Bernard Heuvelmans

Bernard Heuvelmans (born October 10, 1916 in Le Havre , Normandy ; † August 24, 2001 in Le Vésinet , Île-de-France ) was a Belgian - French author , musician and zoologist .

He has published various books and articles, especially in the field of so-called cryptozoology , the theory of the initial bipedalism (original bipedalism of Ursäuger ), but also for jazz music . His goal in life was to look for hidden animals and to achieve recognition of the cryptozoological method.

Live and act

Childhood / youth

Bernard Heuvelmans was born to a Belgian judge and a Dutch mother, who came from a musical family. Born on French soil in Le Havre, Heuvelmans was given French nationality , but he also received his father's Belgian nationality . In his youth he often visited his grandparents in Antwerp , where he could be found in the zoo almost every day . There he made his first animal drawings and expressed his interest in nature and zoology. Back then he surprised his teachers with his great knowledge of evolution and jazz . Heuvelmans later founded his own jazz band: Bib Heuvelmans et les hot Swings .

Study of zoology

aardvark

In 1939 he received his doctorate at the age of 23 with a thesis on the tooth structure and teeth of the South African aardvark (Orycteropus afer) at the Free University in Brussels ( Universite Libre de Bruxelles ). Here his love for jazz was already evident, he won first prize for small bands at an international congress of amateur musicians. After completing his doctorate, he largely freed himself from the constraints of a rigid university life. Like many others, Heuvelmans joined the military at the outbreak of World War II , where he was taken prisoner by the Germans during the invasion of Belgium . After his release, he began a life as a jazz singer and academic writer, looking for and finding friendship with jazz personalities such as Josephine Baker and Louis Armstrong . From 1947, now only a French citizen, he lived almost exclusively in Paris and on the island of Le Levant in south-eastern France in the Var department . Increasingly, his interest in everything that appeared unusual or abnormal to him within his specialist field of zoology increased. So in 1948 he made the decision to systematically collect reports and newspaper articles on everything that was out of the ordinary. The turning point in his life this year was an article by Ivan T. Sanderson in the Saturday Evening Post , which dealt with possibly surviving dinosaurs in the Congo Basin ("There could be Dinosaurs ..."). At that moment the thought occurred to him to write a whole book about such unknown animals.

Cryptozoology - Heuvelman's search for hidden animals

The book “Sur la Piste des Bêtes Ignorées” appeared a few years later in 1955 in a French-language edition in two volumes and immediately became a bestseller . Heuvelmans had to finance all of his research himself, as no university supported him because of his unorthodox origins. “ That's why I always had to make my books fascinating for the greatest possible readership, ” says Heuvelmans. It was translated into English ( On the Track of Unknown Animals ) in 1958 , and more than a million copies were sold worldwide in over 20 languages, including Japanese, Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian - but it has not yet appeared in German.

The first volume deals with hidden terrestrial animals in Southeast Asia and Oceania , the second with those in Africa , America and Siberia . The effect of “Sur la Piste des Bêtes Ignorées” and the later English translation was enormous. One critic noted at the time: " Because his research is based on a strict dedication to scientific method and teaching and his background as a zoologist, Heuvelman's findings are respected by the entire scientific community ".

The book also inspired the well-known businessman and amateur researcher Thomas "Tom" Baker Slick to undertake an expedition to find the Snowman . Due to his pioneering impact, he also initiated the establishment of an international, cryptozoological organization in 1982 as well as numerous expeditions of researchers and lay researchers to the Congo, southern China and many other places. Brought the book Heuvelmans enough money one to devote its special search for unknown animals rest of his life, although he over the years and always different zoological topics such as the initial bipedalism broached. Since the 1960s, Heuvelmans has also been involved on television with the program “Sherlock au Zoo” or on the radio with “Les Coulisses de l'Arche de Noé”.

In 1959 the term “ cryptozoology ”, which Heuvelmans previously only used in private correspondence, was first demonstrably used in a book by Lucien Blancou about the Canidae (dogs) dedicated to Heuvelmans (“Heuvelmans, Maitre de la Cryptozoologie”). The term is made up of the three ancient Greek words kryptos "hidden", zoon = "animals" and logia "teaching". Based on this term, the word cryptid (plural: cryptids), for the animals with which cryptozoology is concerned, was coined and immediately adopted by Heuvelmans. In 1975 he founded a center for cryptozoology in Le Bugue , southwestern France, which later moved to Le Vésinet near Paris and housed the large private library and his entire data collection until his death.

When, at the instigation of the biologist Roy P. Mackal and the ecologist J. Richard Greenwell, the aim was to found an international association for cryptozoology in 1982 that supports expeditions and publishes publications on the subject, the term was of course included in the naming. Thus the International Society of Cryptozoology (ISC) was founded, which published the magazine Cryptozoology annually and a quarterly newsletter. Bernard Heuvelmans, the "father of cryptozoology", as he was and is respectfully called by some, was elected first president (he remained in this position throughout his life), Roy P. Mackal as vice-president and Richard J. Greenwell to the executive secretary and editor. In its heyday, the ISC had around 850 members, after years of inactivity and the death of important members such as Bernard Heuvelmans himself or Grover Krantz, it is now de facto dissolved. Impressed by their example, however, other organizations, associations and research centers around the world that deal with cryptozoology have been appearing for many years - but with varying degrees of success and different levels of seriousness.

Honor and death

While Bernard Heuvelmans announced in 1984 that he would publish a twenty-volume cryptozoological encyclopedia, he has withdrawn more and more in recent years due to his poor health. In 1997, Bernard Heuvelmans was to be honored with the Gabriel Peters Prize - Fantastic Science - in Hamburg for his life's work. He could no longer accept this award personally; his good friend Hermann Reichenbaum appeared on his behalf to accept the award.

On October 12, 1999, the exhibition space in the Lausanne Zoological Museum was opened in honor of Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans opened and made more than 25,000 reports, 1,000 books, 12,000 slides and around 25,000 photos or illustrations as well as 12 paintings by his divorced wife Alika Lindbergh available to the public. Today, any interested scientist can view the documents after consulting the museum. This impressive collection is the result of years of traveling ( Africa , Europe , America and Indonesia ) and the collection of reports that Heuvelmans made throughout his life. On August 24, 2001, Bernard Heuvelmans died of heart failure and was buried in a small group.

Trivia

For his comic " Tim in Tibet ", the author Georges Remi ( Hergé ) found out exactly about the Yeti at Heuvelmans . Heuvelmans had also provided the technical background for the Tintin comics “ Destination Moon ” and “ Steps on the Moon ”.

Works

• 1944 L'Homme parmi les étoiles
• 1946 L'Homme au creux de l'atome
• 1951–1952 Le Secret des Parques (3 volumes)
• 1951 De la Bamboula au Be-Bop: Esquisse de l'évolution de la musique de Jazz (Paris: Editions de La Main Jetée): Book about the development of jazz.
• 1955 Sur la piste des bêtes ignorées (Paris: Plon): this 'Opus Magnum' by Heuvelmans deals with numerous rural cryptids of our world. The first volume deals with South East Asia and Oceania and the second with Africa, America and Siberia. Heuvelmans obtained most of the rest of his research funding from the proceeds of this book and was therefore able to fully focus on cryptozoology. The work stimulated numerous expeditions and is still the standard work in cryptozoology today. To date it has a circulation of over a million pieces.
• 1958 Dans le sillage des monstres marins - Le Kraken et le Poulpe Colossal. (Paris: Plon): deals with global phenomena associated with giant octopuses and gigantic octopuses.
• 1958 On the Track of Unknown Animals (Landon: Hart-Davis): The English version of Sur la piste des bêtes ignorées.
• 1959 Le Jazz (Paris: Marabout / Flash)
• 1959 On the Track of Unknown Animals (New York: Hill and Wang)
• 1965 Le Grand Serpent de Mer, le sondème zoologique et sa solution (Paris: Plon): chronologically ordered reports on worldwide events and sightings of marine cryptids, as well as the establishment of a classification system based on this to determine these.
• 1965 On the Track of Unknown Animals (Abridged & revised edition, New York: Hill and Wang)
• 1968 In the Wake of Sea Serpents (London, Rupert Hart-Davis; Adapted for the USA from: New York, Hill and Wang): Comprehensive translation of the works Dans le sillage des monstres marins - Le Kraken et le Poulpe Colossal, published in 1958 and 1965 and Le Grand Serpent de Mer, le Zonen zoologique et sa solution
• 1969 Histoires et Légende De La Mer Mystérieuse (Paris: Alibris)
• 1970 On the Track of Unknown Animals (UK edition of 1965 edition, London: Paladin.)
• 1974 L'Homme de Néanderthal est toujours vivant (With Boris F. Porchnev, Paris: Pion.) Report on the Minnesota ice cream man
• 1975 Dans le sillage des monstres marins - Le Kraken et le Poulpe Colossal (Revised version, Paris: Francois Beauval)
• 1975 Le Grand-Serpent-de-Mer, le Problem zoologique et sa solution (Revised version, Paris: Pion)
• 1978 Les derniers dragons d'Afrique (Paris: Pion): Cryptid "dragons" (dinosaur-like) in Africa
• 1980 Les bêtes humaines d'Afrique (Paris: Pion): hominological cryptids also in Africa
• 1995 On the Track of Unknown Animals (London: Kegan Paul International)
• 2003 The Kraken and the Collosal Oktopus (London: Kegan Paul International)

The Paris publisher Oeil du Sphinx announced in June 2005 that it would reissue or publish for the first time all previously published works by Heuvelman as well as previously unpublished volumes in the series “Bêtes ignorées du Monde”, which ended in 1980 with “Les bêtes humaines d'Afrique” .

Web links

• Bernard Heuvelmans - Hunter of the Unknown Animals Cryptozoology-Online
• Biography (french)
• «Institut Virtuel de Cryptozoologie» (French)
• Bernard Heuvelmans (1916-2001) - Obituary (English)