Ernst Schäfer (zoologist)

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Ernst Schäfer in Tibet (1938)
Ernst Schäfer as a witness during the Nuremberg Trials

Ernst Schäfer (born March 14, 1910 in Cologne , † July 21, 1992 in Bad Bevensen ) was a German zoologist and Tibet researcher. During the Nazi era , Schäfer was a leading member of the German Ahnenerbe Research Foundation and held the rank of SS Sturmbannführer .

Youth and Studies

Ernst Schäfer grew up as the son of a middle-class family in Waltershausen ( Thuringia ) and was already enthusiastic about hunting as a teenager. After graduating from high school in Mannheim, he studied zoology and botany, but also geology, mineralogy, chemistry, physics and ethnology in Göttingen, Hanover, Philadelphia and Berlin from 1929 to 1934. His specialty was ornithology .

In 1930 he joined the German Ornithological Society (DO-G). His dissertation was published as a special issue of the Journal for Ornithology Volume 86 (1938). His doctoral supervisor, the ornithologist Erwin Stresemann , appointed Schäfer, not least because of his extensive collection, which he donated to the Zoological Museum of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität , on December 7, 1939, on the day of his wedding to Herta nee. Völz, by telegram to honorary member of the DO-G.

Tibet expeditions

He became known through three expeditions to Tibet in 1931, 1934/35 and 1938/39. The first two were led by the US millionaire son Brooke Dolan II (1908-1945), with the second expedition going to the headwaters of the Yangtze River (in addition to shepherds, the missionary Duncan also took part). The first expedition to Tibet included Schäfer and Dolan Gordon Bowles , Otto Gneiser and Hugo Weigold . Because of his zoological collecting activities on the first expedition, he became an honorary member of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. He himself was the expedition leader of the third expedition entitled “ German Tibet Expedition Ernst Schäfer ”. In the meantime, the Nazis had noticed him through his bestseller and Heinrich Himmler offered him the financing of another expedition to Tibet in 1936, which Schäfer was planning . This expedition was carried out on behalf of the SS organization Ahnenerbe and was under the patronage of Heinrich Himmler in order to investigate from the point of view of colleagues at the Ahnenerbe, among other things, whether traces of an "Aryan" original religion could be found in the Tibetan Buddhist scriptures Thesis of the shepherd himself, however, held nothing. Another expedition member was the anthropologist and SS-Hauptsturmführer Bruno Beger , who measured the skulls of Tibetans in search of an “Aryan” ancestry. For the Ahnenerbe, the expedition also researched “suitable grains and seeds for the future war economy” and was interested in future settlement areas in the east as well as a robust horse breed. In the beginning, it was difficult to get permission to travel to India from the suspicious British, and you had to wait several weeks for a permit from the government in Tibet, which was then issued subject to conditions. The documentary film Mystery Tibet , which premiered in 1943, was made from the expedition .

The main aim of the expedition was to collect ethnographic, zoological and botanical specimens. They brought back over 3000 bird skins and 2000 bird eggs, which are now in the Natural History Museum in Berlin. In addition, they collected around 7,000 seeds (today at the Leibniz Institute for Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Gatersleben), 400 skulls and skins of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, numerous insects, minerals, took 40,000 black and white photos, shot 17,500 meters of film and brought numerous ethnographic objects back to Berlin. They mapped and carried out geomagnetic measurements. In addition to Schäfer, members of the expedition were the geophysicist Karl Wienert , the anthropologist Bruno Beger, the entomologist, photographer and cameraman Ernst Krause and the technical director and caravan guide Edmund Geer.

About his Tibet expeditions he wrote a. a. the trilogy Among Robbers in Tibet , The Festival of the White Veil and Across the Himalayas to the Land of the Gods . During an expedition planned for 1940/41, Schäfer wanted to cause unrest from Tibet in the British-ruled India . But the expedition did not materialize.

Second World War

From 1943 Schäfer headed the " Sven Hedin -Reichsinstitut for Inner Asia and Expeditions" founded by him in Munich, which was closely connected to the SS-Ahnenerbe. Soon after, in August 1943, he moved his institute to Schloss Mittersill . In addition to his old employees, the ornithologist Günther Niethammer joined them. The hoped-for collaboration with Sweden - after all, his institute was named after Sven Hedin - did not materialize. After Bruno Beger had selected mainly Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz in June 1943 and had them murdered for August Hirt's skeleton collection, Schäfer wrote to Beger on June 24th: “It was great that you could also pick out Mongolian types for us”.

Schäfer had already joined the SS in 1933. In this he successively achieved the rank of Untersturmführer (1933) and SS-Sturmbannführer (1942). From an organizational point of view, Schäfer was not assigned to any division in the SS, but instead was listed in the staff of the personal staff of SS chief Heinrich Himmler. He also belonged to the Friends of the Reichsführer SS . In the winter of 1939/1940, Schäfer accompanied Himmler as a climate expert together with other selected researchers and SS functionaries ( Globocnik , Lorenz , Hoffmann, Krüger) on a trip to Poland. On this occasion, he learned from members of Himmler's staff about mass murders that the SS had committed against members of the Polish intelligentsia at the time.

A large Caucasus expedition was planned for 1943 ( Sonderkommando K ), but this was prevented by the defeat at Stalingrad . The planned scope showed how much Schäfer was favored by Himmler. April 1943, the humanities (headed by Walther Wüst ) and natural sciences (headed by Schäfer) were delimited in the Ahnenerbe.

In 1945 Heinrich Himmler awarded him the War Merit Cross, Second Class with Swords . After the Second World War, Schäfer claimed to have been reluctant to join the SS.

post war period

In July 1945, Schäfer was arrested in Munich and then interned by the Allied military government. In the following years he was repeatedly interrogated as a witness in the course of the Nuremberg trials . In 1949 he became a professor at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas in Venezuela , where he stayed until 1954. There he built the biological research station in the Henri Pittier National Park (then Rancho Grande ) and an associated museum. He was there with his family, and after his death his wife Ursula published books on the national park and its bird life (around 500 species of birds). There he met the abdicated Belgian King Leopold III. and know his wife, who visited the research station in the national park. The king invited him in 1954 to act as a scientific (and hunting) advisor. For the 1958 world exhibition, Schäfer proposed an animal film about the Belgian Congo and an expedition there, which took place with international participation. There, together with Heinz Sielmann, the 1959 film Ruler of the Jungle over Mountain Gorillas was made.

From 1960 to 1970 he was chief curator of the natural history department at the Lower Saxony State Museum . At the end of November 1963 he went on a three and a half month collecting trip (natural history and ethnographic objects) to India on behalf of the State Museum. He traveled via Madras , Kerala , Mysore to Dharamsala in northern India, where numerous Tibetans in exile and the Dalai Lama , who were expelled by the Chinese after the 1959 Tibetan uprising, lived. He renewed his contacts and acquired numerous ethnographic collectibles, which he showed in a special exhibition in the State Museum after his return in 1965. After his time as curator he lived and worked in Göhr at Schnega until 1987 . Most recently he lived with his wife in Bad Bevensen. He also wrote for the hunting magazine Wild und Hund in Paul Parey magazine publishing .

Others

The dwarf blue sheep he discovered on the expedition in 1934 bears the scientific name Pseudois schaeferi .

In 1937 he lost his first wife in a hunting accident.

Publications

  • Mountains, Buddhas and Bears , Paul Parey Verlag, Berlin 1933. (in one edition)
  • Unknown Tibet , Verlag Paul Parey, Berlin 1938. (in several editions)
  • Roof of the Earth , Verlag Paul Parey, Berlin 1938. (in several editions)
  • Ornithological results of two research trips to Tibet , Berlin 1939 (dissertation; later reprinted as: Journal für Ornithologie , 86th vol. (1938), special issue, Kommissionsverlag R. Friedländer & Sohn, Berlin).
  • Tibet calls , Verlag Paul Parey, Berlin 1942. (in several editions)
  • Secret Tibet , Verlag F Bruckmann / Munich 1943.
  • Among the robbers in Tibet. The dangers and joys of a researcher's life , Braunschweig 1952, Munich: Goldmann 1954
  • The festival of the white veil. A research trip through Tibet to Lhasa, the holy city of the divine kingdom , Vieweg 1950
  • Across the Himalayas to the land of the gods. On a research trip from India to Tibet , Braunschweig, Vieweg 1950
  • On lonely changes and paths. Hunting and research in three continents , Paul Parey publishing house, Berlin 1961
  • Venezuela's bird life and its ecological conditions , 4 volumes, Wirtemberg Verlag, from 1996

Literature and media

Web links

General:

Commons : Ernst Schäfer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

To Schäfer's Tibet trips:

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ His father was an industrialist from Philadelphia. In 1942 Dolan traveled again to Tibet with Ilia Tolstoy on behalf of the Office of Strategic Services and met the young Tenzin Gyatso , later the Dalai Lama. He died on his trip in Tibet.
  2. ↑ Der Spiegel 2017, No. 13, p. 107. Based on the book by Peter Meier-Hüsing
  3. ↑ Der Spiegel 2017, No. 13, p. 108
  4. ↑ Der Spiegel, 2017, No. 13, p. 108. Scientific equipment was to be left behind, and no birds and animals were to be killed, which the expedition later completely ignored.
  5. ↑ Der Spiegel, 2017, No. 13, pp. 106, 109
  6. ↑ Fritz Grobba, Men and Powers in the Orient. 25 years diplomat. Activity in the Orient , Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1967, p. 188f
  7. ^ Quotation from Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 523.
  8. ↑ a b c d e Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Fischer Taschenbuch 2005, p. 523.
  9. ↑ Michael Kater, Das Ahnenerbe, p. 214
  10. ↑ Michael Kater, Das Ahnenerbe, p. 465
  11. ↑ Wendland-Lexikon , Volume 2, Lüchow 2008, p. 345.
  12. ↑ Der Spiegel 2017, No. 13, p. 109. While stumbling in a boat while duck hunting, a shot was released that hit his wife in the head.
  13. ↑ Review by Christoph Horst, rubric "Poetry and Truth", Konkret , October 10, 2017, p. 38
personal data
SURNAME Shepherd, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German zoologist and Tibet researcher
DATE OF BIRTH March 14, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH July 21, 1992
Place of death Bad Bevensen