Georg Naumann

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Georg Naumann

Kurt Georg Naumann (born November 10, 1901 in Radeberg ; † June 6, 1978 in Upper Wells / Athabasca ) was a German scientist , trapper and pioneer in the early local discovery and use of oil / natural gas deposits in the northern catchment area of the Athabasca River .

Life

Georg Naumann was the eldest son of the Radeberg factory worker August Otto Naumann (1874–1922) and his wife Anna, nee. Berger (1876–1966), who in addition to Georg had 5 other children (4 sons and a daughter). After the early death of the father, the responsibility for caring for the large family, which was endangered in the subsequent famine after the First World War, rested on the eldest son Georg. After attending elementary school in Lotzdorf from 1908 to 1916, he learned from 1916 to 1919 in the Liegauer Grundmühle the grinding and bakery trade , as well as the sawmill trade. In his free time he was active in the natural sciences and self-taught about the offers of the Kosmos Gesellschaft der Naturfreunde . Since the family lived on the outskirts of Radeberg an der Dresdner Heide , he became involved with forestry and hunting at an early age . At the beginning of the 1920s he had become unemployed as a result of the general recession and depression and wanted to join the wave of emigration to the USA, Canada, Brazil or Australia.

When the Radeberg taxidermist and naturalist Max Hinsche (1896–1939) was looking for a partner for his multi-year expedition to the far north of Canada , which he had planned on behalf of the "Staatliche Museen für Tierkunde und Völkerkunde Dresden" , Georg Naumann was chosen. In the book "Canada Really Experienced" by Max Hinsche in 1938, Georg Naumann is documented under the pseudonym "Partner N.". Together and almost penniless, they began their research trip on May 27, 1926 with the crossing on the steam turbine ship "Empress of France" from Hamburg to Quebec . In Canada, they first worked on a farm near Winnipeg to earn the money for food and expedition equipment. With the Canadian National Railways they traveled north via Edmonton to Athabasca Landing and from there by boat about 250 km downstream (north) on the Athabasca River to their intended destination in the primeval forests on the Athabasca River, near the old Indian pier " Pelican Portage ”.

The first log house by Naumann and Hinsche in 1926

Here they built their first log cabin, and later a second on the House River.

The first Canadian winter brought Naumann and Hinsche to the physical limits of existence through hunger and cold (frostbite). Boat trips on the unpredictable Athabasca River ended almost dramatically. Finally, Georg Naumann and the Indians of the Plains Cree ( Paskwa Wi Iniwak ) saved his partner Max Hinsche's life after an unsupervised gunshot wound in loneliness and cold. After the first winter, they separated for economic reasons. Georg Naumann began building his own existence on the Athabasca River 10 kilometers downstream. Here he lived in the summer months from fishing, hunting and the cultivation of crops and in winter as a trapper from selling the furs. He expanded his line (trap line) to a length of up to 100 kilometers.
Naumann has been a Canadian citizen since 1938.
Georg Naumann was not married, he had 15 children in several open relationships with half-Indian women who came from the Cardinal family line of French descent. After separating from the women, he raised 5 children himself as a single father in his log cabin in Pelican Portage: George (Dick), Hazel, Garry, Rose Mary and Jerry Naumann. He died on June 6, 1978 at the age of 76 in Athabasca / Canada without ever returning to Germany. He was buried in Upper Wells near Athabasca in a forest cemetery.

Act

In the vicinity of his settlement area and further north, Naumann became aware of natural, constant gas escapes that had previously been ignored and that no one had described before him. His investigations suggested gas resources from sources that were still unknown at the time. During this time he was traveling on long stretches along the course of the Athabasca River, as from 1949 he worked as a postmaster in the Athabasca district / Alberta. His duties as Master of Post Office "Pelican Portage - Settlement" included writing and accounting as well as delivering mail by motorboat to the trappers and indigenous people. In doing so, he continually discovered new gas leaks that indicated a high proportion of oil in the soil layers. As an autodidact, he carried out empirical research. With experiments over long periods of time in the catchment area of ​​the northern Athabasca River as far as Fort McMurray , through systematic analyzes and structured procedures, decades before the oil boom that broke out in Alberta in the 1970s, he was able to deduce the causal oil deposits from the gas leaks and to use them for your own local purposes.

The Athabasca Oil Sands Territories; Pelican Portage is located in the center of the Athabasca Oil Sands region

Naumann's settlement area was in the center of the huge Athabasca oil sand deposits, which were still unknown at the time . He put this discovery into practice as early as the 1930s and initially used it for his own needs in the simplest possible way by placing simple pipes vertically into the ground in the garden around his log house on the Athabasca River and the pipes rising up from the oil-sands-containing soil Gases ignited. With their heat radiation, these permanent flares enabled above-average harvest yields of vegetables and potatoes, including tomatoes and cucumbers that did not grow outdoors in Canada. The book authors David Halsey and Diana Landau, who met him on a trip to Canada in 1977/78 and were his guests, wrote: “Tomatoes and cabbages even thrive in late autumn in Dick Naumann's unique garden, where they are predestined by his unusual natural gas torches Be protected from the cold ”(p. 59), backed up by a photo of these torches. His discoveries made him known in Alberta as "Dick Naumann of Upper Wells", whose estate in the wilderness on the Athabasca River was visible from afar through its torches and whose hospitality was proverbial for weary travelers.

Naumann's first garden around 1930, in the picture on the right his first “natural gas torches” for heating

Later, as the manager of a central sawmill at Pelican Settlement with an associated logging camp (lumberjack camp) and as the owner of his own store, he introduced this simple gas extraction technology and gas usage and was thus a pioneer in this area.
Thanks to the local natural gas use developed by Naumann at this location, he was able to produce large quantities of potatoes and vegetables for the central kitchen of the sawmill and the logging camp, in addition to the needs of his own family. After further expansion, all of the motors in this sawmill to drive the engines and work machines, right up to the operation of the washing machines, were run with natural gas. Naumann also developed the generation of heat and electrical energy from the use of natural gas. His invention did not go unnoticed and laid the foundation for further scientific investigations by the researchers at the University of Calgary (Prof. V. Geist with research team), who then carried out geological and ecological studies in this area. This ultimately led to extensive exploration and development of the oil reserves on a large scale in Alberta after the 1970s.
Naumann was also active as a cartographer , since the areas on the northern Athabasca River were almost unpopulated and unexplored until then. He was instrumental in the development of more precise maps for his work as a naturalist and for the development of the "Pelican Settlement", which is currently being expanded.

literature

Web links

Commons : Athabasca oil sands  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Max Hinsche: Really experienced Canada . J. Neumann Verlag , Berlin 1938. OCLC 35791084
  2. ↑ Canada, Voter Lists, 1935–1980 for George Naumann (opening only possible with Ancestry membership). Retrieved February 27, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Renate and Klaus Schönfuß: Dream of Canada - Dream of Freedom, The Life of Max Hinsche . Self-published, Radeberg 2014.
  4. ^ A b c David Halsey, Diana Landau: Wild Paradise Canada . Readers Digest Verlag Das Beste, Stuttgart / Zurich / Vienna 1998, p. 58 ff . (David Halsey Adventure Tour 1977-1979).
personal data
SURNAME Naumann, Georg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Naumann, Kurt Georg (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German natural scientist
DATE OF BIRTH November 10, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Radeberg
DATE OF DEATH June 6, 1978
Place of death Upper Wells, Athabasca