Carl Raswan
Carl Reinhard Raswan (born as Carl Reinhard Schmidt) (born March 7, 1893 in Dresden ; † October 14, 1966 in Santa Barbara , California ) was one of the most important connoisseurs and supporters of the Asil Arabian horse , author and author of specialist articles, as well as an advocate for the understanding of the Bedouin tribes of Arabia, which are closely connected with Arab breeding, their way of life and a peoples-wide tolerance.
Life
Childhood and environment
Carl Raswan was born in the Laubegast-Tolkewitz district of Dresden under the name Carl Reinhard Schmidt as the child of the physician Martin Schmidt and a Hungarian mother.
Even in his early years, the young Carl Raswan tried to find out what was hidden beyond the Elbe, behind the mountains opposite. Carl Raswan first came into contact with horses at the age of five when he received the pony Phili as a gift from his father .
With the acquisition of the Dr. Klenke's Kurpark Wachwitz in 1898 by his father opened up for Carl Raswan and his pony the opportunity for longer excursions into the Dresden area without having to cross the Elbe.
school career
In 1902 Carl Raswan started school at the humanistic Königliche Wettiner Gymnasium in Dresden. His parents' choice for this school turned out to be fortunate for Carl Raswan, as it gave him the opportunity to study classical European antiquity and its languages. During his school days, Carl Raswan deepened his reading of ancient hippologists , such as Simon of Athens , Xenophon , Varro , Oppian and Palladius .
Carl Raswan often spent his school holidays with his pony with his uncle Bernhard Schmidt , who took up the position of chief forestry council in the forester's house in Kreyern in Spitzgrund. During one of these holiday stays, Carl Raswan observed the young Prince Ernst-Heinrich von Wettin , who rode into the Moritzburg castle pond with his Arab white horse , which was acquired by the Hungarian king . The white horse was probably a Shagya Arab and Carl Raswan watched the horse recognize itself in the reflection in the water and play with it. This experience aroused his interest in the Arabian horse and thus became a key experience for the further life of Carl Raswan.
Formative study trip
After graduating from high school, his parents sent Carl Raswan on a three-week trip to Greece in May 1911 , during which he had previously spent a few days in Constantinople (now Istanbul ), the then capital of the Ottoman Empire . Carl Raswan put the trip under the motto of his childhood dream "in search of the ideal horse". He spent most of his time studying ancient works of art depicting horses; z. B. the Parthenon frieze by the Greek sculptor Phidias from the 5th century BC. And the Panathenic pageant with the hundred horses that still existed at that time . By inspecting the private library of a friend of his Greek archaeologist, Carl Raswan gained extensive insight into the history of the ancient horse. While reading this, Carl Raswan also came across the two volumes of the work A Pilgrimage to Nedschd , which deeply impressed him and made him say: "After my return from Athens I could no longer imagine my future in Europe ..."
First trip to the Orient
Inspired by the writings of Lady Anne Blunt and his studies of ancient works of art, Carl Raswan began studying all Arabic shortly after his return from Greece, and in just a few years he had mastered both the language and the script at a native level. At the end of 1911, Carl Raswan received an invitation from his cousin to Egypt, who ran an import / export trade in Cairo , very conveniently . He traveled to Cairo via Trieste and Alexandria , where he first experienced the splendor and diversity of the Orient. With the business mission of his cousin Carl Raswan 1912 moved to a position as assistant to the Santa Stefano Farm to Ramle , east of Alexandria, where he was responsible for the irrigation technique of farm system and extensively with the problems of the rural population, the fellahin , dealt .
The then 16-year-old sister Charlotte Schmidt followed Carls Raswan to Egypt to take over the housekeeping for him in Ramle. On their excursions on horseback in the area around Alexandria, Carl Raswan and his sister made their first acquaintances with the Bedouins in the area. So one day they met Sheikh Ammer Ibn-el-Aide of the Would Ali tribe , who was riding a small Arab stallion named Ghazal (Arabic for gazelle). It was in the Sheikh's tent that they both got to know the customs and family life of the Bedouins for the first time, and it was there that Carl Raswan also met Marzuki , the former stable master of the Egyptian King Tewfik (also Taufik), and became friends.
In the constant search for the "dream horse", Marzuki invited Carl Raswan to accompany him on a trip to Jerusalem and Damascus , since there he should have the opportunity to come into contact with the horse-breeding Bedouin tribes. Sheikh Ammer made his stallion Ghazal available on loan to Carl Raswan for this trip. The friendship between the Sheikh and Carl Raswan was so close that the latter gave him the nickname "Aziz" (Arabic for the beloved), which is to be seen as a special honor. Carl Raswan kept this nickname later in other contacts with the Bedouins. During this first trip through Arabia, which lasted about a year, Carl Raswan had many opportunities to deal with the nomadic tribes of the Arab Bedouins, to study their way of life and religion and to understand the social structure of the Bedouin tribes. The common interest in the Arabian horse and the common experiences in the desert cemented this relationship and led to the blood brotherhood between Carl Raswan and the young Bedouin prince Fawaz as-Shaalan (Fuaz). This close relationship between the families continued until Carl Raswan's death. During this journey, which Carl Raswan later described in his book Drinker of the Air , he finally recognized the stallion Ghazal, a representative of the Asil Arabian horses, as his "dream horse". Ghazal was later given to him as a present by Sheikh Ammer.
First World War
With the beginning of the First World War , decisive changes in his life also came to fruition for Carl Raswan. In autumn 1914 he received the draft order for the Royal Saxon Hussar Regiment No. 18 in Grossenhain, but was postponed. Raswan then volunteered at the German embassy in Constantinople in May 1915. Raswan was involved in the heavy fighting for Gallipoli , the Dardanelles and fought with the 4th Turkish Army on the Suez Canal , after which he fell ill with malaria , typhus and lung abscess . After participating in battles in Mesopotamia (today's Iraq ), Carl Raswan came to Ukraine in 1917 , where he witnessed the Russian-German armistice. On the way home, Raswan experienced the October Revolution in Warsaw before he arrived in Dresden in 1918, completely emaciated due to the privations.
Emigration to the USA
Back in his hometown, however, Carl Raswan could no longer find a home and decided in 1921 to go to Oakland (California) to see his mother, who was now 61, who was living there. Raswan thus adopted the USA as his adopted home. It took another four years for Carl Raswan to largely recover from the health effects of the First World War in 1925.
Raswan's passion, his attachment to the Arabian horse, led to Will Keith Kellogg , a breeder of thoroughbred Arabian horses who ran a farm near Pomona, California , asked Judith Blunt for these breeding animals in late 1925 -Lytton, 16th Baroness Wentworth (also known as Lady Wentworth) at her Crabbet Park stud in Sussex ( Great Britain ). Raswan carried out the trade as requested and so on February 22nd, 1926, selected Arab horses were imported, which improved the quality of breeding in the USA in a sustainable manner. One horse from this selection was the gray stallion Raswan (AV 1921), the best son of the well-known Polish Arabian stallion Skowronek (AV 1908), which was given to Carl Raswan by Lady Wentworth. The stallion Raswan was also housed on the Kellogg farm, but was killed there because of malice. When Karl Kellogg brought the news of the stallion's death to Carl Raswan, he is said to have said the following:
- "Dead ??" shouted Carl. "No! He should live! From now on everything I do will be done in his name! "
Since that event, the native Carl Schmidt called himself Carl Raswan (Raswan, also Radhwan, is the angel of mercy at the entrance to paradise according to Muslim belief).
With a horse bred by the Hingham Stock Farm from Massachusetts / USA, the dapple gray stallion Jadaan, Carl Raswan worked as a double for the actor Rudolph Valentino in April 1926 while filming the film The Sheik's Son in a Desert near Yuma ( Arizona ) with. During the filming, Carl Raswan got caught in a sandstorm that almost cost him his life. Rudolph Valentino died a few months after filming in New York .
Second trip to the Orient
The dramatic events of the recent past awakened Carl Raswan longing for "his" Bedouins and so he undertook a trip to the Ruala tribe in the desert and steppe areas of northern Arabia in the same year. During this trip, the close relationship between Carl Raswan and the family of his blood brother Prince Fawaz, whose grandfather Amir Nuri as-Shaalan Raswan was very fond, deepened. Raswan described the experiences and insights of this trip in his book "In the land of black tents".
In 1928 Carl Raswan undertook another trip to inner Arabia, during which he visited several Bedouin tribes. During this journey he gained an insight that led him to the following description:
- “Since the world war, the last romantic and the ideals of Bedouin life have collapsed. Mauser and machine guns and now also automobiles destroy hundreds of horses in current battles, which previously only caused harmless wounds with lances and primitive weapons ... and with knightly virtues and laws keeping their passions (e.g. blood vengeance) in check. - ... In October 1927 I experienced a ... case among the Fid'an-'Anaza Bedouins, who lost 135 mares in one day ... "
Carl Raswan thus witnessed a decisive development that led to a sharp decline in the Arabian horse in its region of origin and the effects of which breeders can still perceive today. The year 1928 was also marked by such events, to which there was also a drought that caused up to 2,000 camels to die of thirst for weeks in the Ruala Bedouins.
Admission into the tribe of the Ruala
On April 15, 1929, Carl Raswan was officially accepted into the Ruala tribe and into the family of Nuri Shaalan. This great honor for a European and a Christian (Raswan quote: "I never had to deny my religion with the Bedouins.") Moved Raswan to call himself Abd al-Aziz Ibn Radhwan, the Ruala . In the same year Raswan brokered a peace agreement between 21 leaders of rival Bedouin tribes, which gave him a high reputation. Carl Raswan described his experiences in his book The Arab and His Horse as well as in the text part of the book Arabian Horses by U. Guttmann.
Influence on the breeding of Arabian thoroughbred horses in Europe
A Raswan publication in ST.GEORG magazine about Prince Mohamed Ali's Manial stud, in which a photo of the gray stallion Jasir Or.Ar. (= Original Arab), led to an inquiry in 1929 from the owner of the Königlich Württembergischen Gestüt Weil , Pauline Fürstin von Wied, to purchase this stallion as the main stallion for her valuable breeding stock. Raswan accepted the assignment, which turned out to be more difficult than expected. He wrote about this:
- "... After months of negotiations ... after a personal consultation with the King of Egypt ... I finally managed to convince these great lovers and breeders of the noble Arabian horse in Egypt that their victim, Jasir, would be sent to Germany in the course of time would prove to be a gain for Egypt. "
The stallion was then transferred by ship and train from Cairo to Weil within a 16-day journey. However, Jasir turned out to be a “little runaway” who valued freedom above everything. After nibbling through his lead rope, he promenade across the ship's sundeck in Venice, then fell into a hatch two decks deep on thick bales of cotton, jumped up, shook himself, and then ran along a narrow, steel corridor to a platform from which from one could see the entire engine room, where the runaway was caught again unharmed. Jasir was one of the horses that was taken over into the breeding stock of the Württemberg main and state stud in Marbach after the Royal Stud in Weil was dissolved.
Another well-deserved promotion of the European population of Arab horses began in 1930 when Carl Raswan was asked by the Polish Prince Roman Sanguszko to purchase original Arab breeding horses for his stud in Gumniska (southern Poland) and to take his stud manager Bogdan Zietarski with him on the trip . Together they traveled around 12,000 km in the Middle East and viewed over 10,000 horses. The result of the trip, which lasted from November 1930 to mid-1931, was the importation of five stallions and four mares. The stallion Kuhailan Zaid db (= desertbred) came to the Hungarian stud in Bábolna , whose management his colleague and friend Tibor von Pettkó-Szandtner had just taken over, the remaining horses were brought to Gumniska. A descendant of the stallion Kuhailan Haifi db from this purchase is the stallion Ofir (AV 1933), who later exerted extensive influence on the breeding of the thoroughbred Arabian in Europe at the Polish state stud Janów Podlaski . Raswan and Zietarski have had a close friendship and deep respect for each other since that trip. In a letter dated August 6, 1955 to the well-known hippologist Johannes Erich Flade , a compatriot and friend of Carl Raswan, Raswan extensively praised Bogdan Zietarski's expertise and "horse manliness".
Third trip to the Orient
In the summer of 1936, Carl Raswan made another trip to the Middle East. Originally the purpose of the trip was to visit his Arab friends. Due to the political situation, this trip turned out to be extremely dangerous. Raswan mostly traveled by car from Cairo to Aqaba , today's Syria , from there through Iraq to Baghdad and on to Iran to Tehran , before returning via Alexandria and Genoa. Raswan reports the experiences of this odyssey in his book "Escape from Baghdad".
Own breeding and literary works
Since the late 1930s, Carl Raswan had a small stud in the Sandia Mountains in New Mexico (USA), on which he bred Arabian thoroughbreds. In the course of the Second World War , Raswan began to organize his notes in order to publish them. This resulted in u. a. the book "Sons of the Desert". The order of these records lasted more than eight years.
In a letter to Flade dated May 11, 1955, Raswan reported that he wanted to publish an index in a next project that would contain all Arab ancestry trees, Bedouin breeders and imports to Europe and America over the past 100 years. The work was originally planned in twelve volumes, which should appear in a three-month cycle. It took Carl Raswan another five years to prepare this RASWAN INDEX , which is still an important reference work for breeders of Arab horses. In creating the work, Carl Raswan received extensive support from his wife Esperanza Raswan, who did the writing and proofreading. Ultimately, the RASWAN INDEX appeared in seven volumes between 1957 and 1967, the last supplementary volume published postmortem by Esperanza Raswan.
In 1955, Carl Raswan drew some conclusions from the findings of his eventful life. He praises the way of life of the Bedouins, the children of Ishmael , their dignity of a life in freedom and their code of honor, which contains the principles of humanity. In another letter to Flade on January 16, 1965, Carl Raswan refers to the bond between people in all countries and their ties to nature and all animals.
Sickness and death
In November and December 1965, Carl Raswan fell ill and went to hospital for treatment for a week. As can be seen in a letter to Flade dated December 22, 1965, old injuries from the First World War, his stays in the desert of Arabia and a kidney injury that Raswan suffered in 1934 on Wiener Straße in Dresden were examined during this stay Secret State Police of the Nazis was inflicted. The investigation showed that the old wounds had healed well, but that Raswan's kidneys, spine and lungs, which were affected by sandstorms during his stays in the desert ( silicosis ), appeared to require treatment. Raswan reports in the letter that even the Arab horses were affected by lung bleeding when the sandstorms lasted more than two days.
On October 14, 1966, Carl Reinhard Raswan died suddenly and unexpectedly, presumably as a result of the silicosis that he contracted during his numerous trips to the inner city. On January 14, 1967, Prince Mútab condoled Fawaz as-Shaalan and with him the tribe of the Ruala, who have lost a loyal, dear friend in Carl Raswan (alias Abd al-Aziz Ibn Radhwan, the Ruala ).
Marriages and offspring
- From his first marriage, Carl Raswan had four sons.
- In his second marriage he married his wife Esperanza, who gave him two daughters ( Chela and Beatriz ). Carl Raswan had a very close relationship with his wife, about whom he once said:
- "She is much more than my significant other and made of a material that angels are made of."
swell
- Johannes Erich Flade : “Carl Reinhard Raswan - We never own a horse; it is entrusted to us ”Contribution from“ ASIL ARABER - Arabia's noble horses ”Volume VI / S. 213 ff. Publisher Asil Club eV; Olms Verlag Hildesheim 2007
- ↑ Carl R. Raswan: Drinker of the Air . Olms Verlag 2nd edition from 1990 - ISBN 3-487-08140-7
- ↑ Dudley, Aaron. "JADAAN: The Horse That Valentino Rode" , The Western Horseman, Mar 1952 reprinted at Windt im Walt Farm, web site accessed April 5, 2010
- ↑ Ursula Guttmann: "Love letters about Arab horses". Georg Olms Verlag April 2007, ISBN 978-3-487-08471-8
literature
- Lady Anne Blunt : "A Pilgrimage to Nejd - the Cradle of the Arab race". London 1881
- Carl R. Raswan: "In the land of black tents". Olms Verlag 2nd edition from 1990 - ISBN 3-487-08136-9
- Carl R. Raswan: "The Arab and his horse". Olms Verlag edition: N.-A., reprint. (January 1990) - ISBN 3-487-08234-9
- Carl R. Raswan and Ursula Guttmann: "Arabian Horses". Mueller Rueschlikon Verlag reprint from January 1992 - ISBN 3-275-00528-6
- Carl R. Raswan: "Escape from Baghdad". Olms Verlag Reprint Hildesheim 1978 - ISBN 3-487-08158-X
- Carl R. Raswan: "Sons of the Desert". Olms Verlag 2nd edition (August 2000) - ISBN 3-487-08134-2
- Alice Payne: "Carl Raswan Dies". The Arabian Horse News, 11/12, 1966. See http://www.wiwfarm.com/APRaswanObit.html
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Raswan, Carl |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Schmidt, Carl Reinhard (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German traveler to the Orient, author and sponsor of the Arabian horse |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 7, 1893 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dresden |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 14, 1966 |
| Place of death | Santa Barbara (California) |