduled for former 
German colonies or major German expatriate communities whenever possible. This practice 
places Meteor’s scientific efforts within the neocolonial framework described by Gregory 
Cushman, allowing a Germany officially stripped of its colonies to maintain an informal 
empire.79 These visits were celebrated with speeches commemorating Germany’s past and 
predicting its future greatness, and with patriotic songs, such as when they concluded a 
celebration in Windhoek with a rousing rendition of “Siegreich woll’n wir England schlagen!” 
(“We want to defeat England!”) in the presence of British officials. Spiess followed with a 
speech, telling the crowd, “Germany has always risen again. What it needs is the right man and 
he will come!”80  

 While it is perhaps unsurprising for logistics and public relations, which so clearly 
encompassed the swirl of both concrete and emotional repercussions from the war, to express a 
nationalist agenda, the expedition’s scientific activities were not exempt, as Merz’s initial 
promise to lay claim to the Atlantic suggests. Sabine Höhler has argued the gathering of 
oceanographic and sounding data—and their publication by German scientists in charts of the 
ocean’s basin which were labelled as products of German science—constituted a symbolic 
claiming of territory.81 If Germans could no longer claim colonies ashore, they could, in the act 
of mapping, claim the bottom of the ocean. 

                                                        
78 Spiess, “Bericht des Expeditionsleiters,” 9. 
79 Cushman, “The Struggle over Airways in the Americas, 1919-1945: Atmospheric Science, Aviation Technology, 
and Neocolonialism,” ch 7 in Intimate Universality: Local and Global Themes in the History of Weather and 
Climate, ed. James Rodger Fleming, Vladimir Jankovic, and Deborah R. Coen (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science 
History Publications/USA, 2006), 175-222. 
80 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 271. 
81 Höhler, “Profilgewinn,” 234-246. In this article and elsewhere, Höhler’s argument follows Bruno Latour’s 
depiction of the collection of data into charts as a rendition of time and space into stable but portable form; Höhler, 
“Depth Records and Ocean Volumes: Ocean Profiling by Sounding Technology, 1850-1930,” History and 
Technology 18, no. 2 (2002): 119-154. 



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Their meteorological efforts similarly laid claim to the currents of the air over the 
Atlantic. While the meteorologists onboard both wrote their own reports and sent data home for 
further analysis, much of their results volume consists of hundreds of pages of tabulated data, an 
assertion of German data dominance to support the symbolic seizure of aerial territory. Spiess 
also noted, “The total aerological data [from the voyage] will be of great practical value for 
aviation over the Atlantic Ocean, which cannot be long in coming.”82 Charles Lindbergh’s 
transatlantic flight, just two weeks before Meteor at last returned home to Wilhelmshaven in 
early June 1927, drove this message home. Although Spiess did not explicitly tie this prediction 
to military purposes, the statement—and the studies it represents—must be considered alongside 
other forms of German pushback against mandated disarmament. Just as the encouragement of 
soaring in gliders allowed the nation to train a cadre of pilots without building powered aircraft, 
so too would the scientific study of the atmosphere over the Atlantic have great usefulness for a 
revived military machine.83 Indeed, as Cushman has related, the Deutsche Seewarte was 
involved in other projects that let them “appropriat[e] the weather in the Atlantic Basin” and, 
more concretely, furthered the efforts of the German aviation industry in Latin America, where it 
found a refuge during the post-Versailles restrictions on military airpower.84 

The German Atlantic Expedition, then, demonstrates the not-uncommon trope of science 
as a tool of politics. But these scientists were neither naïve pawns of savvy politicians nor 
cynically trading their support for naval goals in exchange for access to resources for their work. 
They were instead willing wielders of politics, as eager to use their skills to forward German 
pride and to defend their perceived place in the first rank of a worldwide hierarchy as were their 
naval colleagues. This model of the relationship between science and the state is a useful one to 
keep in mind. It is likely also a more common one than many might prefer to imagine.  

 

Acknowledgments 

This research was assisted by a fellowship from the Dissertation Proposal Development 
Fellowship Program of the Social Science Research Council with funds provided by the Andrew 
W. Mellon Foundation. It also benefitted from research conducted as a Kenneth E. and Dorothy 
V. Hill Fellow at the Huntington Library.  

                                                        
82 Spiess, Meteor Expedition, 391. 
83 See Peter Fritzsche, A Nation of Fliers: German Aviation and the Popular Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard 
University Press, 1992), especially ch. 3, “Gliding and the Revival of Nationalism,” 103-131. 
84 In addition to its support of the Meteor Expedition, the Seewarte conducted between 1922 and 1930 a number of 
meteorological expeditions towards this end, including ten to Latin America, five to West Africa, and others in the 
North Atlantic, while expanding a network of shipborne observers in the Atlantic. Cushman, “Struggle over 
Airways,” 188. 


