Dr. Otto Heinrich / Henry Haas, Dr.jur., Dr.phil.

Born March 26, 1887 in Brno.

Otto Haas (Paläontologe) had a law degree obtained to satisfy his father (it would be "useful") and a Ph.D. in geology/paleology. After emigration to the U.S. in late 1939, by way of London and the British Museum, he worked at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Obituary appeared in Mitt. Österr. Geol. Ges. Wien in 1978.

Reno obituary appeared in the Reno Evening Gazette, Reno, Nevada, Dec 22 1976: "Otto Haas, emeritus professor of paleontology in the University of Nevada's Mackay School of Mines died Tuesday in a Reno hospital..."

From an obituary written by Joseph Lintz, Department of Geological Sciences, Mackay School of Mines, University of Nevada, Reno:

Soldier, attorney, paleontologist, teacher—the remarkable career of Otto Haas ended three months short of his ninetieth birthday in Reno, Nevada. Otto Heinrich Haas was born on March 28, 1887, in Brunn, which was at that time in Austria and since World War I a part of Czechoslovakia. His father Gustav Haas was an attorney, and his mother Gabriele [nee Strakosch] was the daughter of a family which had manufacturing interests, first in cloth mills and later in sugar refining. An elder brother and later a sister completed the family. Otto attended local schools through the Staatsgy mnasium.

In the summer of 1905 the Haas family moved to Vienna where Otto entered the University of Vienna in the faculty of philosophy studying geology. At the insistence of his father, Otto switched to the law school which he completed early in 1910, receiving the Doctor Juris. His first publications, two communications on ammonites to the Geological Society of Vienna in 1908, initiated a 68-year span of contributions to the literature. That fall Otto entered the military for one year, serving first with the Sixth Dragoons at Brunn and later in the Fourth Dragoons at Weis and Enns.

Upon completion of this first military interlude, Otto joined his father in the practice of law in Vienna. But his thoughts were with his first love, geology, and he worked his classes in along with his legal duties. He was strongly influenced by Carl Diener, who steered him toward what was to become his principal life’s work: the study of ammonites. He began the research for his dissertation “ The Fauna of the Middle Lias of Ballino in the Southern Tyrol.” Geological studies first under Victor Uhlig and later under Franz E. Suess comprised his principal course work, while his research continued under Diener. In March 1914 he received his Ph.D. With the outbreak of World War I later that year, Otto Haas once again joined the army of the Emperor Franz Joseph. Commissioned a lieutenant, he was assigned to the Second Dragoons, serving against the Russians in Galicia and Roumania, and against the Italians in Italy. He saw continuous, arduous action against the enemy, usually at “ the point” during advances, and the last one out when the retreats were necessary. Unexpectedly he was transferred to the General Staff and assigned to the Kaiser Jager Division in Italy, where his life suddenly found a sedentary pace in division headquarters. Otto secured a compassionate discharge shortly before the end of the war, and he returned to Vienna where he studied for the Austrian Geological Survey examination which he passed in March 1919. For the next two decades he practiced law in Vienna, succeeding to his father’s practice.

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