Hugo Hergesell was a German meteorologist born in 1859 in Bromberg in Prussia, which is and was also called Bydgoszcz to the Poles. The Teutonic Knights took it briefly in the 14th century, and then Prussia took it in the first division of Poland in 1772. It had been split between the powers of Prussia, Russia, and Austria in an agreement in order to maintain the balance of power. Frederick The Great treated his new subjects well, unlike what would happen to them later when Hitler's Wehrmacht were to annex the place in 1938.
Hergesell became a professor of meteorology at the University of Strasbourg, the capital of another historically contentious territory, Alsace (taken by Germany in 1871, then reclaimed by France after WWI, and taken again by Germany in WWII, now again part of France). He conducted many of the first important research on the atmosphere using balloons, manned and unmanned, in the latter part of the 19th century and early 20th century. This research was both a product of and integral to the development of aviation technology. This may be why he was so close with Kaiser Wilhelm, the agressive militaristic leader of the German state, and why they went on trips together in the years preceding WWI. In an expedition to Tenerife, an Island posession of Spain off of the West coast of Africa (conveniently located between Germany and its German colonies), Hergesell helped set up weather stations donated by the Kaiser himself.
In 1934, Hergesell was awarded the Third Reich's medal for German achiever's, the Eagle Cross, for his contributions to Science and Avaiation -- probably pinned on his chest by Adolf Hitler himself, as was usually done. Hergesell died in 1938 at the outbreak of the Second World War.
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