The first professor of geology

The proverb that nobody is prophet at home does not apply to the Teplice native Gustav Karel Laube – the town where he came into the world and also where he is buried is grateful to him for the most precious thing it possesses – its spa springs. This April, 92 years will have passed since his death.

13th February 1879 was a dark day in the history of Teplice. An inrush of groundwater at a mine between Lahošť and Duchcov resulted in the level of the healing springs dropping and the spa buildings being closed down three days later. The reputation of the world-renowned spa town of Teplice was tarnished literally overnight, and many guests packed their bags and never came back. It was necessary to take swift action. The experts who were invited by the town council to save the springs included Gustav K Laube, the first professor of mineralogy and geology at Karl-Ferdinand University. And it was him who succeeded in detecting the thermal waters less than three weeks later.

However, Laube is connected to Teplice in more ways: above all, he was born there in 1839 into a patrician family whose father was not only an established tradesman but also a lessee of the New Spa and a town councillor. He also devoted his research activities to the region – he pointed out the significance of the Pravčická brána (Prebischtor) and the Panská skála rock, for which he proposed protection by law, and he was also interested in the Ore Mountains and mineral springs. At the end of the 1860s he took part in an expedition to the east coast of Greenland, where Julius Payer was also gaining his first polar exploration experience.

Laube felt (entirely naturally and understandably considering the period in which he was living) that he was exclusively German. He co-founded typical national clubs that intentionally segregated Czech Germans. Such clubs included e.g. Gesellschaft zur Förderung Deutscher Wissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur in Böhmen (Society for the Support of German science, arts and literature in Bohemia) and Verein für Geschichte der Deutschen in Böhmen (Association for the History of Germans in Bohemia). When Prague University was divided into Czech and German parts, Laube opted to work in the German one (he later even became its chancellor).

Laube’s merits relating to Teplice and its spas are so great that despite his obvious German nationalism, his importance has never been belittled. That is why today we can still see Laube Square and a memorial plaque to him in the town.