Karl Mauch

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Karl Mauch
Karl Mauch with Paul Jebe around 1868
Memorial for Mauch at the former teachers' college in Schwäbisch Gmünd, the Franciscan
Mauch's sketches and notes
Drawing of a rhinoceros by Karl Mauch, 1869

Karl Gottlieb Mauch (born May 7, 1837 in Stetten im Remstal , † April 4, 1875 in Stuttgart ) was a German Africa explorer , prospector and cartographer .

Life

Karl Mauch was the premarital son of the joiner Joseph Mauch and his later wife Christiane Dorothea Greiner. He finished his school days at the secondary school in Ludwigsburg and at the age of 17 began to study pedagogy at the Catholic teachers' seminar at the Franziskaner in Schwäbisch Gmünd . Mauch finished his studies in 1856 and got a job as an assistant teacher in Isny im Allgäu the following year .

In 1859 Mauch left the civil service at his own request and worked as a tutor for various families in Styria until 1863 . During visits to the Botanical Garden of the University of Graz , he was particularly interested in the flora of Africa. Since he liked the job of a teacher less and less, Mauch applied to a Hamburg shipping company in 1863 and went to sea for almost two years. Mauch then reached Durban in South Africa via London in 1865. He resigned and began to research the country and its people.

Mauch wandered through southern Africa from 1865 to 1871, crossed the watershed between the Zambezi and Limpopo and reached the vicinity of Tete on the Zambezi.

In 1866 he made the acquaintance of the ivory hunter and adventurer Henry Hartley. With this he roamed the Matabele kingdom and became aware of quartz veins with visible gold at that time. In 1867 he advanced further northwest towards the Zambezi and discovered two large gold fields. On a third trip (1868/1869) he came from the Transvaal Republic via the Limpopo to the Inyati mission station (North Matabeleland in present-day Zimbabwe ). In 1870 he made a trip to Delagoa Bay . In 1871 he discovered the ruins of Greater Zimbabwe near Masvingo , which he assigned to the ancient sea trade destination of King Solomon of Israel, Ophir . Then he passed the upper course of the Zambezi, where he found a gold field (Kaiser-Wilhelms-Feld).

Shortly after these trips, Mauch published his experiences and observations, which mainly attracted a lot of attention in the Cape Colony , the Boer states and in England. On the British side, his reports even received attention from the colonial administration. Further gold discoveries were made around 1870, which very quickly led to the establishment of gold mining companies in the area that would later become southern Rhodesia .

At the end of 1871, the now malaria patient came back to Germany. He later traveled to the Caribbean . Over time, he began to doubt his own Ophir Zimbabwe theory.

Since there were no opportunities for Mauch to work scientifically in Germany, he earned his living from 1874 as managing director of the cement factory " Spohn & Ruthard " in Blaubeuren . He lived there in a furnished room on the upper floor of the station building.

On Good Friday night from March 26th to 27th, 1875, Mauch fell out of the window of his apartment under unexplained circumstances. In addition to suicide, murder has recently been contemplated, albeit without any solid evidence. He may have simply suffered an attack of faintness or nausea while being intoxicated, stepped to the window and rushed out, injuring his skull, tearing his liver, breaking ribs and breaking his spine . When he was found, presumably hours after the fall, he was conscious but could not remember what had happened. He was taken to Stuttgart Ludwig Hospital, where he died on April 4, 1875. He was buried three days later in the Prague cemetery. In October of the same year, “some friends of our compatriot, who was accomplished at an early age” - including the Land and Reichstag member Otto Elben , the Stuttgart banker Moritz Pflaum and the Polytechnic director Paul Heinrich von Zech - published an appeal for a memorial stone on Mauch's grave in the Württemberg State Gazette. It was handed over to the community on June 18, 1876. This burial site was destroyed in World War II but was reconstructed in 1977.

In 1991/92 the Stuttgart Main State Archives , which are keeping his estate , commemorated Ophir under the title Ein Schwabe im Goldland? The discovery of the ruins of Zimbabwe by Karl Mauch in 1871 with a small exhibition of the traveler. A permanent exhibition about Karl Mauch is in the museum under the Y-Burg in Stetten.

Honors

Works

literature

  • Constantin von Wurzbach : Mauch, Karl . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 17th part. Imperial-Royal Court and State Printing Office, Vienna 1867, p. 130 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Ferdinand Krauss : Outline of life about K. Mauch. In: Annual Books of the Association for Patriotic Natural History in Württemberg 24 (1868), pp. 24–28 ( online at Google Books ).
  • Richard Andree : Albert Roscher and Karl Mauch, two German travelers in the interior of South Africa. In: Ders .: Dr. David Livingstone's expeditions in South Africa. II. In addition to the research of other recent travelers as well as the trips to Madagascar during the last few years. Leipzig 1869, pp. 161–174, here pp. 171–174 ( online at Google Books).
  • Alexander Merensky : A New Map of the South African Republic. In: Journal of the Society for Geography in Berlin 10 (1875), p. 366–371, p. 368 f. ( online at Google Books).
  • Engelbert Mager : Karl Mauch. Life picture of an Africa traveler . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1895 ( online ).
  • Engelbert Mager: The emigration to Southeast Africa with special consideration of the areas visited by Karl Mauch. In: Annual report of the Handelsgeographisches Verein von Stuttgart 1896, pp. 78–97; Separately printed Gmünd 1897 ( online at Hathi Trust Digital Library ).
  • Viktor Hantzsch:  Mauch, Carl . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 52, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1906, pp. 240-244.
  • Hans Offe (Ed.): Carl Mauch. The life and work of a German Africa explorer: on Carl Mauch's 100th birthday . Württemberg Association for Trade Policy, Stuttgart 1937, OCLC 180630004 .
  • EE Burke (Ed.) Et al .: The journals of Carl Mauch; his travels in the Transvaal and Rhodesia, 1869-1872. (National Archives of Rhodesia) Salisbury, 1969.
  • FO Bernhard: "Discoverer of Simbabye". The Story of Karl Mauch 1837-1875. Part I in: Rhodesiana 21 (1969), pp. 19-35 ( online as PDF); Part II in: ibid. 22 (1970), pp. 28-43 ( online as PDF).
  • FO Bernhard (Ed.): Karl Mauch. African explorer . Struik, Cape Town 1971, DNB 577876023 .
  • Lothar Rother: Carl Mauch's travels in southern Africa. A contribution to the scientific research of the Transvaal and Rhodesia. In: The Caravan. Vol. 17 (1976), Issue 1/2, pp. 43-100 ( online as PDF).
  • Herbert WA Sommerlatte: Karl Mauch (1837–1875), an almost forgotten traveler to Africa. In: The Earth. Journal of the Society for Geography in Berlin. 111 (1980), pp. 199-211 ( online as PDF at DigiZeitschriften ).
  • Heinrich Pleticha (Ed.): Zimbabwe. Voyages of discovery into the past . Thienemann, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-522-60620-5 (collection of excerpts from travel reports as well as standard works on the “Ophir” theory).
  • Wolfgang Saida (Ed.): 150 years of Karl Mauch, Africa explorer; 1837-1987 . Kernen 1987, OCLC 312913802 .
  • Herbert W. Sommerlatte: Gold and ruins in Zimbabwe. From diaries and letters of Swabian Karl Mauch (1837–1875) . Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1987, ISBN 3-570-07918-6 .
  • Neville James Smith: Theorizing discourses of Zimbabwe, 1860-1900: A Foucauldian analysis of colonial narratives. Diss. University of Natal (Durban) 1988 ( online as PDF).
  • Uta Lindgren :  Mauch, Carl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , p. 425 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Dietmar Beetz : Solomon's gold land. Publishing house Thuringia, Erfurt 1993, ISBN 3-86087-113-7 (fictional representation).
  • Stephan Molitor: Karl Mauch (1837-1875). From Bulawayo to Blaubeuren . Denkhaus, Blaubeuren 1998, ISBN 3-930998-15-7 .
  • Peter Hertel: To the ruins of Zimbabwe . Klett-Perthes, Gotha 2000, ISBN 3-623-00356-5 .
  • Ulrich van der Heyden : Carl Mauch's stay in southern Africa and his search for the legendary country of Ophir. In: Hannelore van Ryneveld and Jania Wozniak (eds.): Single walk and return through the ages . Unknown Passages - New Beginnings. Festschrift for Gunther Pakendorf. Stellenbosch 2010 ISBN 978-1-920338-46-6 , pp. 35-64.
  • Eva Maria Verst: Karl Mauch (1837–1875) as an explorer. Science and career between Germany and South Africa . Röhrig Universitätsverlag, St. Ingbert 2012, ISBN 978-3-86110-506-0 .
  • Michael Schütte: The "Discovery of the Ruins of Zimbaoe". On the invention of "white history" in "Black Africa" ​​1871-1872. Master's thesis at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Seminar for Medieval and Modern History, 2013 ( online as PDF ).
  • Gerald Chikozho Mazarire: Carl Mauch and Some Karanga Chiefs Around Great Zimbabwe 1871–1872. Re-Considering the Evidence. In: South African Historical Journal 65 (2013), pp. 337-364.

Web links

Commons : Karl Mauch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b R [ené]. A [rthur]. Pelletier: Mineral Resources of South-Central Africa . Cape Town (Oxford University Press), 1964 p. 24
  2. ^ Colonial Office : Description of Country between Pretoria and Leydenburg, and other papers by Karl Mauch relating to the Transvaal territory. Translated from Petermann, etc. London . 1876. copac entry in the British Library (English)
  3. ↑ Ulrich van der Heyden: Carl Mauch's stay (see literature), p. 51 f.
  4. ↑ A memorial stone for Karl Mauch. In: State Gazette for Württemberg No. 248 of October 24, 1875, p. 1660.
  5. ↑ Engelbert Mager: Lebensbild (see literature), p. 413, where the grave is described as follows: “On the grave mound, a granite table rises on a strong substructure, in which the well-hit marble relief, made by the sculptor Scheck, is set. The inscription reads: »Karl Mauch, Africa traveler, born. May 7, 1837, died April 4, 1875. "The granite column is entwined with a rose bush and shaded by a tree of life, the whole thing is surrounded by a simple grating."
  6. ↑ Peter Hertel : To the ruins of Zimbabwe. Klett Perthes, Gotha 2000, ISBN 3-623-00356-5 , pp. 164-166.
  7. ↑ Sommerlatte: Karl Mauch (see literature), p. 202 with note 8.
  8. ^ The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 42 (1872), p. Cxlii ( online at Google Books).
  9. ↑ CE More: Some observations on 'ancient' mining at Phalaborwa. In: Journal of the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy 74 (1974), pp. 227-232 ( online as PDF).
  10. ^ Titus Häussermann: The Stuttgart street names. Tübingen 2003 ISBN 978-3874075497 , p. 403.
  11. ↑ mapcarta.com
  12. ↑ Peter E. Raper: Art. Mauchsberg. In: Dictionary of Southern African Place Names. Johannesburg 1987 ISBN 0947042067 ( online at Internet Archive).
  13. ^ Entry in the online catalog of the National Library of Australia. on www.trove.nla.gov.au

This article is based on a text in the public domain from Meyers Konversations-Lexikon , 4th edition from 1888 to 1890.

Please only remove this note if you have revised the article to such an extent that the text reflects the current state of knowledge on this topic, this has been proven and it meets today's linguistic requirements.
To refer to the Meyers article afterwards, you can{{ Meyers Online | Volume | Page}} to use.
personal data
SURNAME Mauch, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mauch, Karl Gottlieb (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German African explorer, prospector and cartographer
DATE OF BIRTH May 7, 1837
PLACE OF BIRTH Stetten in the Remstal
DATE OF DEATH April 4, 1875
Place of death Stuttgart