Bror from Blixen-Finecke

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Bror von Blixen-Finecke (born July 25, 1886 in Näsbyholm Castle, Gärdslöv parish in Trelleborg municipality ; † May 3, 1946 in Gårdstånga, Eslöv municipality ) was a Swedish baron, professional hunter and hunting guide in Kenya and British East Africa , literary Role model for Ernest Hemingway and from 1914 to 1925 husband of Karen Blixen , the well-known Danish author and farmer in Kenya. In the film Out of Africa he is portrayed by Klaus Maria Brandauer .

Life in Sweden

Näsbyholm (1822)

Bror von Blixen-Finecke was the son of Baron Frederik von Blixen-Finecke and his wife Clara von Blixen-Finecke and the twin brother of Hans von Blixen-Finecke . The Blixen are a noble family from Western Pomerania, who have also lived at Näsbyholm Castle in Sweden since 1756.

Blixen-Finecke and his brother Hans attended school in Lund together, first living with a family, then together in a small apartment. Bror von Blixen-Finecke attended the agricultural college in Alnarp and managed a smaller estate called Stjerneholm. Blixen-Finecke's future wife, Karen, was a great cousin of the two brothers and had known the family since childhood. On December 23, 1912, Blixen-Finecke and Karen Dinesen got engaged. The couple decided to emigrate to Kenya together and open a dairy farm near Nairobi .

Emigration to Kenya

Mbogani, Blixen-Finecke's house from 1917.

Blixen-Finecke went to Kenya and bought the 800 hectare Mbagathi farm, which is relatively small at the foot of the Ngong Mountains south of Nairobi . In December 1913, Karen Dinesen came by ship from Naples to Mombasa . The couple married in Mombasa in January 1914. Blixen-Finecke invested a lot of time in big game hunts and safaris. In 1915 he and Karen fell ill with syphilis. In 1917 the couple moved to a larger house on their property, to Mbogani, which is now the Karen Blixen Museum . Blixen-Finecke and his wife separated in 1921, followed by divorce in January 1925.

After separating from Karen Blixen

In 1927 Blixen-Finecke founded a safari company with Philip Percival and Jeff Manley, "Tanganyika Guides Ltd." Blixen-Finecke worked in Tanganyika and Philip Percival in Kenya. In the following years he undertook numerous safaris all over East Africa , but also into the Belgian Congo . Blixen-Finecke married a second time and ran the Babati farm in Tanganyika with his wife Cockie Birkbeck. In November 1928 Karen Blixen had Edward, the Prince of Wales , the future British King Edward VIII. (1936-37), as a guest in her house and invited Blixen-Finecke to do so. As a result, he went on safari with the royal hunting party. In the winter of 1930 the Prince of Wales came on a second safari with Blixen-Finecke.

In 1932 Blixen-Finecke separated from his second wife and in 1934 married Eva Dickson from Sweden , who was killed in a car accident in 1937. A year later, Bror Blixen-Finecke left Kenya and went to Gardiners Island . With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, he began to raise funds to open an American army hospital in Finland. In 1940 Blixen-Finecke took over command of the cargo on the Swedish ship that was supposed to bring the necessary equipment for the hospital to Bergen . Everything was unloaded in Bergen, but the onward transport was unsuccessful because the German Wehrmacht marched into Norway. Blixen-Finecke diverted the equipment to Sweden, from where it was brought across the northern border to Norway. The hospital could not be maintained for long, so Blixen-Finecke brought the equipment back to neutral Sweden, where it remained inoperative. He moved into a house in Näsbyholm. While on vacation in Falsterbo , Bror met his last love, Ruth. In her house, not far from Näsbyholm, he wrote his second book “The Africa Letters”.

One year after the end of World War II, on May 3, 1946, Blixen-Finecke died in a car accident.

Works

  • Nyama , Stockholm, 1936 (244 pages)
  • African Hunter , Cassell & Company, London, 1937. (British first edition in English, with drawings)
  • African Hunter , St. Martin's Press, New York, 1986 ( ISBN 0-312-00959-3 ; German Unforgotten Africa. Hunting memories and life adventures , Sulzberg / Allgäu 2004, ISBN 3-925456-48-1 )
  • The Africa Letters . St. Martin's Press, New York, 1988; with a foreword by GFV Kleen ( ISBN 0-312-01468-6 ; German hunting letters from East Africa , Sulzberg / Allgäu 2005, ISBN 3-925456-52-X or ISBN 3-925456-53-8 )

literature

  • Ulf Aschan: The Man whom Women Loved. The Life of Bror Blixen. St. Martin's Press, New York, 1987, ISBN 0-312-00064-2
  • Ulf Aschan: Baron Blixen. Ett portraits av Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke . Wiken, Höganäs, 1986, ISBN 91-7024-332-8
  • Lennart Hagerfors: The dream of the Ngong. A novel about Bror Blixen (original title: Drömmen om Ngong ). German by Ursula Gunsilius . Hinstorff, Rostock 2002, 271 pages, ISBN 3-356-00931-1

Web links

Commons : Bror von Blixen-Finecke  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chronology on the homepage of the Karen Blixen Museum in Rungstedkyst (English), accessed on June 2, 2010.
  2. ↑ a b Karen Blixen in Africa , entry on the homepage of the Karen Blixen Museum in Rungstedkyst (English), accessed on June 2, 2010.
personal data
SURNAME Blixen-Finecke, Bror von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish baron and big game hunter
DATE OF BIRTH July 25, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Näsbyholm Castle, Gärdslöv parish, Trelleborg municipality
DATE OF DEATH May 3, 1946
Place of death Gårdstånga, Eslöv Municipality