Gustav Nachtigal

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Gustav Nachtigal

Gustav Nachtigal (born February 23, 1834 in Eichstedt (Altmark) , † April 20, 1885 off the coast of West Africa ) was a German explorer of Africa .

Life

Youth and Studies: 1834–1863

Gustav Nachtigal as Altmärker (1854)

Gustav Nachtigal father, the pastor Carl Friedrich Nachtigal, died in 1839 of pulmonary consumption . After his father's death, Gustav Nachtigal grew up in Stendal , where he attended the Winckelmann grammar school. After graduating from high school, he studied medicine at the Friedrichs University in Halle , the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg and the Royal University of Greifswald . In 1854 he became a corps boy of the Palaiomarchia in Halle and later also received the ribbon of Nassovia (1878) and the corps loop of Pomerania (1877). After successfully completing his studies, he became a military doctor for the Prussian Army in Cologne in 1858 .

Activity in North Africa: 1863–1868

Nachtigal fell ill with tuberculosis and went to North Africa to recover. First he lived in Algeria , from 1863 in Tunis , where he took part as a field doctor in the campaign against the rebellious tribes of the Maghreb and then became the Beys personal physician at the court in Tunis . Here he also learned Arabic .

In 1868 Nachtigal met the researcher Gerhard Rohlfs , who in 1868 had been commissioned by King Wilhelm I of Prussia to hand over presents to the Sultan of Bornu in what is now Nigeria . Rohlfs assigned this task to Nachtigal. In Murzuk , Nachtigal met the Dutch Africa researcher Alexandrine Tinne .

The great trip to Africa: 1869–1874

Nachtigal set out from Tripoli on February 17, 1869 , crossed the Sahara , stayed in Fezzan and then went to the Tibbu area , the land of Tibesti, which was previously not entered by any Europeans . The Teda living there threatened Nachtigale with death and robbed him so that he had to flee to Murzuk , where he then spent the winter. In contrast to other Africa researchers, he did not use this experience to defame the Africans, but tried to understand why the Tibbu had seen him as a hostile intruder.

In July 1870 he reached Kuka , the residence of the Sultan of Bornu, and presented him with the gifts of the Prussian king. Nachtigal then traveled to the Kanem and Borkou region and returned to Kuka in January 1872. He then turned to Bagirmi and the southern areas, at that time still inhabited by pagans . After he returned to Kuka in the fall of 1872, Nachtigal traveled to the Chari River in present-day Chad and from there to the Sultanate of Wadai (present-day eastern Chad). In the summer of 1873 he traveled from the capital Abeschr to the southern border and in 1874 came first to the Sultanate of Darfur and in the summer of 1874 to the Sultanate of Kordofan . On the way he learned other regional languages ​​and collected scientific data on the culture of the Africans, which made him a forerunner of modern ethnographic field research. When interpreting the research results, Nachtigal tried not to draw any negative conclusions about the Africans, as was the case with other travelers to Africa of his time - such as Henry Morton Stanley . During his expedition, Nachtigal had also witnessed slave hunts , which he described relentlessly.

Eventually Nachtigal reached Khartoum , the capital of Egypt-occupied Sudan . From here he traveled along the Nile to Cairo in Egypt and finally returned to Germany in 1875.

Activities in Berlin and Tunis: 1875–1884

Nachtigal wrote down the results of his travels in Berlin . He has received numerous awards and has served as chairman of the Society for Geography and the African Society . He was also a member of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory . In 1878 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . In 1882 Nachtigal was appointed Consul General in Tunis by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck . Official reports criticized the fact that the consul Nachtigal devoted himself too much to researching the Islamic culture of North Africa and was only insufficiently committed to the interests of the German export industry.

Colonial administration in West Africa: 1884–1885

The government building in Douala (Cameroon) with Nachtigal's grave (1894)

In 1884 Nachtigal was appointed Reich Commissioner for German West Africa and thus involved in German colonial policy .

In the spring of 1884 he traveled to Kapitaï and Koba and the Gulf of Guinea as an imperial commissioner . On July 5, 1884, Nachtigal established the so-called German "protectorate" over the area of Togoland (today Togo or part of Ghana ). On July 14th he placed Cameroon "under German protection". In the same year he certified the partly fraudulently acquired rights or land acquisitions of the Lüderitz company in what is now Namibia (" Lüderitzland "), but expressed concerns about a confrontation with France because of Kapitaï and Koba in Guinea. He stayed again in Cameroon and on March 11, 1885 placed the Mahinland not far from the Niger Delta "under German protection".

On the way back to Europe he fell ill with tuberculosis. He died on April 20, 1885 on board the gunboat SMS Möwe . He was buried in Cape Palmas on April 21, 1885 . In 1888 his remains were transferred to Cameroon, where a memorial was erected to him near the former government building.

Honor and classification

Nachtigal monument in Stendal by Richard Anders

Despite his critical stance towards the German colonial acquisitions, Gustav Nachtigal was stylized as a colonial hero in the German press. His sometimes disparaging remarks - including about the lobby of German schnapps exporters - were never published under official pressure.

The Cape Nachtigal near Victoria , the hospital of Duala and the ship Nachtigal , which sank in Cameroon in 1914 as a result of the First World War, were named after him . The ship Gustav Nachtigal bears his name, as does the Nachtigal glacier on South Georgia. The Nachtigal Hospital in Sebbe in Togo was also named after him. A plant genus, Nachtigalia Schinz ex Engl. From the family of the miracle flower plants (Nyctaginaceae) is also named after him.

In the GDR historiography, the researcher was unreflectedly equated with Carl Peters . In view of the published and unpublished writings of Nachtigal, however, it can be stated that, alongside Heinrich Barth, he is not only considered to be the most scientific researcher in Africa, but also one of the few personalities in the history of research who does not regard Africans as arrogant travelers, laden with racial prejudice, or as brutal conquerors faced.

Gustav Nachtigal played a major role in clearing up the fate of Eduard Vogel .

In Stendal, a bronze bust was erected in his honor west of Nachtigalplatz (end of Bahnhofsstraße). A square in the African Quarter in Berlin-Wedding was also named after Nachtigal in 1911 , but its name has been highly controversial since the 2000s. The Berlin-Mitte district council decided to rename Nachtigalplatz in spring 2016. On April 11, 2018, the district assembly announced that the square would be named after Emily and Rudolf Duala Manga Bell , who played a central role in the resistance of the Duala people against German colonial rule. The renaming of the 3 streets or the square will probably be postponed for an indefinite period of time or will be dropped entirely due to well over 1000 contradictions.

The Geography Society awarded the Gustav Nachtigal Medal from 1896 to the 1990s .

He was an honorary member of the Thuringian-Saxon Association for Geography.

Others

Rudolf Prietze was the son of Nachtigal's sister Marie Luise Nachtigal. He also became an African explorer and is considered one of the fathers of modern African studies (linguistics).

Works

  • Sahara and Sudan. 3 volumes, Berlin; Leipzig 1879–1889. Available as reprints.
  • Tibesti. The discovery of the giant craters and the first crossing of Sudan, 1868–1874. Edited by Heinrich Schiffers . Erdmann, Tübingen, Basel 1978, ISBN 3-7711-0305-3 .

literature

  • Dorothea Berlin: A German pair of friends from a better time: Rudolf Berlin and Gustav Nachtigal. Behr, Berlin 1928
  • Claus Priesner :  Nightingale, Gustav. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , pp. 682-684 ( digitized version ).
  • Gustav Nachtigal 1869/1969. (Bonn-) Bad Godesberg 1969.
  • Commemorative publication Gustav Nachtigal. 1874–1974 (= publications from the Übersee-Museum Bremen. Series C, Volume 1), Bremen 1977
  • Werner Hartwig: "White Gold" - on the trail of Gustav Nachtigal . Weltbild (holiday journal) 1977
  • A. Tunis: Gustav Nachtigal. A philanthropist in the civil service . In: Baessler archive. Volume 44, 1996, pp. 407-424. [1]
  • August K. Stöger: March into the Unknown HOCH-Verlag Düsseldorf 1972 1st licensed edition Printed by: F.Sailer, Vienna

Web links

Commons : Gustav Nachtigal  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Gustav Nachtigal  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ After the KKL 1910 and the KCL 1960, Nachtigal wore three bows, no ribbon
  2. ^ Gerhard Richter: Stendal. Heart of the Altmark . (City-guide). Ed .: Altmärkisches Museum Stendal. 3. Edition. Volksdruckerei Stendal, 1965, p. 2 .
  3. ↑ Kösener corps lists 1910, 208/395; 103/83; 93/553
  4. ↑ Ambas Bay , in: Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon , Volume I, Leipzig 1920, p. 38.
  5. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
  6. ↑ Berlin streets are renamed. Off for colonialists taz, February 3, 2017
  7. ↑ Laura Hofmann: New street names for the African quarter found. In: Der Tagesspiegel . April 11, 2018. Retrieved April 11, 2018 .
  8. ^ Directory of the members of the Thuringian-Saxon Geography Association on March 31, 1885 ( Memento from December 1, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Nachtigal, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Africa explorer
DATE OF BIRTH February 23, 1834
PLACE OF BIRTH Eichstedt (Altmark)
DATE OF DEATH April 20, 1885
Place of death off the coast of West Africa