Colin Ross

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Colin Ross (sometimes also "Roß" written; * June 4, 1885 in Vienna , † April 29, 1945 in Urfeld am Walchensee ) was an Austrian journalist , war correspondent and engineer . Between the world wars , he was one of the best-known German-speaking travel journalists alongside Egon Erwin Kisch , Richard Katz and Alfred E. Johann . From 1933 he also used his trips abroad for the purposes of National Socialist propaganda .

Life

Colin Ross was the eldest son of the engineer Friedrich Ross (1850-1918), who was involved in the construction of the first municipal power station in Vienna. He studied mechanical engineering and metallurgy at the Technical Universities of Berlin and Munich, as well as economics and history in Munich. In 1910 he finished his studies successfully with a graduation to the Dr. phil. in Heidelberg . He was already active as a journalist during his studies, and journalism finally became his profession. In 1911 he was initially private secretary to Oskar von Miller . As an employee of the German Museum for Natural Science and Technology , he first traveled to America, the USA, New York City and Chicago in 1912 . Also in 1912 he was sent to the Balkan War as war correspondent for the Munich Illustrated Zeit im Bild . At the beginning of 1914 he reported on the revolution in Mexico . In the First World War he did military service, from 1916 as an employee of the "Military Office of the Foreign Office", which was responsible for propaganda. During the November Revolution in 1918, Ross was a member of the Executive Council of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council in Greater Berlin . In 1919 he emigrated to South America, but returned to Germany in 1921.

Ross made extensive trips around the world and reported about it in his books. Against the background of his racist worldview, he described the peoples of Black Africa as "vegetating low races". Only the natural resources and resources seemed interesting for Europe. The fate of Africa should be determined exclusively by Europe. In the foreword “The Continent Without a Past” in his book The Awakening Sphinx (1927) he questioned whether the peoples of Africa, apart from Egypt, had ever had their own culture and political structures and were ever able to reach them . On pages 66 to 71 he describes dancing Bushman women in the chapter “The Bastard”:

“The Bushmen are certainly not a beautiful race of people [...] The age of the women was completely indeterminable. In any case, they all resembled hideous witches, with their dirty yellow skin, repulsive faces, and sagging, sagging breasts. Only one fell wholly out of this general ugliness. […] 'She is a bastard,' said the Bur, 'her father was a white man.' […] The bastard sat in the midst of this wretched people. […] All the dirt and all the depravity could not destroy its beauty. […] This beautiful half-breed girl still carried the secret and instinct of her noble white blood within her, the share of which would by right have lifted her far beyond this sphere of misery and miserable […] If one were to take her out of this world, she would have wanted and dressed and placed in the other to which she belonged at least halfway, it would not have to be extremely delightful to experience how this now doomed blood would slowly open up and develop in itself all that which is now dull and unredeemed in her is stuck and weighs on her like a heavy dream. "

On the other hand, Colin Ross wrote in his 1929 book Die Welt auf der Waage on pages 102-103:

“Certainly a car, a rifle, a gramophone, an airplane can arouse surprise and astonishment when it is shown for the first time, but the 'savage' is generally not as stunned as it is portrayed in the travelogues. At least not, or at least not always, the belief in the superiority of the white man results. Certainly, one may acknowledge one's power and bow to it, but inwardly one knows that as a human being, as one who is connected with the actual effective forces, with the deity, one is in no way inferior to the white man. It is a fact that is difficult to deny that a number of colored peoples have abilities and mental powers which are insufficiently explained by hypnosis and autosuggestion. You don't have to reach as far as the Indian fakirs, you can sometimes experience the strangest things with an African rainmaker. "

After a long stay in America, he settled in Munich. There was a close friendship with Baldur von Schirach and Henriette von Schirach . Together they shaped the ideological and formal structure of the Hitler Youth during the early years .

Ross always used to travel with his family and became known for the catchy (sub) title "Mit Kind und Kegel ...", which became his trademark. However, his family is rarely mentioned in most books.

Colin Ross was - alongside fellow travel writer Sven Hedin  - one of the few writers who were allowed to take a position against the anti-Semitic policies of the National Socialists with impunity during the Nazi era . Until 1941 he was protected by the fact that he was a personal friend of Henriette von Schirachs , the daughter of Hitler's photographer Heinrich Hoffmann and Mrs. Baldur von Schirachs, who as Gauleiter of Vienna held his protective hand over him to the end.

Ross had a daughter, Renate (1915-2004), and a son, Ralph Colin Ross (1923-1941).

The National Socialist Colin Ross and his wife Elisabeth committed suicide on April 29, 1945 in Urfeld on Lake Walchensee.

Works

Books

  • Under the spell of ice (1911)
  • When the world ran out of coal and iron . (Young people's book series Das Neue Universum Volume 34, pp. 165 ff.) (1913)
  • We outside. Two Years of War Experience on Four Fronts (1916) online  - Internet Archive
  • South America, the Rising World (1922) online  - Internet Archive
  • The way to the east. Journey through Russia, Ukraine, Transcaucasia, Persia, Bukhara and Turkestan (1923)
  • Today in India (1924, due to a new trip to India a revised edition was published in 1937)
  • The sea of ​​choices. Both sides of the Pacific (1925)
  • Journey and Adventure Book (1925)
  • Around the world with the crankcase (1926)
  • The awakening Sphinx. Through Africa from the Cape to Cairo (1927)
  • With kids in the Arctic (1928)
  • With camera, child and cone through Africa (1928)
  • The unfinished continent (1930)
  • The world on the scales. The cross-section of 20 years of world travel (1931)
  • The Will of the World (1932)
  • Haha Whenua - the country I was looking for. With child and bowling through the South Seas (1933)
  • Between USA and the Pole. Through Canada, Newfoundland, Labrador and the Arctic (1934)
  • America's fateful hour. The United States between Democracy and Dictatorship (1935)
  • Our America. The German Part of the United States (1936)
  • The Balkans of America. With kids through Mexico to the Panama Canal (1937)
  • Four years at the enemy (1938)
  • The New Asia (1940)
  • The "Western Hemisphere" as the Program and Phantom of American Imperialism (1941)
  • L 'Avènement d'une nouvelle Europe dans le cadre d'un nouvel ordre mondial (1941)
  • From contested Africa (1944)

Movies

  • Colin Roß around the earth with the crankcase (1924)
  • The Awakening Sphinx (1927)
  • Egypt (1928)
  • As a three year old through Africa (1928)
  • Attention Australia! Attention Asia! (1930)
  • The New Asia (1940)

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Colin Ross  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bodo-Michael Baumunk: A pathfinder of "geopolitics" - The travel journalist and filmmaker Colin Ross . Lecture summary, materials for the 9th International Film History Congress, Hamburg, 1996.
  2. ↑ Nora Andrea Schulze: Responsibility for the Church . Volume III: Stenographic notes and transcripts from Regional Bishop Hans Meiser 1933–1955. Vol. 3: 1937 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010, ISBN 978-3-525-55765-5 , p. 119 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ↑ a b c d Nora Andrea Schulze: Responsibility for the Church . Volume III: Stenographic notes and transcripts from Regional Bishop Hans Meiser 1933–1955. Vol. 3: 1937 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010, ISBN 978-3-525-55765-5 , p. 1072 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  4. ↑ Colin Ross: The Awakening Sphinx. FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1936, page 3
  5. ^ Hitler Youth Personal Account: Ralph Ross (Germany, 1923–41) . - Ralph Colin Ross died in 1941 during the Russian campaign on a bathing lake from a lightning strike out of the blue; Ross, From Chicago to Chungking (1941), afterword by Colin Ross.
personal data
SURNAME Ross, Colin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Horse, Colin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian journalist and travel writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 4, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH April 29, 1945
Place of death Urfeld on the Walchensee