German Arctic Expedition
The German Arctic Expedition (also Schröder-Stranz Expedition ) was a German expedition planned for 1913 with the aim of crossing the Northeast Passage . After the preparatory expedition to Spitzbergen , which started from Tromsø in August 1912 , ended in a disaster that killed seven other participants in addition to the leader Herbert Schröder-Stranz , the main expedition no longer took place.
prehistory
Schröder-Stranz, a German officer, had the idea of crossing the Northeast Passage by ship as early as 1905 during an extensive journey through the Russian peninsula of Kola and Karelia . Only Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld had succeeded in this undertaking before . He planned to hibernate twice during the crossing and to carry out extensive scientific studies. For several years he was looking for sponsors until Duke Ernst II of Saxony-Altenburg finally agreed to finance at least one pre-expedition.
The pre-expedition to Spitzbergen in 1912 was intended to clarify the suitability of the equipment and the crew and to gain experience in the arctic climate. In addition, the question was to be answered whether the interior of Northeast Land was covered by a continuous ice sheet. In addition, the expedition was a welcome opportunity for Schröder-Stranz to draw public attention to his project and thus gain further donors, since the financing of the main expedition was not secured. The original plan to be the first person to explore the Arctic by plane had to be abandoned after Alfred Ritscher, the intended pilot, injured himself in a plane crash and did not complete his training. The experienced polar sailor W. Berg was initially to become the captain of the available motor sailor, Herzog Ernst . However, since the latter had to supervise the construction of the ship intended for the main expedition, Schröder-Stranz appointed Ritscher the skipper, who however had no experience in arctic waters.
At the beginning of August 1912, Schröder-Stranz met with his companions, mainly scientists and a Norwegian crew, in Tromsø. There he opened up his new plan to them to cross the north-east country by train sledge . So far, only Nordenskiöld had succeeded in doing this from south to north, and Schröder-Stranz planned the crossing on the much longer route from east to west. He explained that wintering on Svalbard could no longer be ruled out. Two participants, including Ludwig Kohl-Larsen , who was supposed to be the ship's doctor , then left the expedition. The other participants were convinced, and the Herzog Ernst set sail on August 5th with 15 men on board.
Discontinuation of Schröder-Stranz
Just a few days after departure, the team encountered the first drift ice . When we arrived at the southern tip of Spitsbergen, it turned out that the direct route to the north-east through the Storfjord was already impassable and instead, Spitsbergen had to be circled on a north-westerly course in order to then pass the North Cape to north-east. On August 13th, between the North Cape and Cape Platen, however, the onward journey through pack ice was again made impossible. The Herzog Ernst could not penetrate as far as the east coast of northeastern country, which made another change of plan necessary.
Schröder-Stranz then proposed to take the sledge on the ice to the coast, and from there on a western route to cross the Gustav V country of northeastern land and then the island of Spitsbergen . He wanted to come on board again by December 15 at the latest at the Krossfjord on the west coast of Svalbard, where Kurt Wegener and Max Robitzsch wintered at the Ebeltofthafen geophysical observatory that same year . On August 15, Schröder-Stranz set out with three companions and food for two months, over 10 km from the coast. The group has been missing since then.
Walk to the Adventfjord
Six days after the departure of Schröder-Stranz and his companions, Herzog Ernst reached the Sorgebai (also Treurenbergbai) on August 21, where she was supposed to leave provisions in the local refuge for Schröder-Stranz. Due to unfavorable winds and pack ice , however, she could no longer leave the bay and was trapped in the ice. Since enough food was taken with them, the crew could have hibernated on the Herzog Ernst . Instead, however, she decided on September 21st to tackle an arduous hike of almost 300 km towards the next settlement on the Adventfjord (now Longyearbyen ). The members of the Norwegian crew recognized the hopelessness of the undertaking and initially stayed on the ship.
The group made slow progress; after five days, she reached a refuge built by Nordenskiöld in the Mosselbai - originally only one day was estimated for this route. While the rest of the group was initially unsure whether it would make sense to continue on foot, Detmers and Moeser were of the opinion that they should go faster with lighter luggage. The two left alone on September 27, even leaving their sleeping bags behind. The rest decided to get more supplies from the ship first. When they arrived at the ship, the Norwegians Stenersen and Rotvold joined them. After the group set off from the refuge again on September 29, Detmers and Moeser were last seen on the horizon near Mosselbai. They have also been missing since then.
On October 4th, the group reached a seal trap on the Wijdebai . The feet of the oceanographer Hermann Rüdiger were completely frozen so that he could not go any further. Rüdiger had to stay at the hut together with Christopher Rave . On October 8th, Ritscher and Eberhard first set out on the march, followed a day later by the Norwegians Stenersen and Rotvold. A short time later the Norwegians caught up with Ritscher and Eberhard.
On October 24th, the group arrived at the foot of the Dickson Land glacier . The ascent failed, but they were initially able to find shelter in a hut on the Westfjord, where they found extensive food supplies. They spent almost two months there, presumably because Eberhard's health had since deteriorated dramatically.
On December 18, Ritscher sent Eberhard back to the ship with the two Norwegians. He himself set off on the march without a sleeping bag and completely on his own. In order to protect himself from freezing to death while he was sleeping, Ritscher later stated that he set an alarm clock to 15 minutes in advance for each break, so that he never fell into a long sleep that would have meant certain death.
Ritscher crossed the glacier with great exertion and reached Dickson Bai, part of the Isfjord in the north of Longyearbyen. There he found, however, that the fjord was not completely frozen, but that a gully about 200 m wide remained in the middle of the fjord; a crossing did not seem possible. Jumping from ice floe to ice floe, he actually managed to cross the fjord, although he once broke into the ice-cold water and was only able to save himself with difficulty. On December 27th, he finally arrived in Longyearbyen, completely exhausted and hypothermic. Only after a few days was he able to give a full report on the situation of the Schröder-Stranz expedition. An emergency call was then telegraphed to Norway.
Rüdiger and Rave
Rüdiger and Rave, who actually only had food in stock for five weeks, had been waiting in the hut on the Wijdebai since the beginning of October. Rüdiger could hardly move because of his completely frozen left foot, so that Rave had to carry out all activities. The polar night had fallen on October 20 , so the men spent most of the time in complete darkness. When supplies ran low, they both realized that their only salvation lay in returning to the ship. Rave therefore designed a shoe for Rüdiger that he could walk with at least to a limited extent. On November 23rd, both of them started the 80 km long walk back to the ship. Although Rüdiger was in severe pain and often had to sit on the sledge, both of them reached the hut on the Mosselbai after just three days, where fresh supplies were located. On November 27th they set out on the last leg, and although they got lost a few times, they arrived at the ship on December 1st.
Stenersen, Rotvold and Eberhard
The three, who had separated from Ritscher on December 18 at the Westfjord, reached the hut four days later where Rüdiger and Rave had stayed for a long time. They left for the ship on December 24th. While the Norwegians arrived at the ship on the same day, the completely exhausted Eberhard could not keep up with them. The Norwegians later stated that they had lost sight of him in the Mosselbai area and had not found him again despite a long search. You also mentioned that Eberhard showed an increasing "mental disorder", which can be interpreted as a clouding of consciousness of an impending cold death . In a letter Eberhard left in the hut, which was later found, Eberhard expressed his concern about being left behind by the Norwegians.
Wintering on the ship
Soon after arrival, Rave had to amputate Rüdiger's left foot and toes on his right foot and several phalanges without anesthetics. On February 23, Knut Stave, the ship's cook, died of tuberculosis . The remaining four Norwegians set out for Longyearbyen at the end of March and reached it on April 5th. Rave stayed with the immobile Rüdiger.
Rescue expeditions
After the outcome of the Schröder-Stranz expedition became public in Norway and Germany, several rescue expeditions were soon put together.
A Norwegian expedition, which had already started from Longby on January 24th, led by miner Ingvar Jensen, had to be canceled on February 5th after several participants were frozen to death.
Kurt Wegener , who spent the winter at the Ebeltofthafen geophysical observatory on the Krossfjord that same year , had heard of the disaster of the Schröder-Stranz expedition over the radio and started a rescue expedition on February 21, 1913. When one of his companions fell ill, he had to give up first. On March 4th he started a second attempt with three workers from the marble quarry on Kingsbai . His goal was to save Rüdiger and Raves, which he still imagined on the Wijdebai. The four men arrived at the hut on March 18 and learned from letters they had left that Rüdiger and Rave had made their way back to the ship. Then Wegener turned back.
After the first news had arrived in Berlin, an auxiliary committee headed by Adolf Miethe had been set up, with Hugo Hergesell , August Brauer and Arthur von Gwinner as leading representatives . The Norwegian Arve Staxrud (1881–1933) was commissioned with the official German rescue expedition . It started after the end of the polar night on April 12, 1913 and wanted to help the team overland with dog sleds. He reached the Sorgebai on April 21 and rescued the Rüdiger and Rave that remained in the station house of the Swedish degree measurement expedition from 1900–1902.
Against the will of the Berlin government circles, a Frankfurt aid committee set up a private rescue expedition under the leadership of the Arctic journalist Theodor Lerner . Since his failed occupation of Bear Island in 1899, Lerner had fallen out of favor with official agencies and was therefore categorically rejected. After hearing about Staxrud's success in Spitzbergen, he went in search of Schröder-Stranz. However, his expedition was not a lucky star either. In May 1913, his ship Lövenskiold was trapped in the ice near the North Cape of Northeast Land. Lerner and his companions then went on long tours of the area on skis and dog sleds, but without discovering a trace of Schröder-Stranz. On June 26, the ship was finally crushed by the pack ice and sank shortly afterwards. However, the team managed to salvage large parts of the equipment beforehand. The men crossed over to the Sorgebai in boats and reached the Herzog Ernst on July 25, 1913. With the ship, which was meanwhile maneuverable again, the expedition members started their journey home.
There are film recordings of the rescue expedition led by Theodor Lerner by the later Riefenstahl cameraman Sepp Allgeier , which was published as The Tragedy of the Schröder Strantz Expedition, directed by Bernhard Villinger , a member of the expedition . Christopher Rave also captured the expedition in a film that was released in theaters in October 1913 under the title With the Camera in Eternal Ice . The film has been considered lost since the end of the Second World War , but a few minutes of the film have now resurfaced in a Moscow archive.
The expedition received considerable media coverage, far beyond Germany. When the survivors were received in Hamburg, Kaiser Wilhelm II was even present.
References to the whereabouts of the missing
In the summer of 1937, seal hunters found remains of thermal gaiters, canoe parts and ammunition in the Duvefjord. The abbreviation “DAE” (“German Arctic Expedition”) carved into a piece of wood identified the finds as belonging to the Schröder-Stranz expedition. The location was later located at 80 ° 14 '3' 'N / 23 ° 44' 33 '' E and is considered the probable landing site of Schröder-Stranz after his way over the pack ice.
The German soldier Alfred Schlösser, who was stationed on Spitzbergen as part of the Haudegen company , came across 3 aluminum plates (20, 21 and 22 cm in diameter) in the same bay in 1945 (called Nusser Bay by Dege), which also could be assigned to the Schröder-Stranz expedition equipment. In 2007, other objects were found at the landing site, including the remains of a sleeping bag and parts of a meteorological device. Criminological investigations of the found objects and the circumstances of the location suggest that the objects necessary for survival in the arctic climate had been left behind on purpose, probably at a time when at least one of the expedition participants was already dead. What is unusual, however, is that no written message was left, as is usual in such a case on polar expeditions. The survivors probably tried to walk west across the inland glacier to the Hinlopenstraße as planned . If the expedition members have made this extremely grueling walk behind them, they will have drowned at the latest when trying to cross the Hinlopenstrasse in a small kayak .
Reasons for the misfortune
There are many reasons for the disaster. Schröder-Stranz and his companions had no experience in the Arctic and had little knowledge of the area. In addition, the start time in August for an Arctic expedition was chosen much too late. A return of Duke Ernst to Tromsø in the middle of the deepest Arctic winter was impossible and doomed to failure from the start. Therefore, the chief Schröder-Stranz was put to blame for the disaster; he had "put so many human lives at risk twice by overestimating his own abilities and underestimating the dangers." The geologist Hans Phlipp, a member of Wilhelm Filchner's pre-expedition to Spitzbergen in 1910, came to the conclusion that it “must be viewed as tremendously carelessness when scientific expeditions without sufficient experience with the smallest provisions and with one for wintering by no means suitable ship will only set off towards the east coast of Svalbard in late summer. Such a completely ill-considered enterprise can only be described as blind bravado and must necessarily lead to disaster. "
The decision of the group around Captain Ritscher to leave the Herzog Ernst and to set off on a 300 km long march at the end of September, with the falling polar night and temperatures below −30 ° C, was a serious mistake. What Schröder-Stranz also did not know at the time is that it is practically impossible to cross the Hinlopenstraße in autumn when the pack ice and the strong currents there are in a small boat. After the failure of the DAE, scientists therefore called for future planning of state expeditions to be improved and checked by experts.
Attendees
The participants in the German Arctic Expedition were:
| Surname | task | fate |
|---|---|---|
| Victim | ||
| Lieutenant Herbert Schröder-Stranz | ladder | lost in northeastern land |
| Captain lieutenant a. D. August Sandleben | First Officer | lost in northeastern land |
| Max Mayr | Geographer and geologist | lost in northeastern land |
| Richard Schmidt | Private secretary and taxidermist | lost in northeastern land |
| Erwin Detmers | zoologist | Lost on the march from Herzog Ernst to Longyearbyen on September 29, 1912 in the Mosselbai area |
| Walter Moeser | botanist | Lost on the march from Herzog Ernst to Longyearbyen on September 29, 1912 in the Mosselbai area |
| Wilhelm Eberhard | Technician and machinist | Lost on the march back to Herzog Ernst on December 24, 1912 in the Mosselbai area |
| Knut Stave (Norwegian) | cook | February 26, 1913 aboard the Duke Ernst of tuberculosis died |
| Survivors | ||
| Alfred Ritscher | Captain the Duke Ernst | reached Longyearbyen on December 27, 1912 |
| Hermann Rudiger | oceanographer | rescued by Staxrud on April 21, 1913 |
| Christopher Rave | Marine painter and cameraman | rescued by Staxrud on April 21, 1913 |
| August Stenersen (Norwegian) | Ice pilot | reached Longyearbyen on April 5, 1913, took part in Staxrud's rescue expedition |
| Einar Rotvold (Norwegian) | sailor | reached Longyearbyen on April 5, 1913 |
| Jørgen Jensen (Norwegian) | sailor | reached Longyearbyen on April 5, 1913 |
| Julius Jensen (Norwegian) | sailor | reached Longyearbyen on April 5, 1913 |
Literature / web links
- William James Mills: Exploring Polar Frontiers: A Historical Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara 2003, ISBN 1576074234 , pp. 578-581.
- Christopher Rave: Lost in the ice. Diary of the unfortunate Schröder-Stranz expedition (PDF; 26.5 MB). Schaffstein, Cologne 1913 (Schaffstein's green ribbons; 49).
- Hermann Rüdiger: The concern bay. From the fateful days of the Schröder-Stranz expedition . Edition Fines Mundi, Saarbrücken 2007 (reprint of the Berlin 1913 edition).
- Arve Staxrud, Kurt Wegener: The expeditions to the rescue of Schröder-Stranz and his companions. Described by their guides . Reimer, Berlin 1914.
- Frank Tadeusz: Harakiri in the polar sea . In: Der Spiegel . Hamburg, No. 14 (2008), p. 150 f. ISSN 0038-7452
- Theodor Lerner: Under the spell of the Arctic . Edited by Frank Berger, Oesch Verlag, Zurich 2005, pp. 227–288. ISBN 3-0350-2014-0
- William Barr: Lieutenant Herbert Schroder-Stranz's expedition to Svalbard, 1912–1913: a study in organizational disintegration. In: Fram, The Journal of Polar Studies. Volume 1, No. 1, Winter 1984, pp. 1-64.
- Commons : German Arctic Expedition - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Individual evidence
- ↑ Herbert Schröder-Stranz: General plan of a scientific expedition through the northeast passage (Taimyr peninsula) and through the calm ocean. unpublished 1911, Federal Archives Berlin, January 9th. AA, No. 37684, Bl. 12-16.
- ^ Cornelia Lüdecke: Science and adventure in the Arctic. Examples of German polar expeditions. In: Journal of Northern Studies. 1-2/2007, ISSN 1654-5915 , pp. 59-64.
- ↑ Hermann Rüdiger: Die Sorge-Bai. From the fateful days of the Schröder-Stranz expedition. Edition Fines Mundi, Saarbrücken 2007 (reprint of the Berlin 1913 edition)
- ↑ a b c According to the ZDF documentary Aufbruch ins Unknown , the body of one of the two - Detmers or Moeser - was found in 1917.
- ^ Karl Wegener: The auxiliary expedition from Cross and Kingsbai to Wijdebai, In: Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen. 59/1913, pp. 137-140.
- ↑ Hans Steinhagen : Max Robitzsch - polar researcher and meteorologist . VerlagsService OderSpree, Jacobsdorf / Mark 2008, p. 79ff. ISBN 978-3-939960-06-5
- ↑ Bernhard Villinger: The Arctic is calling! With dog sled and camera through Svalbard and Greenland. Herder Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1929.
- ^ The tragedy of the Schröder-Strantz expedition , on: filmportal.de
- ^ Gerhard Lamprecht: German Silent Films 1913 - 1914 . Deutsche Kinemathek eV, Berlin 1969, p. 273 .
- ^ German Arctic Disaster: Some of the Schroeder-Stranz Party Safe - Commander Missing. from the New York Times of April 9, 1913
- ^ Polar historical study on the German Arctic Expedition of 1912 by the TU Darmstadt [1]
- ^ Wilhelm Dege: Wettertrupp Haudegen , Wiesbaden 1954, p. 262
- ↑ Documentation Lost in the Arctic ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. of the station PHOENIX
- ↑ Anonymous: "North Polar Regions", Geographical Journal. 19/1913, pp. 581-582.
- ↑ Hans Philipp (Ed.): Results of the W. Filchnerchen pre-expedition to Spitzbergen 1910. In: Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen. Supplementary booklet No. 179/1914, pp. 9-10.
