Carl August Rathjens

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Carl August Rathjens (also Carl Rathjens senior ) (born March 11, 1887 in Elmshorn / Schleswig-Holstein , † July 29, 1966 in Hamburg ) was a German geographer who traveled in particular to southern Arabia and Yemen there .

biography

Carl August Rathjens' father was Ernst Marcus Hinrich Rathjens, born in Kiel in 1837. He was the illegitimate son of a farm owner from Bossee and a maid. The father recognized the child as his and enabled the son to train as a teacher. The mother of Carl August Rathjens was Marie Sophie Mohr, born in Elmshorn in 1858, who was related to the owners of the block forge Mohr, which still exists in Horst today . Her dowry made it possible for the son to study.

In 1911 Rathjens married Rosalie Anna Ursula Reichert (1885–1969) from Berlin. The couple had four children, two daughters and two sons. One of the two sons was Carl Rathjens (1914–1994), who later became a geomorphologist , ice age researcher , high mountain researcher and a special expert on the Orient , especially Afghanistan . In 1920 the couple divorced.

After attending secondary school , Rathjens studied geography and zoology in Kiel, Berlin and Munich from 1906 . In 1911 he received his doctorate under Erich von Drygalski with the thesis "Contributions to the regional studies of Abyssinines". Already as a student he traveled to Abyssinia (today's Ethiopia ), during another stay he explored the Jewish cultures there. Together with Hermann von Wissmann , he took a trip to Lapland in 1925 , where they were on a folding boat on the tundra to study the surface shapes of the ice floors. The two men then wanted to visit Saudi Arabia , but were refused entry, whereupon they traveled on to Bur Sudan and from there to Yemen . There they carried out extensive cultural, zoological and botanical work, which helped them to gain a great reputation with the Yemeni government and other officials. In later years Rathjens worked as an economic advisor for the government. He also campaigned for the establishment of a Jeminite museum in Sanaa .

From 1911 to 1921, Rathjens worked at the Hamburg Colonial Institute after a brief activity at the Zoological State Institute in Munich and at the World Economic Archives until his dismissal for political reasons in 1933 . After he returned to Germany from his fourth major research trip to the Orient in 1937/1938, he was prohibited from publishing his research results. Until 1945 he worked as a freelance writer.

In 1946 Carl August Rathjens became honorary professor for geography at the University of Hamburg . In 1952, together with his assistant Erhard Gabriel , he made his last big trip to Syria and Iraq in a VW Beetle . In 1955 he was awarded the Carl-Ritter-Medal of the Society for Geography in Berlin.

Commitment to Hedwig Klein

At the end of the 1930s, Rathjens tried to help the Jewish scholar of Islam, Hedwig Klein, to flee Germany and got her a job in India. The escape failed because the ship Klein was on was ordered back from Antwerp to Hamburg shortly before the outbreak of World War II . At the beginning of 1940 Rathjens was imprisoned for a month in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp , but released after an intervention by the Yemeni ambassador, but remained under police supervision. Hedwig Klein was deported to Auschwitz in 1942 and murdered, as was her sister, her mother and her grandmother.

“In an act of remembering unusual for its time”, Rathjens, who was deeply affected by Klein's fate, was appointed by the Hamburg District Court as an out-of-home nurse for Hedwig Klein at his request in the summer of 1947 . He had 56 copies of her doctoral thesis printed and campaigned for her to be posthumously declared a "Doctor of Philosophy". Rathjens “energetic and courageous commitment” can be praised, wrote Freimark in 1991, but his work in this matter has so far not received any recognition.

Publications

  • The Jews in Abyssinia , Hamburg 1921.
  • Pre-Islamic antiquities , Hamburg 1932.
  • With Herrmann von Wissmann: Regional studies results [of a trip to South Arabia] . Hamburg 1934.
  • The pilgrimage to Mecca. From the Weihrauchstrasse to the oil industry , Hamburg 1948.
  • Sabaeica . 3 volumes from 1953–1966. Hamburg.

literature

  • Carl Rathjens March 10, 1887-29. July 1966. In: Islam. 46, 1970, pp. 55-63, doi : 10.1515 / islm.1970.46.1.55 .
  • Peter Freimark : PhD Hedwig Klein - at the same time a contribution to the seminar for the history and culture of the Middle East , in: University life in the “Third Reich”. The Hamburg University 1933–1945, edited by Eckart Krause a. a., Berlin Hamburg 1991, Part II, pp. 851-864, ISBN 3-496-00882-2 .
  • Armin Püttger-Conrad: The Orient researcher Carl Rathjens from Elmshorn 1887-1966 . In: Local history yearbook for the Pinneberg district. Contributions to regional history . tape 42 . Home association for the Pinneberg district from 1961 eV, 2009, p. 53-56 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Püttger-Conrad, Der Orientforscher Carl Rathjens , p. 54.
  2. ↑ Ellinger, Deutsche Orientalistik , p. 224.
  3. ↑ a b c d Püttger-Conrad, Der Orientforscher Carl Rathjens , p. 55.
  4. ^ Ellinger, Deutsche Orientalistik , p. 571.
  5. ↑ a b Müller, Wolfgang, "Rathjens, Carl" in: Neue Deutsche Biographie 21 (2003), pp. 179–180 [online version]; URL: https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd119510960.html#ndbcontent
  6. ↑ a b c Stefan Buchen: The Jewess Hedwig Klein and Mein Kampf : The Arabist who nobody knows. In: Qantara.de. March 16, 2018, accessed March 16, 2018 .
  7. ^ Freimark, Promotion Hedwig Klein , p. 854.
personal data
SURNAME Rathjens, Carl August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geographer and orientalist
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH July 29, 1966
Place of death Hamburg