S. Warren Carey, the famous Australian geologist learned the German language to study
''Vom wachsenden Erdball'' - the classical paper of Expanding Earth Theory:
''Carey frankly admitted belated inheritance of some Egged and Hilgenberg ideas. He did not know about Hilgenberg's book Vom wachsenden Erdball before the 1956 symposium [The Continental Drift Symposium of 1956, Hobart]. This book arrived in 1958 when the proceedings were being printed. He found a page to show the German series of paleogeographical globes and a photo from Hilgenberg is reproduced on p. 300 of the proceedings. Later Carey studied Hilgenberg's work in depth and confessed to me that he had learned the German language for this purpose.''
Giancarlo Scalera: Samuel Warren Carey, A Commemorative Memoir, 2003, p. 89
"The bud-and-petal analogy [with the expanding earth], which has been developed by Hilgenberg (1933, p. 29) is useful because it incorporates the earth's hemihedral asymmetry, the antipodal relation of continents and oceans, the greater separation of the southern continents and the northward migration of the southern hemisphere (the opening calyx).''
S. Warren Carey, The Expanding Earth, p. 30
''The importance of Hilgenberg lies in the fact that he marks the beginning of the scientific system of physics to Paleontology and Paleomagnetism, in support of a universal tectonic theory, and that he made paleogeographic reconstructions on globes with smaller radii than the present one. All those who have worked for the scientific and moral lesson of the fifty years spent in unflagging. [...]
Hilgenberg's ideas on the Earth's radius was a constant. For the academicians the idea was to be serious, but still based on little data. There was another disadvantage for the theory of expansion coming from Berlin. It concerned not only the Earth, but also claimed to be wider in scope than that of Wegener, assuming that it was a cosmological agent that involved the dimensions of all planets and heavenly bodies. Such a theory was not enough to find support in contemporary physical theories. [...]
Hilgenberg's ideas on the Earth's radius was a constant. For the academicians the idea was to be serious, but still based on little data. There was another disadvantage for the theory of expansion coming from Berlin. It concerned not only the Earth, but also claimed to be wider in scope than that of Wegener, assuming that it was a cosmological agent that involved the dimensions of all planets and heavenly bodies. Such a theory was not enough to find support in contemporary physical theories. [...]
This enthusiasm has gone further towards reductionism, and became all absorbing in physics research. It led to the extraordinary technical progress that we enjoy today, to the attempt to describe all phenomena by the quantization method, as well as those ( eg gravity field) heretofore eluded such a method, but also to underestimation of the role of 'quantum paradoxes' in the revelation of the poor knowledge of the world (the wave-corpuscle dualism, non-locality, Shrödinger's for common and military reasons. In other Physics, in addition to tendency towards specialization and pragmatism in the university General Physics courses. In Earth physics and astronomy. Nuclear physics laboratories, or as mediocre secondary-school teachers expropriated from History of Sciences, the Sky, or the Earth. [...]
Hilgenberg, in his research on expansion, starts with a work on geology, tectonics, or global geodynamics but in the spirit of a physicist. The first question was asked to be about the gravitation and the expansion of planets. Manifested itself, looking forward to the progression of palaeogeographic reconstructions that seem so marvelous today. The method on which they are based is still totally modern, bringing together, as it does, from many disciplines. [...]
Hilgenberg's purpose was to reassemble all the fragments of Pangea into a coherent mosaic.He followed the classic reconstruction of Wegener for the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, keeping India in contact with Asia, as Wegener had done, and in contrast with modern plate-tectonics. The complete solution for the complete closure of the United States - Antarctica block is concerned, however. Antarctica side by side with the coasts of Chile and the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula between Central America and Peru, parallel to the Californian Peninsula. Australia was in the polar position with its present south-western coast alongside Tierra del Fuego. The Asian Far East, Indochina, reached back to the point. [...]
Hilgenberg concluded that immense counter-clockwise megashear crossed Laurentia from northwest to southeast, now the North American continent appears with its western part to the northwest in the Paleozoic, on an earth 60% by cent of its present size, without large oceans or deep seas. [...]
The expansion of the planet is then conveyed to the continents. The same is the case in which you will find a solution in the world. Hilgenberg moved paper outlines of continents from the globe to a smaller one, Eliminating some radial thin slices to compensate for the positive variation in curvature: this was the equivalent of adopting azimuthal equidistant projection with the center of the continent as the center of projection.
The addition of the crust, the overlapping and the sinking of the edges of the continents, are equally interesting. An essential role in explaining these phenomena is played by mechanical forces that a spherical continental cap undergoes."
Giancarlo Scalera - Thomas Braun: Ott Christoph Hilgenberg in Twentieth-Century Geophysics, 2015
Vom wachsenden Erdball, 1933, Berlin, extremely rare copy, Verlag O. Hilgenberg
p. 56, 2 maps (one fold.): 28 figs; 21cm; printed covers, fine condition, O. C. Hilgenberg's copy.
Inscribed by Hilgenberg in pencil on the title page: ''Mitte November 45'' (See the author's signature, also in pencil, here: kriegswichtig_luftkriegsakademie.pdf p. 66).
We know only three private copies of this booklet:
1. Prof. Karl-Heinz Jacob's copy
2. The copy received by S. Warren Carey in 1958 and returned to Hilgenberg, because Carey used in 1982 a copy in facsimile; see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Othb0xsvZb4
3. Our copy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3rholKox10
Price: USD 5,000,000.00