Hans Schomburgk

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Hans Schomburgk 1913

Hans Hermann Schomburgk (born October 28, 1880 in Hamburg ; † July 27, 1967 in West Berlin ) was a German explorer of Africa and pioneer of German animal films in the first half of the 20th century .

Life

Schomburgk was born as the son of the architect Hermann Eduard Schomburgk (1850–1937). He attended high schools in Hamburg , Lüneburg and Jena . In 1898, he moved at the age of 17 years to South Africa on a farm, joined the English Natal a -Police and participated in the Boer War in part. He then worked as a police officer in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia ), a big game hunter and an explorer .

Schomburgk began his way through Africa with the big game hunt, but ended it in 1912 in order to instead document the life of the animals together with various cameramen , and later also that of the people of the continent.

In 1906 he went on his first independent expedition. He discovered the Schikande River and Lake Sengwe in southern Angola . A year later he was able to identify the tsetse fly as the vector of sleeping sickness . He crossed the African continent several times to hunt and catch rare animals. In 1909 he brought the first East African elephant and in 1912 the second pygmy hippopotamus to Europe.

Schomburgk was involved in the creation of the first map of West Liberia and was appointed military attaché to the Liberian legation in London .

Cushion stone Hans Schomburgk , Neuss grave , Ohlsdorf cemetery

He also directed several documentaries and feature films that contributed significantly to the image of Africa for the German cinema audience at the time. In 1922 he married the author and editor Meg Gehrts (1891–1966), who had played the lead role in his film A White Among Cannibals .

After 1933 Schomburgk was more and more handicapped because of his “half-Jewish” origins. In 1940 he was banned from speaking . His films were rewritten and his name was erased, they were also re-cut as propaganda or disappeared in the archive. Only after the war was Schomburgk allowed to give lectures again in both parts of Germany. In the GDR his books were published in millions.

Schomburgk lived primarily as a freelance writer and producer of films, he was considered the German Africa filmmaker and animal expert until the 1950s . Hans Schomburgk died in (West) Berlin at the age of almost 87 . He was buried in Hamburg, Ohlsdorf cemetery, grid square Z 16 (east of Nordteich on Waldstrasse ), on the Neuss grave.

He assigned a considerable part of his ethnographic Africa collection to the city of Querfurt , of which he had been an honorary citizen since 1959. The exhibits are presented in the local castle museum.

Honors

Works

  • The last paradise . Berlin: Hobbing, undated
  • Wild and wild in the heart of Africa. 12 years of hunting and research trips . Berlin: German Book Community , 1926.
  • My Africa experience and what I heard from the interior of Africa . Berlin, Juncker Verlag, 1928.
  • I'm looking for the last paradise in Africa . Berlin: Sigismund Military Publishing House, 1940.
  • Women, masks and demons . Berlin: H. Wigankow-Verlag, 1947.
  • About humans and animals and something about me . Wigankow Publishing House Berlin 1947
  • Tell us something, chimpanzee. The life story of a chimpanzee, told by herself . Berlin: Wigankow, 1948.
  • The pulse of the wild . Berlin: VdN, 1952.
  • My friends in the bush. A film trip through Africa . Berlin: VdN, 1954.
  • Cleo, a chimpanzee fate . Hanover: Weichert Verlag, 1955.
  • Tents in Africa. Rides - Research - Adventure in Six Decades . Berlin: VdN, 1957.
  • Rides and tracks . Berlin: VdN, 1960.

Filmography (selection)

  • 1913/1917: In German Sudan
  • 1919: tropical poison
  • 1921: In the battle for diamond fields
  • 1921: A white among cannibals
  • 1922: women, masks and demons
  • 1932: The last paradise
  • 1936: The wilderness dies
  • 1958: Hans Schomburgk - My farewell to Africa

literature

  • Martin Albrecht: Hans Schomburgk, his tents in Africa and a school zoo in Pankow. In: Ulrich van der Heyden, Joachim Zeller (eds.) " ... power and share in world domination." Berlin and German colonialism . Unrast-Verlag. Münster 2005, ISBN 3-89771-024-2
  • Gerlinde Waz: In search of the last paradise. The Africa explorer and director Hans Schomburgk. In: Hans-Michael Bock, Wolfgang Jacobsen, Jörg Schöning (eds.) Triviale Tropen. Exotic travel and adventure films from Germany 1919-1939. CineGraph. Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-88377-551-7
  • NN: Bwaku with the strange box. In the footsteps of the ancestors . In: Der Spiegel 14/1948, pp. 23–24 ( full text as digitized version )

Web links

Commons : Hans Schomburgk  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Celebrity Graves
personal data
SURNAME Schomburgk, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schomburgk, Hans Hermann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German African explorer and pioneer of animal films
DATE OF BIRTH October 28, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH July 27, 1967
Place of death Berlin