Edith Ebers

Edith Ebers (4 December 1894–13 September 1974), née Heirich, was a German Quaternary geologist and conservationist. She became widely known for personally stopping the 1935 detonation of rocky outcroppings that blocked a new Alpine road between the Bavarian towns of Traunstein and Bad Reichenhall. The detonations would have destroyed the exposed rocks that exhibited glacial striations. Thereafter, she became known as the Glacier Fräulein (in English: Glacier Maiden).

Biography Rockface showing glacial striations and moulins formed by the Saalach Glacier at the end of the last glaciation about 12,000 years ago. Edith Heirich was born in 1894 in Nuremberg, the eldest child of Karl Heirich and Hermine Knote who hailed from "the illustrious Knote family."

She went on to research the formation of drumlins as well as the glaciation history and glacial geomorphology of the Bavarian Alpine foreland. She was also involved in landscape architecture and public relations and published research on Alpine rock carvings.

She became the main instigator of the foundation of the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps (CIPRA).

She died on 13 September 1974 and was buried in the Ebers family crypt in Seeshaupt. as is "Edith Ebers Weg" in Neufahrn near Freising (formerly the street was called Konrad-Lorenz-Weg; the renaming took place in 2023 because of Lorenz's Nazi past).

Selected works The results of drumlin research to date: A monograph on drumlins. 1925 The Ice Age in the Landscape of the Bavarian Alpine Foreland. 1934 The diluvial glaciation of the Bavarian Traun region. 1939 New Tasks of the Nature Conservation Movement. Nature Conservation Issues No. 1. 1947 The Glacier Garden on the German Alpine Road. 1952 From the Great Ice Age. 1957 Ice Age Hiking and Wonder Booklet for the Bavarian Alpine Foreland. 1959 The rock art area in the Höll am Warscheneck and its postglacial geological history. 1969