In memoriam Prof Hanna Bremer (1928-2012)


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In memoriam Prof Hanna Bremer 
(1928–2012)

The community of scientists associated with the International Association of 
Geomorphologists (IAG/AIG) has lost another of its founding fi gures. Hanna Bremer, one 
of the closed circle of IAG Honorary Senior Fellows, had been an ardent supporter of the 
idea of collaboration among the workers in this discipline from the very beginning, from 
the fi rst International Geomorphological Conference held in Manchester in 1985. 

At the time of the second conference, which took place in Frankfurt in 1989, she 
could look back to a highly successful academic career. It started with studies in Geography, 
Geology and Physics in Gött ingen, where she fi rst worked in fl uvial geomorphology, the 
topic of her doctor’s thesis also defended there. Then she moved to Heidelberg and accom-
plished habilitation on the geomorphology of the Australian Outback and fi nally sett led 
in Cologne, where she chaired Physical Geography for two decades (from 1972 to 1993) 
and became an authority on tropical geomorphology. In her books on morphogenesis in 
the tropics she exploited the experience accumulated during long years of fi eld work on 
four continents: Australia, Africa (Nigeria, Mali and Kenya), Asia (India and Sri Lanka) 
and South-America (Amazonia). Communication in English or French was no problem 
for her. 

Aft er her retirement (in 1993) she travelled less frequently, but in 1996 she felt 
it to be her duty to participate at the Regional Geomorphological Conference at venues 
of Budapest and Veszprém. Unfortunately, the acting President of the IAG, Prof Dietrich 

Olaf Slaymaker, Dénes Lóczy and Hanna Bremer in Sümeg, at an excursion during the 
IAG Regional Geomorphological Conference in 1996



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Barsch suff ered a stroke just some months before the Conference started. On hearing the 
sad news, Hanna Bremer immediately presented herself as an obvious substitute (a German 
professor of equal international esteem) and enthusiastically fi lled the gap created by the 
absence of the President. She was particularly delighted when she was decorated with 
the Medal of Veszprém, the Town of Hungarian Queens. She and Prof Olav Slaymaker 
(University of British Columbia, Vancouver) also took part at the excursions accompanying 
the meeting – as it is att ested by the photo taken in Sümeg, where we stopped to have a rest. 
Hanna also co-edited the proceedings volume of the conference, which was published as the 
rather thick ”Supplement-Band 110” to the high-ranking international professional journal 
she founded in 1973, the Zeitschrift  für Geomorphologie. (She fi lled the position of Chief Editor 
at the journal until 1992.) Aft er the meeting in Veszprém she made some friendly gestures 
towards the Hungarian hosts: invited a Hungarian geomorphologist among the editors of 
her favourite journal and off ered part of her rich collection of books to the library of the 
Geographical Research Institute of the Academy in Budapest. 

In the last decades of her life she was seldom seen at big conferences, but preferred 
to spend most of her time at home in Wilhelmsfeld, reading or sorting her collection of 
slides, books and maps, regularly socializing and daytripping in female circles. For the very 
last years the Soroptimist Club in Weinheim, in the pleasant environs of the Bergstrasse 
of Hesse, became her residence. She kept contact with geomorphologist friends through 
circular lett ers sent out before Christmas.

She passed away on 20 January, 2012. Hanna Bremer will be remembered not 
only for her publications, the well-writt en textbooks and handbooks on the tropics (Die 
Tropen), weathering and soil formation in tropical environments (Zur Morphogenese in den 
Feuchten Tropen, Relief und Boden), the origin of inselbergs and other exotic topics, but even 
more for her personal traits, her boundless helpfulness and enthusiasm and the warmth 
of her original personality.

Dénes Lóczy