Augusto Berns

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Augusto Berns (born Rudolph August Berns * 1842 in Uerdingen , † after 1888) was a German engineer and entrepreneur who in 1867 in the Peruvian Andes , the abandoned Inca city Machu Picchu , rediscovered, which today as World Heritage Site of the New Seven Wonders of the World is one .

Life

Rudolph August Berns was the eldest son of the wine merchant Johann Berns and his wife Caroline geb. Duldgen. As a young man he emigrated to Peru, from then on called himself Augusto Berns and worked a. a. as a surveyor for a railway company.

Machu Picchu

For a long time, Hiram Bingham was considered the discoverer of Machu Picchu. Only recently has science been convinced that Berns discovered the city before Bingham. The evidence is a book by the cartographer Hermann Göhring, who from 1880 was the authorized representative of the Museum für Völkerkunde in Leipzig. In 1873 he had toured, described and mapped the Peruvian province of Paucartambo with the Prefect of Cusco, Baltazar La Torre. In his expedition report published in 1877, Hermann Göhring mentions the “fortress” Picchu. The book is accompanied by a map drawn in 1874 showing Machu Picchu. According to documents in the Biblioteca Nacional del Perú in Lima, Berns had rediscovered the city.

The American historian Paolo Greer, who found the documents relating to Augusto Berns in the Peruvian National Library, initially suspected that Berns had plundered the Inca city. He later moved away from this assumption. Berns may not have been the only one to discover the city before Bingham, but research is still ongoing.

A biography of Augusto Berns' further fate, especially his business ventures, can be found in the Peruvian National Library, which dates back to 1887. After that his track is lost.

Afterlife

The writer Sabrina Janesch tells the life story of Augusto Berns in her novel Die goldene Stadt , published in 2017 , which is based on her own research and that of historians.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. German discovered Machu Picchu , Der Tagesspiegel of June 4, 2008
  2. ^ Sabrina Janesch: The golden city . Rowohlt, Berlin 2017, pp. 4–5.
  3. ^ Thirteenth report from the Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig. 1885 . Leipzig 1886, p. 8.
  4. ^ Herman Göhring: Informe al Supremo Gobierno del Perú sobre la expedición a los valles de Paucartambo in 1873 al mando del Coronel D. Baltazar La-Torre . Lima 1877, p. 106.
  5. a b Paolo Greer: Machu Picchu Before Bingham . In: South American Explorer Magazine , No. 87, June 2008.
  6. The Lost City of the Incas . Interview with Sabrina Janesch, accessed on September 11, 2017.
  7. sueddeutsche.de ( Memento of the original from September 29, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sueddeutsche.de
  8. ^ Sabrina Janesch: The golden city . Rowohlt, Berlin 2017, p. 8.
  9. ^ Sabrina Janesch: The golden city . Rowohlt, Berlin 2017, p. 4.