August Wilhelm Schynse

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Father August Schynse

August Wilhelm Schynse (born June 21, 1857 in Wallhausen near Bad Kreuznach , † November 18, 1891 in Bukumbi on Lake Victoria ) was a German, Catholic missionary , African explorer and cartographer .

Life

August Schynse, the son of an estate manager, studied philosophy and theology in Bonn . He entered the seminary in Speyer in 1879 . In 1880 August Schynse was ordained a priest in Speyer Cathedral. He then lived for a short time as a chaplain at House Caen near Geldern . Schynse traveled to Algiers in September 1882 to be the first German to join the Society of Africa Missionaries (White Fathers) founded by Charles Martial Lavigerie in 1868 .

After a few delays, it reached its operational area in the central Congo in 1885 . At first he worked at the Manyanga station with the Bayanzi tribe. He traveled with the task of finding suitable locations for establishing a mission station. As a result of his explorations, he founded the Bungana station at the mouth of the Kasai in the Congo. After the Vatican , following the intervention of the Belgian King Leopold II, gave the order to leave missionary work in the Congo Free State to the Belgian Scheut missionaries , the White Fathers had to leave the area in 1887.

After a stay in Europe, Father August Wilhelm Schynse was for a short time an economist and mathematics teacher at the Ecole Notre Dame d'Afrique (St Eugène) in Algiers.

From 1887 he worked in what was then German East Africa in the Kipalapala mission station near Tabora . Because of the uprising of the East African coastal population , he had to flee to the Bukumbi mission station on Lake Victoria in 1889 with a caravan of 280 porters, 36 children and 11 Askari . There I received a message from the relief expedition for Henry Morton Stanley and Emin Pascha , which urgently needed new equipment but was already on its way to the east coast. Schynse was commissioned with the transport. He reached the expedition in forced marches and with an almost blind missionary who was to be taken to the East African coast. With the caravan of Stanley and Emin Pascha Schynse came to Zanzibar on the coast. On his travels he kept a diary of his observations. This diary was published without his knowledge and caused a sensation for its revelations about the real purpose of Stanley's trip and his relationship with Emin Pascha in Germany.

In this diary Schynse wrote: “I chat most of the way with Emin Pascha, who makes no secret about the actual purposes of the expedition. How can a shabby Scottish merchant (Mackinnon, who gave a lot of money for the Stanley expedition) come up with the idea of ​​spending significant sums of money to get out an Egyptian official whom he might not even know by name? This expedition was not so much about Dr. Emin Pasha, as his province and his ivory. "

In 1890 he took part in further research trips by Emin Pascha “at the request of the German government, for whom he also rendered important services as an interpreter, cartographer, etc.”. Schynse's first trip with Emin Pascha and Franz Stuhlmann from April 26th to July 29th 1890 led from Bagamoyo to Tabora. The second expedition from August 20 to September 8, 1890 took place from Tabora to Bukumbi on Lake Victoria. The third trip around the southwest corner of the lake to Buddu, a province in Uganda and from there via the German station Bukoba and the lake back to Bukumbi lasted from January 29 to March 9, 1891. Father Schynse wrote valuable notes for science, published after his death. Deprivation and fever had weakened him. He died in Bukumbi on November 18, 1891.

August Wilhelm Schynse earned scientific merit in the cartographic representation of the southwest side of Lake Victoria. "His scientific diaries testify to careful research into the country and its people in order to protect the inhabitants from slave hunters, to pacify the country and to preserve native cultural values ​​in church missionary work."

Schynse's sister Katharina Schynse (1854–1935) was after his death in 1893, the founder and general director of the "Association of Catholic Women and Virgins in Support of the Central African Missions of the White Fathers", today's "Pontifical Missionary Organization of Catholic Women".

Works

  • Two years at the Congo, experiences and descriptions. (Ed.): Karl Hespers JP Bachem, Cologne 1889.
  • With Stanley and Emin Pascha through German East Africa. (Ed.): Karl Hespers JP Bachem, Cologne 1890. ( Digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf )
  • Report on the trip to the south-west bank of the Victoria-Nyansa with map in Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen , 1891, p. 219.
  • P. Schynse's Last Journeys, Letters and Diaries. (Ed.): Karl Hespers, Cologne 1892.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Mackinnon; en WP: Sir William Mackinnon, 1st Baronet
  2. ^ Official press of Prussia: Latest communications. IX. Vintage. No. 28. Responsible editor: Dr. jur. O. Hammann. Berlin, Wednesday, April 9, 1890.
  3. ^ Johann Pietsch: in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche , Vol. 9, 1st edition
  4. ↑ William Gross Korte house in Lexicon for Theology and Church , Vol. 9, 1st Edition
personal data
SURNAME Schynse, August Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Africa explorer
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1857
PLACE OF BIRTH Wallhausen
DATE OF DEATH November 18, 1891
Place of death Bukumbi on Lake Victoria