Albert board

Albert Tafel (around 1916)

Albert Tafel (born November 6, 1876 in Stuttgart , † April 19, 1935 in Heidelberg ) was a German geographer, doctor and explorer.

Life

Albert Tafel was the son of Emil Otto Tafel , senior building officer, professor at the building trade school in Stuttgart, and his wife Lina geb. Reuchlin. After graduating from high school at Dillmann Gymnasium in Stuttgart , he undertook a foot trip across the Balkan Mountains to Troy and Constantinople. In 1896/1897 he served as a one-year volunteer with the "König" Dragoon Regiment (2nd Württemberg) No. 26 in Ludwigsburg. 1898–1902 studied medicine in Tübingen, Berlin and Freiburg / Breisgau. He came in the fall of 1898 to the Corps Rhenania Tübingen and was in February 1899 rezipiert . 1903 promotion to Dr. med. in Freiburg. During his studies he traveled to Crete, Albania and Persia. He undertook numerous difficult mountain tours, especially ski tours with self-made skis on the Zugspitze and in the Bernese Oberland.

After the medical state examination in 1903, Albert Tafel pursued further geographic studies under Prof. Penk and Prof. v. Richthofen and was won in 1904 as an expedition doctor by Wilhelm Filchner to China and Tibet. After Filchner's return, he made further journeys through northern China and northeastern Tibet, with a particular interest in the often unclear course of the Hoangho River . When he returned to Stuttgart in January 1908, he brought along large geological and ethnological collections and his interpreter and Tibetan travel companion, Brdyal Lango.

Albert Tafel married Henriette born in Stuttgart in August 1909 . Müller , a Jew. The young couple initially lived in the Tafel'schen house on Hasenbergsteige in Stuttgart. Brdyal was employed as a servant. In 1914, Tafel received a professorship for geography in Karlsruhe. However, he could not start teaching because he had been appointed as the successor to Albert von Le Coq , the archaeologist and Central Asian researcher in Berlin, to head a Turfan expedition . On behalf of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, he was to carry out excavations in the Gobi desert.

The young couple now moved to Berlin-Charlottenburg, where their children Eleonore (Elinor) were born on July 1, 1910 and Albert Tobias (Toby) on May 20, 1913. Brdyal was taken to Berlin and was employed there as a servant. In Berlin, Albert was busy working out his maps and collections and preparing the new East Asia trip, which was to begin in 1914. The outbreak of the First World War prevented this project, he was drafted as a lieutenant from his dragoon regiment in Stuttgart.

First he was on long-distance patrols in France, then in Romania and from 1916 in Mesopotamia with the von der Goltz army. Despite severe attacks of illness (tropical fever and blood poisoning), he worked there with Arab and Persian auxiliary troops against the English expeditionary army until the end of the war. After the war the Rittmeister of the Reserve saw a. D., geographer and Dr. med. no possibility in Germany to lead a life according to his style. So he decided to go to the Dutch-Indian service as a doctor and worked in Batavia and Timor, then on Pulu Laut (North Borneo) as a mine doctor.

Albert Tafel (1930)

After the sudden death of his wife on April 10, 1928, Albert returned to Stuttgart. The Berlin budget had already been dissolved when the war began. In 1931 he had to undergo a gastric resection. (The obituary of the Corps-Zeitung des Corps Rhenania speaks of an operation "on a malignant tumor" that took place in the surgical clinic in Tübingen).

In 1933 Albert felt so comfortable again that he traveled to China (Tientsin) again to prepare further collection expeditions there. On this trip he took his children Eleonore (Elinor) and Albert Tobias (Toby) with him to bring them to safety in China from Hitler's persecution of the Jews.

On this occasion Albert was able to revisit some areas of his earlier travels using modern means of transport. During this stay in China, Albert fell ill with liver cancer in 1934. At the beginning of 1935 he returned to Germany by ship. The surgical help came too late, however, he died on April 19, 1935 in the surgical clinic in Heidelberg after an operation.

Expeditions

Tafel made several trips to Asia between 1903 and 1908, especially to the north of Tibet . Among other things, he took part in Wilhelm Filchner's first expedition through northern China and the eastern and northeastern parts of Tibet, with a particular interest in the still unclear course of the Hoangho River.

In January he briefly separated from the expedition team to explore various source rivers including the upper reaches of the Yellow River on his own . He explored parts of Inner Mongolia , the province of Kukunor , the Qaidam Basin , a desert region in the north of the Tibetan plateau in the Chinese province of Qinghai. He also explored the Marco Polo Mountains and visited the Kumbum Champa Ling Monastery , where he met the thirteenth Dalai Lama , Thubten Gyatsho .

When he returned in 1908, he brought along large geological and ethnographic collections. The rock and animal collections are kept by the University of Tübingen, the valuable ethnographic Tibetan collection is in the possession of the Linden Museum in Stuttgart.

Awards and honors (selection)

• Iron Cross 1st Class (1916)
• Military Merit Order (Württemberg) , Knight's Cross (1918)
• Carl Ritter Medal (1908)

Publications

• My Tibet trip. A study trip through northwest China and Inner Mongolia to eastern Tibet . Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart / Berlin / Leipzig 1914 (2 complete volumes 352 + 346 pages, pictures, maps). Digitized volume 2
• My Tibet trip. A study trip through northwest China and Inner Mongolia to eastern Tibet . 2nd Edition. Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart / Berlin / Leipzig 1923 (one-volume edition).

Books and writings with references to Albert Tafel

• Meyer's Encyclopedic Lexicon . 9th edition, vol. 23, page 154 and vol. 9, p. 175
• Corps newspaper of the Rhenania in Tübingen . XXVII year, June 1, 1935, No. 3 Albert Tafel, pp. 51–53
• Sven Hedin : Fifty years of Germany . FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1938, p. 54, p. 80–90 Dr. Albert board
• Wilhelm Filchner: A researcher's life . Eberhard Brockhaus, Wiesbaden 1950, Dr. Albert Tafel, pp. 49, 52, 73
• TRIBUS, Publications of the Lindenmuseum in Stuttgart Museum for Countries and Ethnology, No. 7, October 1957, Günther Köhler, Dresden, Albert Tafel for his 80th birthday, pp. 167–168
• Hanno Beck: Great travelers, explorers and researchers of our world ., Verlag Georg D. Callwey, Munich 1971, p. 331, Albert Tafel - one of the greatest explorers (1877–1935)
• The liaison system in Tübingen . Documentation in the year of the university anniversary 1977 p. 91, Albert Tafel (Rhenania)
• The street names in Stuttgart . Silberburg-Verlag, 1992, p. 235, Tafelweg in Stuttgart Stammheim, Albert Tafel (* 1876 - Stuttgart - 1935 Heidelberg), Asian researcher. His travelogue “My Tibet Trip” received a lot of attention in the scientific world.
• Gertrud Bolay: A Tibetan in Asperg . 100 Years of the Historical Association for the City and District of Ludwigsburg eV Ludwigsburg, Memories from the City and District 1897–1997, Commission publisher J. Aigner, bookstore, Ludwigsburg
• Dietrich Schleip: A native of Stuttgart in Tibet . Research trips by Albert Tafel, pp. 350–352, Schwäbische Heimat, July – September 1999, issue 3
• Frank Raberg: Württ. Biographien , Volume II. W. Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 2011, p. 288, Albert Tafel
• Paul Fickeler: Albert Tafel as a German explorer (obituary). In: Geographische Zeitschrift , 41st year, 12th edition, 1935, pp. 480-484, jstor: 27814628

Web links

• Wilhelm Filchner: Albert Tafel at Wissen.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1930, 129 , 421
2. ↑ Dissertation: About the technique of optical iridectomy .