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Godfrid Wessely “had to” be 90 years old for his Wikipedia entry to be corrected. Until then it was not clear whether he saw the light on January 13th or January 31st, 1934. Godfrid Wessely himself confirms on January 15, 2024 that he was born on a Tuesday, January 13, 1934, as the fourth of six children in Großinzersdorf, today a cadastral community of the town of Zistersdorf, in the northern Weinviertel (Lower Austria). This cleared up the obvious typo, 13 became 31.
Also born here and Godfrid's playmate was Adolf Frohner (1934 to 2007), who was an internationally recognized artist. Wessely's father, an elementary school teacher, died in the war in 1942, and his now single mother had to care for three children who were still studying. Godfrid attended high school at Hackinger Kai (Vienna Hietzing), entered the Zwettl Abbey Boys' Choir College in 1945, before moving to high school in Krems in 1947 and graduating in 1953. This would clear the first milestones in the “Life” section of Wikipedia.
There is also private information to be added here: in 1959 he married his wife Herta, and their four children were born by 1965. Herta Wessely became an icon of citizen protest at the beginning of the 21st century. The occupation of Bacherplatz in Vienna Margareten, which she initiated in January 2006, is legendary, where a planned underground car park was prevented. The STANDARD described her as “The most concerned citizen in the city” (November 18, 2007). On June 6, 2010, the “Presse” headlined: “Herta Wessely: Grande Dame of Citizens’ Protest.” In Godfrid she had a reliable comrade-in-arms; he was "retired in his main job" from 1993 (quote from Wessely).
He began his dissertation, the "Geological survey of the Tertiary and Quaternary periods of the Hainburg Mountains and adjacent areas" in the spring of 1955 with Eberhard Clar (1904 to 1995), who was then head of the geological institute at the University of Vienna. After mapping in 1955 and 1956, he submitted his work in December 1958 and received his doctorate on June 26, 1959. The work area on the edge of the eastern Vienna Basin contained all the essential elements that he would need in the next decades.
He studied the loose sediments from the New Era (Tertiary) in the lowlands west of Hainburg using numerous drillings that the ÖMV (Austrian Mineral Oil Administration, today: OMV) made available to him. Limestone and other deposits from the Mesozoic Era, as he mapped them in the Hainburg Mountains, would later become his research focus in the subsurface of the Vienna Basin. His dissertation was published in October 1961 by the Federal Geological Survey, for which he then did mapping in his limited free time. The dissertation was intended to open the door to his position at OMV from August 1, 1959 to 1993.
He experienced the transformation of ÖMV as an Austrian oil company into the internationally active group, OMV, at the changing addresses of his employer. He started in 1959 as a drilling geologist in Prottes in the Weinviertel and then became a production geologist and micropaleontologist in Gänserndorf. The deposits from the Tertiary of the Vienna Basin with the Matzen oil field, the largest in Central Europe, were his first fields of activity. In 1963 he began his time as an exploration geologist in Vienna with the work area of the Limestone Alps, or the Calcareous Alpine subsoil of the Vienna Basin.
Briefly, the other key details of his company career: In 1983 he became head of ÖMV outcrop geology (today: exploration geology), and in 1985 he became head of the ÖMV geology department. He retired in 1993. His Vienna addresses at ÖMV, starting at Otto-Wagner-Platz 5 (Vienna Alsergrund), then Hinteren Zollamtsstraße 17 (Wien Landstraße) up to Gerasdorfer Straße 151 (Vienna Floridsdorf), are a piece of ÖMV company history. This emerged in 1956, one year after the state treaty, from the SMV (Soviet Petroleum Administration), which was founded in October 1945. The company's current headquarters are at Trabrennstrasse 6-8 (Vienna Leopoldstadt).
Additions to Wikipedia are also necessary for “awards” and “writings”. The fact that two important geoscientific institutions in the country, the Federal Geological Institute (GBA, now: GeoSphere Austria) and the Austrian Geological Society (ÖGG), honored a person with their highest awards only happened twice in their history. On June 23, 1989 he received the Haidinger Medal from the GBA. This medal, designed by Eduard van der Nüll (1812 to 1868), the architect of the Vienna State Opera, was only awarded 20 times in 175 years (1849: date the GBA was founded). Werner Janoschek commented in his laudatory speech: "The outstanding successes of the ÖMV in this area and the certainly sensational extremely deep drillings of the ÖMV in the Vienna Basin would not have been possible in this form without the geologist Godfrid Wessely."
The ÖGG followed in 2006 with the Eduard Sueß Medal and honorary membership for "his outstanding geoscientific life's work in the service of industry and science". This makes him the second geologist after Wilhelm Petraschek (1876 to 1967) to receive both awards. Petraschek received his laurels at the age of 75 and 80 respectively; Wessely was honored at the age of 55 and 72 respectively. A year later, the State of Lower Austria received the Honorary Prize for Science.
Thanks to numerous deep drillings, we know that the Vienna Basin consists of three "stories". The Tertiary sediments (“filling”) form the first floor with rich petroleum deposits, most notably the Matzen field discovered in 1949. The subsoil made up of rock units from the Northern Limestone Alps and the flysch zone, pushed over by the mountain formation, forms the second floor with important gas deposits. The autochthonous (stationary) deposits (limestone and marl) from the Mesozoic period lying underneath - in the underlying area (in geological terms) - belong to the third floor. The marlstone series drilled here (Jurassic period, Mesozoic period) is the parent rock of the oil deposits in the Vienna Basin.
With the Zistersdorf ÜT 2A well, which reached the final depth of 8,553 m on May 31, 1983 and drilled all three floors, the ÖMV set records (deepest hydrocarbon well outside the USA) and made history. He was responsible for the geological project planning: "TG Geology: Dr. Godfrid Wessely" (final drilling report). For him, who was then in his 50s, it was almost a home game, as he had only seen the light of day a few kilometers further south in Großinzersdorf. Whether Zisterdorf ÜT 2A, the 6,630 meter deep Aderklaa Ultra T1b borehole or the Maustrenk ÜT 1a with 6,563 meters, Wessely was the mastermind behind all the deep boreholes.
With each drilling, new light came into the underground of the Vienna Basin. The entire sequence of layers that is known on the surface has now also been demonstrated underground. On the occasion of his 90th birthday, he remembers: "When the ÖMV started studying the subsoil of the Vienna Basin, I had to deal with the Limestone Alps." The petroleum geologists at the time were experts on the first floor, the rest was foreign to them: "I learned the geology of the Limestone Alps from Georg Rosenberg and Benno Plöchinger, both from the Federal Geological Institute." What then followed was a reinterpretation of all previous drill cores. Wessely was now able to reinterpret the rock fragments (cuttings) thanks to his surface knowledge. This, together with geophysical investigations, created the technical basis for the deep and super-deep drilling projects.
His work "On the geology and hydrodynamics in the southern Vienna Basin and its peripheral zone", published in 1983, decoded the formation of the thermal waters along the thermal bath line with the towns of Baden, Bad Vöslau and Bad Fischau. According to Wessely, cold water in the area of the Northern Limestone Alps (western edge of the Vienna Basin) penetrates the rock body, migrates underground towards the east into the Vienna Basin, warms up, becomes mineralized and penetrates up along the deep Leopoldsdorf fault system. This synthesis could only come from someone who knew the geology of the Limestone Alps and the Vienna Basin above and below ground like the back of his hand.
Wessely's expertise was and is in demand not only in petroleum issues, but also in geothermal energy and thermal water projects. The thermal baths in Laa / Thaya in the northern Weinviertel, but also the expansion of the thermal baths in Vienna Oberlaa, to name just two projects, are largely based on his knowledge and expertise.
Fortunately, he also left his knowledge in written form. In addition to specialist publications, his richly illustrated book on the geology of Lower Austria with 655 illustrations and 26 tables from 2006 is a milestone. Here the geology of the country and, above all, its subsurface are examined in great detail on 416 pages.
So much for a few facets of the “life” of this great geologist, who infects his counterpart in personal encounters with his modesty, helpfulness and warm-heartedness. Since Wikipedia is growing every day through constant expansion and additions, the entry regarding Godfrid Wessely, which had been in need of revision for a long time, was able to be corrected promptly. Ad multos annos! (Thomas Hofmann, February 1, 2024)