Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen

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Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen

Fabian Gottlieb Benjamin von Bellingshausen ( Russian Фаддей Фаддеевич Беллинсгаузен , Faddei Faddejewitsch Bellinsgausen ; September 9 * . Jul / 20th September  1778 . Greg Good Lahhentagge (Estonian: Lahetaguse today Landsgemeinde Saaremaa ) on Saaremaa (Estonian: Saaremaa ); † 13th January jul. / January 25,  1852 greg. In Kronstadt ) was a German Baltic seafarer and officer of the Imperial Russian Navy with the rank of oneAdmirals .

life and work

The estate of the von Bellingshausen family on Saaremaa (Ösel)

Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen was born as the son of Fabian Ernst von Bellingshausen and Anna Katharina von Folckern on the Estonian island of Ösel (today Saaremaa) as a scion of the Baltic German aristocratic family Bellingshausen . In 1789, at the age of 11, he entered the Naval Cadet School in Kronstadt as a cadet . In 1796 he made his first sea voyage to England. In 1797 he became an ensign in the Imperial Russian Navy. From 1803 to 1806 he served on the ship Nadeschda and took part in the first Russian circumnavigation under A. J. von Krusenstern . After the voyage he was promoted to lieutenant captain and was in command of various ships in the Russian Baltic Fleet and the Black Sea Fleet .

The first Russian Antarctic expedition 1819–1821.

In 1819 he was entrusted with leading the first Russian expedition to the southern polar region, initiated by the Russian Tsar Alexander I. As the captain of the corvette Vostok (935  t ), he left Kronstadt in August together with the supply ship Mirny (530 t, captain: Michail Lasarew ). On the outward journey, the island nature of the South Sandwich Islands was recognized, which James Cook had taken for areas of a larger land mass. In the 751 days of the journey, the expedition discovered 29 new islands in the Pacific and Atlantic. Bellingshausen gained the reputation of discovering the Antarctic because on January 28, 1820 he first sighted the edge of an "ice continent". Bellingshausen had described the ice shelf that can be viewed as part of the Antarctic continent. In the course of the actual undertaking, the Arctic Circle was crossed six times and the Antarctic was circumnavigated. It was the second expedition after James Cook's expeditions to advance so far south. In August 1820, the 70th parallel was reached and the Antarctic mainland sailed on a more southerly course than Cook's expedition.

In 1821 the expedition discovered the Antarctic Peninsula offshore Alexander Island and Peter I Island . Bellingshausen considered Alexander Island to be part of the Antarctic mainland. This error was only noticed and corrected in 1940.

In August 1821 the ships of the expedition returned to Kronstadt across the Atlantic.

After returning, Bellingshausen was promoted to sea captain and appointed head of the association in the Baltic fleet. Appointed Vice Admiral in 1828, he took part in the siege of the fortress of Varna during the Russo-Turkish War from 1828 to 1829 until 1829. In 1839 he was appointed war governor and port commander of Kronstadt. In 1843 Bellingshausen was promoted to admiral .

The description of his south polar expedition appeared in Russian in Saint Petersburg in 1831 . The German translation of Fabian von Bellingshausen's research trips in the Southern Arctic Ocean 1819–1821 was not published until 1902.

Fabian von Bellingshausen was married to Anna Dmitrijewna Baikowa (1808-1892) since 1828.

Appreciation

In 1840 Bellingshausen was awarded the Alexander Nevsky Order for his services .

Numerous geographical objects, especially in the Antarctic, were named after him:

1. Geographical objects

2. Astronomical objects:

3. Technical objects:

literature

  • Geography Association in Dresden (ed.): Fabian von Bellingshausen's research trips in the Southern Arctic Ocean 1819–1821 . Travel report by Fabian von Bellingshausen in German based on the original Russian work. Hirzel, Leipzig 1902 (V, 203 pages).
  • Rip Bulkeley: Bellingshausen and the Russian antarctic expedition, 1819-21. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke 2014, ISBN 978-0-230-36326-7 (XXIX, 276 pages).
  • Andreas W. Daum : German Naturalists in the Pacific around 1800. Entanglement, Autonomy, and a Transnational Culture of Expertise. In: Hartmut Berghoff , Frank Biess , Ulrike Strasser (ed.): Exploration and entanglements: Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I . Berghahn Books, New York 2019, pp. 79-102 (English).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andreas W. Daum: German Naturalists in the Pacific around 1800. Entanglement, Autonomy, and a Transnational Culture of Expertise . In: Hartmut Berghoff, Frank Biess, Ulrike Strasser (ed.): Exploration and entanglements: Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I . Berghahn, New York 2019, p. 86, 93, 95 .
  2. ^ Daum: German Naturalists . S. 86, 95 .
  3. ^ David Day: Antarctica: A Biography . Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 21 ( Chapter 2, 1780-1820 ).
  4. ^ Gordon Elliott Fogg: A History of Antarctic Science. Studies in polar research. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1992, p. 36.
  5. a b Fabian von Bellinghausen in the Erik Amburger database, accessed on January 28, 2021.
  6. Eesti Pank is issuing a two-euro coin commemorating the discovery of Antarctica. January 20, 2020, accessed on May 13, 2020 .