Oskar Schmieder (January 27, 1891 in Bonn, Germany - February 12, 1980 in Schleswig) was a German geographer and expert in the regional geography of Latin America. He spent his early career with Carl O. Sauer at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was an associate professor from 1926 to 1930.
Schmieder studied geography at the University of Bonn, University of Königsberg, and the University of Heidelberg. His dissertation on the Sierra de Gredos was supervised by Alfred Hettner. Although focusing on physical geography, the final conclusions of his dissertation already include a certain notion of the social and cultural-historical forces that are decisive for the genesis of the landscape (later known as the cultural-genetic method); a point of view influenced by Hettner. In 1914 he undertook his first private field trip to Peru, but cancelled his trip in Chile to participate in the First World War.[1]
His first travel to Latin America was crucial for his later career. After his Habilitation under Alfred Philippson in Bonn in 1919, with a study on the settlement geography of Ávila in central Spain, he travelled again to Latin America. Before arriving in Peru and Chile, however, he became a professor of mineralogy and geology at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, where he remained from 1920 to 1925. Influenced by his mentor Alfred Hettner, who worked on the Colombian Andes, his regional focus was appreciated at the University of California at Berkeley where he worked with Carl O. Sauer as a visiting professor (1925) and Associate Professor (until 1930) (replacing Richard Russel),[2] and contributed the Latin Americanist focus—and probably German geographic methodology[3] —to the development of the Berkeley School.[4] [5] Together, they carried out research in Baja California. During this time, he taught courses in Latin American regional geography visited by Fred B. Kniffen,[6] Samuel N. Dicken,[7] and Julian Steward,[8] among others. Although Sauer offered him the position of full professor, Schmieder decided to go back to Germany. After Schmieder's departure, Sauer himself began to offer seminars on Latin America,[9] yet followed more or less the Länderkunde format of Schmieder, as James J. Parsons lines out:
Back to Germany in 1930, he became a professor of geography at the University of Kiel, where he continued his work on Latin America with his disciple and assistant Herbert Wilhelmy. He soon adopted the then dominating nationalist/national socialist mode of thinking, became an admirer of the colonial policies of Fascist Italy, contributed to national socialist Lebensraum research, and became a member of the NSDAP in 1941.
After a period at the University of Halle, he went back to Kiel. In the 1950s, he was a visiting professor at the University of Karachi and the University of Chile. In a 1967 volume of the Pakistan Geographical Review he was described as "one of the very senior geographers, a chapter in German geography, an image of Hettner, and a successful writer. He is one of the associates of Berkeley school of geography, founded by Carl Sauer". Schmieder was a convinced representative of Länderkunde regional geography.