Fritz Sarasin

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Fritz Sarasin

Fritz Sarasin (born December 3, 1859 in Basel , † March 23, 1942 in Lugano ; actually Karl Friedrich Sarasin ) was a Swiss naturalist and ethnologist .

biography

Fritz and Paul Sarasin during their expedition to Celebes.
Fritz Sarasin (1859–1942) naturalist, explorer, author, Dr. hc of the Univ. Basel and Geneva, President of the Ethnograph. And the naturist. Museum commission, grave in the Hörnli cemetery
Grave in the Basel cemetery on the Hörnli

Fritz Sarasin grew up as the son of the cotton manufacturer and politician Felix Sarasin (1797–1862) and Rosalia Brunner (1826–1908) in Daig, Basel . In 1878 he studied with the natural scientist Carl Vogt in Geneva . After a semester he moved to the University of Basel, where he met his cousin Paul Sarasin , who was three years older than him . They had their great-grandfather Jakob Sarasin , so they were second cousins. One of Sarasin's nephews was Carl Emanuel Burckhardt .

A lifelong love affair emerged from this irrigation, which they could not live even as descendants of the most powerful families in the city of Basel. So they moved to Würzburg together, where they did their doctorate in zoology with the natural scientist and zoologist Karl Semper .

From 1883 to 1886 Fritz and Paul Sarasin went on a trip to British Ceylon to do zoological and anthropological field research. They were particularly interested in the evolutionary descent of the people they researched using the ethnic groups of the Weddas on Ceylon and those of the Toala on Celebes. Much of the field research has been limited to collecting human skulls. They regularly sent their finds to the Natural History Museum in Basel , which Ludwig Rütimeyer valued very much. Sarasin's expedition laid the foundation for the subsequent military invasions by the Dutch.

For the next six years they lived in Berlin and evaluated the material collected from the expeditions. They were funded by the Geography Society there under Ferdinand von Richthofen and the Anthropological-Ethnological Society under Rudolf Virchow . In 1889 they traveled with Leopold Rütimeyer to do ethnological research in Egypt and the Sinai. In 1890 they traveled a second time to British Ceylon to take anthropological photographs.

In 1896 they returned to Basel and continued their common living and working community. In the mansion Faesch house , at the hospital 22, they had three floors enough space for their extensive collection holdings. Her house soon became the center of scientific life in Switzerland. Both rose to become the most influential natural scientists in Switzerland; Awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Basel and Geneva as well as the highest scientific awards from Germany and the Netherlands. The Carl-Ritter-Medal of the Berlin Geography Society was one of the two most important scientific awards . Thanks to their wealth, they were able to publish great scientific works, which in turn expanded their reputation as natural scientists.

In 1891 Fritz Sarasin was elected a member of the Leopoldina . He was the first president of the Geographisch-Ethnologische Gesellschaft Basel, founded in 1923 . This also included Hugo Hassinger and Felix Speiser -Merian (1880–1949). They had called the founding meeting on December 17, 1923. As the nephew of Paul Sarasin, Speiser followed in his footsteps. Fritz Sarasin was also President of the Swiss Society for Natural Research, now the Swiss Academy of Sciences .

Fritz and Paul Sarasin founded the Basler Völkerkundemuseum, now the Museum of Cultures , and in the late 1890s they ran the Natural History Museum in Basel. Fritz Sarasin also managed the zoological garden. In the 1880s Fritz and Paul Sarasin gave Basel Zoo a young elephant cow from Ceylon, who became famous as Miss Kumbuk .

Fonts

  • with Paul Sarasin: Results of scientific research on Ceylon. The Weddas of Ceylon and the peoples around them. An attempt to bring the riddles dormant in the human phylogeny closer to a solution. 2 volumes. Text and Table tape (Atlas). Kreidel, Wiesbaden.
  • with Paul Sarasin: Travels in Celebes. Executed in the years 1893–1896 and 1902–1903. 2 volumes. Kreidel, Wiesbaden 1905.
  • New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands. Travel memories of a naturalist. Georg, Basel 1917.
  • with Jean Roux : Nova Caledonia. Research in New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands. Recherches scientifiques en Nouvelle-Caledonie et aux Iles Loyalty. Edited by Hans Schinz and A. Guillaumin. Row A: Zoology. 4 volumes. Row B: botany. 1 volume. Kreidel, Wiesbaden, / Berlin 1913–1926.
  • Travel and research in Ceylon in the years 1883–1886, 1890, 1902, 1907 and 1925. With photo panels and a map. Helbig and Lichtenhahn, Basel 1939.
  • From the tropics. Travel memories from Ceylon, Celebes and New Caledonia. 8 lectures. Helbing & Lichtenhahn, Basel 1931.
  • From a happy life. Biographical Notes. Frobenius, Basel 1941.

Awards and prizes (selection)

literature

  • FS In: Ethnologischer Anzeiger. 4, 1944.
  • L. Forcart: The importance of Paul Sarasin (1856–1929) and Fritz Sarasin (1859–1942) for malacoological research. 1943.
  • Paul Hinderling et al. a .: Fritz and Paul Sarasin Memorial Exhibition. Krebs, Basel 1959 ( guide through the Museum für Völkerkunde and Swiss Museum für Volkskunde Basel. Special exhibition 1959).
  • Bernhard C. Schär: love for the tropics. Swiss natural scientist and Dutch imperialism in Southeast Asia around 1900. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2015, ISBN 978-3-593-50287-8 .
  • Christian Simon: traveling, collecting and researching. The Basel natural historians Fritz and Paul Sarasin. Schwabe, Basel 2015.

Web links

Wikisource: Fritz Sarasin  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Geographisch-Ethnologische Gesellschaft, Basel: founding meeting. Retrieved August 17, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Photo by Miss Kumbuk. In: ETH Library. Retrieved August 18, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Sarasin, Fritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sarasin, Karl Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss naturalist and ethnologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 3, 1859
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH March 23, 1942
Place of death Lugano