Adam David

Grave in the Wolfgottesacker cemetery , Basel

Adam David (born July 4, 1872 in Basel ; † September 13, 1959 there ) was a Swiss zoologist , African explorer , big game hunter and publicist . He was the brother of Jean Jacques David , who was also an African explorer.

David grew up in Basel as the son of the businessman Johann Jakob David. After completing school at the Basel secondary school, he studied agronomy at the ETH Zurich and zoology at the University of Zurich , where he received his doctorate in zoology. In 1897 he went to his brother in Egypt, where he took part in his trade expedition to Sudan . After four years at the International Court of Justice in Cairo  , he returned to Switzerland in 1905. From 1908 he traveled several times to Africa again to trade ivory as a big game hunter ; In addition, as an animal catcher, he brought many African animals to zoological gardens in Europe. He also produced one of the first animal documentaries in Africa.

In 1916 David returned to Basel in the course of the First World War and became a member of the board of the Basel Zoo ; he withdrew a later application for the office of zoo director himself in order to organize numerous hunting expeditions to Africa after the end of the war. From the 1940s onwards, David was mainly active as a journalist and was best known for his popular radio show “dr Dr. David verzellt “known throughout Switzerland. In Basel he sometimes had the status of a city ​​original , and a. due to his eccentric clothing in the style of a big game hunter.

After his death in 1959, the Natural History Museum in Basel dedicated an exhibition to him in his memory in 1984. Otherwise, David was largely forgotten; possibly attributable to the reports and photographs of the lifelong bachelor that glorified the hunt, which regardless of the latter represent representative documents of the big game hunt at the time.

literature

• Hans W. Debrunner: David, Adam. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .