Gertrude Duby-Blom

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gertrude Duby-Blom 1986

Gertrude "Trudi" Duby-Blom (born July 7, 1901 in Wimmis , Switzerland; † December 23, 1993 in San Cristóbal , Mexico) was a Swiss socialist , photographer , anthropologist , environmentalist and journalist who spent five decades of her life the Maya Documented cultures of Chiapas in Mexico , most notably the Lacandon culture . In 1991 the UN organization UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) presented her with the Global 500 Award for her “ services to the preservation of a healthy world ”.

Journalism and socialism

Gertrude Elisabeth Lörtscher was born on July 7, 1901, the second of three children of the Protestant pastor Otto Lörtscher in Wimmis in the Swiss canton of Bern . Her sister Johanna was born in 1895, her brother Hans Otto in 1904.

At the age of 17, she left her parents' home, studied horticulture for two years and graduated in social work in Zurich. She then lived for a year with a Quaker family in England and a few months in the Italian city of Florence .

In 1925, Gertrude Lörtscher had to leave Italy and return to her home country because the Italian fascists were uncomfortable with her articles for socialist newspapers in Switzerland. On June 20, 1925, she married the 25-year-old Kurt Düby (1900–1951) in Lausanne.

From 1925 Gertrude Düby worked as a secretary of the women's section of the German SPD , for which she traveled to Germany from 1928. On September 3, 1930, she divorced Kurt Düby because of political and personal differences. In 1933 she entered into a marriage of convenience with the German worker Otto Piel (1906–1999) in order to obtain German citizenship .

After she came to power in 1933, Gertrude Düby was unable to continue her political work in Germany and had to emigrate. She organized the World Women's Congress in Paris and the USA and was involved in the resistance movement against Adolf Hitler's dictatorship until 1939 .

In 1940 Gertrude Düby was admitted to the French internment camp Camp de Rieucros near Mende in the Lozère department , but was able to leave France with the help of the Swiss embassy on March 6, 1940 and emigrated first to the USA, a few months later to Mexico, where she is now " Duby "called. During these years she was in a relationship with the German journalist Rudolf Feistmann .

Photography and anthropology

In Mexico, Gertrude Duby worked as a social worker and journalist for the Ministry of Labor and examined the working conditions of factory workers. She bought her first camera secondhand and began documenting the culture and landscape of the Chiapas Indians as an expedition companion in 1943. On her second expedition to the Lacandon Indians, she met the Danish archaeologist and cartographer Frans Blom (1893–1963).

The couple married on February 16, 1950 and moved to San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas. There they bought a semi-derelict seminary, restored it and named it " Na Bolom " (" Jaguar ") because of the similarity to their family name .

In order to finance their expeditions to the rainforest, they took paying guests into Casa Na Bolom, and Na Bolom gradually developed into a popular meeting place for visitors from all over the world, also because of the cooking skills of “Doña Trudi” Archaeologists from major US universities and personalities such as Diego Rivera and Henry Kissinger .

In 1947 Gertrude Duby traveled back to Europe for a few days to help build a new company in Germany in the Soviet occupation zone , but returned to Mexico after a few days. Until Frans Blom's death on June 24, 1963, the couple repeatedly undertook expeditions into the tropical forest in search of lost Mayan ruins, and it was on these expeditions that those documentary shots of the Lacandons were taken that put Gertrude on a par with important documentary photographers such as Laura Gilpin , Dorothea Lange and W. Eugene Smith provided.

environmental Protection

The systematic deforestation of the Lacandona forests by logging companies, new settlers and the Mexican government gave her life another turn. As an environmental activist, she has toured the world since the 1970s to draw attention to the dying of the tropical forest with her documentary photos. She wrote hundreds of articles in three languages ​​to combat the policies of the Mexican government. In 1975, she founded a tree nursery that continues to give indigenous trees free of charge if they are planted in Chiapas state. "I'm hopeless, but I keep planting trees," she said.

In 1983, The Center for Documentary Photography , Duke University ( USA ) published her documentary photos in the volume Gertrude Blom - Bearing Witness . In one of her most powerful essays, The Jungle is Burning , she writes: “ If mankind continues abusing the planet as we are today, the effects in the near future will be far worse than the devastation that would be caused by any atomic bomb. "-" If man continues to abuse this planet as he does now, the consequences in the near future will be far more dire than any devastation that an atom bomb can wreak. "

Gertrude Duby-Blom died on December 23, 1993 in San Cristóbal at the age of 92. Since then, Casa Na Bolom has been continued as the non-profit foundation La Asociación Cultural Na Bolom AC and continues to support the preservation of the Lacandona forests and their inhabitants in their interest.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Simone Hantsch: Encounter with the Lacandons. The exile of Gertrud Düby in Mexico . In: Latin America News , vol. 23, issue 251 (May 1995) ( online ).
personal data
SURNAME Duby-Blom, Gertrude
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Duby-Blom, Trudi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss socialist, photographer, anthropologist, environmentalist and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH July 7, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Wimmis , Switzerland
DATE OF DEATH December 23, 1993
Place of death San Cristobal , Mexico