ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a letter written by Heinrich Ludwig Quiring from Berlin on 2 November 1949 to Walter Kranz. With the beginning of World War II, geologists in Germany had other things on their minds besides pressing the question of a possible impact origin of the central volcanic Ries and Steinheim Basins, but this did not mean that there was no research relevant to the problem. One prominent argument against an impact at the Steinheim Basin had always been the existence of a raised central mountain, which, as seemed evident, had been pushed up by some force from below. Heinrich Ludwig Quiring was a widely travelled German geologist. Like most of his contemporaries he had served in the German military during World War I and in his Curriculum Vitae he proudly listed every battle in which he had taken part. From October 1945 onwards, Quiring also lectured at the Geological Institute of the Berlin Technical University.
