Otto Schulz combat handle

Otto Schulz-Kampfhenkel (born August 27, 1910 in Buckow (Märkische Schweiz) , † August 21, 1989 ) was a German geographer , explorer , writer and documentary filmmaker who made a name for himself above all during the Nazi regime.

Life

Already at the age of 21 Schulz-Kampfhenkel went on a zoological expedition and acquisition trip to Liberia and described his experiences in his first book entitled The jungle called ... He studied geography in Freiburg im Breisgau and was involved in the fraternity there Franconia. Politically, the connection of the exclusive whites direction of the fraternities and thus the traditional political rights still related to the empire was not close to the NSDAP . Franconia dissolved itself in 1935 under pressure from the regime, and Schulz-Kampfhenkel himself was already a staunch Nazi party member at the time. Schulz-Kampfhenkel mentioned the quite important and formative membership in the fraternity in none of his autobiographical writings, but remained connected to it until the end of his life.

From 1935 to 1937 he was head of the German Amazon Jary Expedition, which was undertaken by the Brazilian and German governments and the foreign organization of the NSDAP under the auspices of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology and the Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro . His book Rätsel der Urwaldhölle describes this journey. In addition, a large Ufa film of the same name was made about the expedition, which was extremely popular at the time and is still a valuable anthropological document today (→ main article: Riddle of the jungle hell ) .

The film from the headwaters of the Rio Jary shows, among other things, the grave - stick planting of the Oayana and Oayapi Indians, who were at the cultural stage of the Neolithic , and who were believed to have died out. The baking of flatbread and the bartering between the two tribes are shown as well as the typical pile dwellings , making music on mouth flutes made of deer bones or on nose flutes made of bamboo tubes. Only through the excellent driving technique of the Indians with their dugout canoes on the rapids of the Rio Jary was it possible for the participants of the expedition to return to civilization after almost two years.

Schulz-Kampfhenkel's skilful marketing of his expedition also meant that the members of a research group he founded were selected for further tasks. Members of his research group were deployed, for example, in the context of the Dora Sonderkommando set up in early 1942 , which was to explore potential Allied advance routes in southern Libya and Chad , map the area and clarify the question of whether the German-Italian troops would come from this direction There was danger.

After the German-Italian defeat in Africa, Schulz-Kampfhenkel turned to new tasks in occupied Eastern Europe. In 1943 Schulz-Kampfhenkel , who had meanwhile risen to lieutenant in the Air Force (December 1943, Oberleutnant ) and SS-Untersturmführer , was appointed special commissioner for geographic issues in the Reich Research Council. In this function, he created a group of geologists, geographers, hydrologists and vegetation experts under the name Forschungsstaffel für die OKW , which included Heinz Ellenberg , Friedrich Huttenlocher , Erich Oberdorfer , Erich Otremba and Josef Schmithüsen . In contrast to the established military geographic departments of the Wehrmacht , the group was supposed to use aerial photographs to produce maps for military terrain assessment. His research tasks in the East were initially both civil and military, but from August 1943, due to the course of the war, turned primarily to military exploration. Schulz-Kampfhenkel's research group, for example, also had an advisory position on building positions.

Schulz-Kampfhenkel always emphasized in his reports that his research served “German interests”. The fact that he ingratiated himself with higher positions, above all the SS, was undoubtedly beneficial to his career, as was the fact that his research was entirely compatible with Nazi ideology . Schulz-Kampfhenkel always worked on his staging as a serious scientist and pioneer of research. In reality, however, his expeditions were guided less by a thirst for scientific research than by an amateurish thirst for travel and adventure.

After the war, Schulz-Kampfhenkel turned to documentary and educational films and in 1962 founded the non-profit Institute for World Studies in Education and Research (WBF) in Hamburg, which has been creating media for general schools ever since.

Books

• 1933: The jungle called. Zoology student, animal catcher, jungle hunter in the Liberian wilderness . Neufeld & Henius, Berlin.
• 1937: In the African jungle as an animal catcher and jungle hunter. A student expedition into the wilds of the Pepper Coast . German publisher, Berlin.
• 1938: Mystery of the jungle hell. Advance into unexplored primeval forests of the Amazon River . German publisher, Berlin.

Movies

• 1938: Mystery of the jungle hell
• 1955: Allah Kerihm (Uta's adventurous journey through Algeria)
• 1960: Robinson in the Wadden Sea
• 1961: Adventure in Togoland

literature

• Sören Flachowsky and Holger Stoecker (eds.): From the Amazon to the Eastern Front. The expedition traveler and geographer Otto Schulz-Kampfhenkel (1910–1989) . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Vienna / Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-412-20765-6 .
• Jens Glüsing, Michael Ende (photos): The Guayana Project. A German adventure on the Amazon . Links, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-8615-3452-5 .
• Hermann Häusler: Forschungsstaffel zbV A special unit for the military-geographical assessment of the site in World War II. MILGEO series of publications , issue 21/2007. Editor of the series of publications: Republic of Austria, Federal Minister for National Defense. Editor: Institute for Military Geosciences.

Web links

• Otto Schulz-Kampfhenkel in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Literature by and about Otto Schulz-Kampfhenkel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Institute for World Studies in Education and Research (WBF)
• Nazis in the jungle camp
• ZDF history: gentlemen in the rainforest

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Holger Stoecker: The hunt for the last "white spots on earth". Stations of a juvenile expedition traveler, 1910–1941. In: Sören Flachowsky and Holger Stoecker (eds.): From the Amazon to the Eastern Front. The expedition traveler and geographer Otto Schulz-Kampfhenkel (1910–1989) . Böhlau Verlag , Cologne / Vienna / Weimar 2011, pp. 23–96, here p. 26.
2. ↑ See Michael Rolke and Sören Flachowsky: “The loaded machine gun in the right, the film apparatus in the left.” Schulz-Kampfhandkel in the “Sonderkommando Dora” - explorations in the desert of Libya from May 1942 to January 1943. In: Sören Flachowsky and Holger Stoecker (ed.): From the Amazon to the Eastern Front. The expedition traveler and geographer Otto Schulz-Kampfhenkel (1910–1989) . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Vienna / Weimar 2011, pp. 206–239.
3. ↑ Häusler p. 22
4. ↑ Hans Böhm: Carl Troll: Scientists in the Nazi Era , Lecture, p. 19  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ Häusler p. 169 ff.
6. ↑ See Sören Flachowsky and Holger Stoecker: Stations of a Self- Staging . An introduction. In this. (Ed.): From the Amazon to the Eastern Front. The expedition traveler and geographer Otto Schulz-Kampfhenkel (1910–1989) . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Vienna / Weimar 2011, pp. 11–22.