Bernhard Hantzsch

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Bernhard Hantzsch
Memorial plaque for Bernhard Hantzsch at the old school community center in Grillenburg
Bernhard Hantzsch exhibition in the Kurort Hartha primary school
Bernhard Hantzsch primary school (new building) in Hartha health resort
Bernhard Hantzsch memorial stone in front of the Bernhard Hantzsch primary school (old building) in Kurort Hartha, which is flagged with the flags of Nunavut and Saxony
Expedition team with A. Kaiser, H. Spande and M. Stelzner (from left to right) on the trail of Bernhard Hantzsch in Pond Inlet 2005

Bernhard Adolph Hantzsch (born January 12, 1875 in Dresden ; † probably late May / early June 1911 in Canada on Baffin Island / Qikiqtaaluk , today Nunavut territory ) was a German teacher , ornithologist and Arctic explorer .

family

Hantzsch was the youngest son of the teacher and local researcher Adolf Hantzsch (1841-1920) and his wife Emma Jencke (1842-1889), niece of the founder of the first Dresden deaf-and-dumb institution, Johann Friedrich Jencke (1812-1893). The geographer and historian Viktor Hantzsch (1868-1910) in Dresden, the government building officer Hermann Hantzsch (1870-1945) in Leipzig and the pastor's wife Bertha Kleinert (1873-1924) in Klingenberg were his siblings.

Life

He was baptized on February 8, 1875 by Dr. Frommhold (deacon) from the Annenkirche . From 1881 to 1889 he attended the second citizen school in Dresden (today 48th elementary school, Seminarstrasse 11a). At his father's request, Bernhard Hantzsch became a teacher and graduated from the royal school teachers' seminar in Dresden-Friedrichstadt from 1889 to 1895 , after which he was an assistant teacher in Grillenburg from 1895 to 1898 and from 1898 to 1909 a teacher in Dresden-Plauen at the higher elementary school (from 1903 XV today 55th Oberschule Gottlieb Traugott Bienert , Nöthnitzer Str. 6).

Work as an ornithologist

His first scientific publication appeared in 1897. After his plans to become a teacher or missionary in Africa came to nothing and he had sufficiently explored the local bird world, he was drawn to the distance, first to the Giant Mountains and then to the Rhodope Mountains and the Danube Delta on the Balkan Peninsula, etc. a. with a visit to Paul Leverkühn .

He then traveled to Iceland from April to September 1903 and carried out a scientific systematization of the Icelandic bird world. He then described the subspecies Acanthis linaria islandica (1904) and Corvus corax islandicus (1906) for the first time. In 1906 he did research in Canada with the support of the Moravian Brethren a . a. about the bird life of the northeast of the Labrador Peninsula . He published his results from 1908.

Baffinland expedition and death

With financial and material support from the Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde , the Rudolf Virchow Foundation from Berlin , and the Saxon King Friedrich August III. from July 1909 he wanted to cross the until then little explored Baffin Island ( Baffinland ) in a westerly direction. Important goals of his expedition were the exploration of the largest inland lake, the Nettilling lake , and then the ornithological mapping of the west coast of the island. The Dutch transport ship Jantina Agatha sank in the Cumberland Sound as soon as he approached the Kekerton whaling station , which was the starting point of the expedition, and Hantzsch lost almost all of his equipment. In April 1910, with the help of some Inuit , he crossed the island and in September reached the west coast of the island on the Foxe Channel via the Koukdjuak River, the outflow of Lake Nettilling . The remaining members of the expedition suffered major problems in obtaining food, as well as a lack of materials and fuel. Probably in June 1911 Hantzsch died of trichinella as a result of eating raw polar bear meat . He was buried there under a cairn not far from the Hantzsch Bay, which was later named after him. Due to the First World War , his records and collections, which were sent back by the Inuit in Hantzsch's homeland, were not given a comprehensive scientific evaluation and only a limited publication.

Perception and honors

The originals of the Baffin Island diaries were lost in Leipzig in 1949 in the household of his brother Hermann's widow. It was not until 1977 that copies of these diaries were published in Canada . Heinz Israel from the Völkerkundemuseum Dresden was inspired to write about the researcher in the museum's newsletter in 1980/1981. The Naumann Museum Köthen honored his life's work in its 1995 sheets. In 1996 the Tharandter Wald tourist association in the health resort of Hartha honored him with a memorial plaque at the former Grillenburg school (now the village community center, Seerenteichstrasse 2) and a small exhibition in the Grillenburg hunting lodge . This exhibition was 2002-2003, u. a. supplemented by loans from the Dresden collections and museums, shown again and is now part of the permanent exhibition in the primary school in the health resort of Hartha. In 2005 a research trip for a film project took place on behalf of Alouette Verlag Oststeinbek . a. to descendants of the Inuit, with whom the researcher traveled until his death, to Baffinland. In 2011 the historical center in Stadskanaal designed an exhibition about the captain W. C. Dijkstra of the ship Jantina Agatha , which also reported about Bernhard Hantzsch as a guest on her last voyage.

The memorial stone erected on the family grave in the Alten Annenfriedhof in Dresden and the Bernhard Hantzsch Foundation founded by his father no longer exist today. A river, the Hantzsch River, and the bay in the Foxe Basin into which it flows, were named after him, as was a bird island on the southern tip of Baffin Island, which BirdLife International has designated as an Important Bird Area (CA282). In his hometown of Dresden , a street in the Plauen district has been named after him since 1932 and the 55th secondary school there, where he last taught, has a plaque in the foyer. The primary school in Kurort Hartha has had his name since 2002 and houses the only permanent exhibition on the life and work of the researcher. This was supplemented in May 2011 on the 100th anniversary of death by the posters of the exhibition from Stadskanaal and a memorial stone in front of the school. It bears the inscription that once remembered the researcher on the family grave. The exhibition had to be relocated inaccessible due to construction work in May 2018. The natural and ethnographic collections of Hantzsch are today u. a. In the depots of the Natural History Museum Berlin , the Museum Center Berlin-Dahlem , the Naumann Museum in Köthen and the Museum of Ethnology ( Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden ) or in the Museum of Animal Science and the Museum of Mineralogy and Geology ( Senckenberg Natural History Collections Dresden ).

Works (selection)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Johann Friedrich Jencke in Stadtwiki Dresden
  2. ^ Homepage of the 48th primary school in Dresden
  3. ↑ 55. Upper School Dresden in Dresden Stadtwiki
  4. ^ Monthly ornithological reports . Volume 12, pp. 32-34
  5. ^ Monthly ornithological reports . Volume 14, pp. 130-131
  6. ^ Bernhard Hantzsch: Contribution to the knowledge of the bird world of the northeastern Labrador . In: Journal of Ornithology . Volume 56, 1908, pp. 175-202, 307-392
  7. ^ Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, inventory 10711, Ministry of the Royal House, Loc. 42, No. 40, Vol. 30, 1911-13
  8. ↑ Hantzsch Grave
  9. ^ Hantzsch River
  10. ↑ Hantzsch Island on the BirdLife International website, accessed July 20, 2016 (English)
  11. ↑ Hantzschstraße in Stadtwiki Dresden
  12. ^ Homepage of the 55th secondary school in Dresden
personal data
SURNAME Hantzsch, Bernhard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hantzsch, Bernhard Adolph (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German teacher, ornithologist and Arctic explorer
DATE OF BIRTH January 12, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH around June 1911
Place of death Baffin Island , Canada