Gustav von Tempsky

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Gustav von Tempsky (around 1860)
Gustav von Tempsky (around 1865)
(with the Forest Rangers)
Tempsky's death
(Painter: Kennett Watkins)

Gustav (us) Ferdinand von Tempsky (born February 15, 1828 in Braunsberg , East Prussia Province , † September 8, 1868 with Te Ngutu o te Manu , Taranaki , New Zealand ) was a Prussian adventurer, officer and painter.

Life

He came from an old Pomeranian noble family based in Tempz (since 1874 Hedille ( district Neustadt (Westpr.) ), Now part of the rural municipality of Luzino ), since 1640 also resident in Silesia , and was the son of the royal Prussian lieutenant colonel Julius Louis von Tempsky ( 1797–1868) and Karoline Henriette Friederike Wilhelmine von Studnitz . He was a cousin of the writer Valeska von Gallwitz . Tempsky grew up in Liegnitz ( Lower Silesia ). He began his military career at the cadet institute in Potsdam and then attended the Prussian War Academy in Berlin . In 1845 he became the regiment shifted his father, the Guards Fusilier Regiment , his brother Benno than the lieutenant served, remained there only nine months.

As an 18-year-old Tempsky moved in May 1846 as a Prussian ensign full of adventure to the Miskito coast in Honduras , where Prussia wanted to establish a settlement. There he later even became an instructor for the soldiers of the Miskito king . He came to Nicaragua for the first time in 1852 .

From 1853 to 1855 he was in Mexico , Guatemala and El Salvador . He published impressions from this period in 1858 in his book Mitla , a Narrative of Incidents and Personal Adventures .

Back in Nicaragua Tempsky married in Greytown ( Nicaragua ) Emilie Ross Bell , the daughter of the British resident James Stanislaus Bell (1797-1858) in Greytown. With her he had at least the two sons Randal (1856-1898) and Louis (1858-1922) and the daughter Lina (1859-1935). According to the birthplaces of his children, Temspky must have stayed in Bluefields (Nicaragua) in 1856 and in Glasgow ( Scotland ) in 1858/1859 .

Burke and Wills (1860/1861) almost put him in charge of the expedition . Instead, he went as a gold prospector to Victoria (Australia) and California ( USA ), finally to New Zealand in the Otago region , the Hauraki District and Coromandel . There he spent the last years of his life.

In New Zealand he worked as a correspondent for the newspaper "Southern Cross". But soon he no longer wanted to just write about the battles against the Māori (see: New Zealand Wars), but fought very successfully himself in the Waikato War. When the war broke out in 1863 he was paid as a mercenary by the settlers and fought as a British royal major with volunteers he had recruited himself under the command of Thomas McDonnell (1831–1899) as the 2nd company of the Forest Rangers (1st regiment of the Waikato troops) against the indigenous people. In September 1868 he fell to the "Battle of the Beak" in the fight against the soldiers of Māori chief Riwha Titokowaru (1823-1888), who recognized him as "Major Many Birds"; his English comrades called him the "Prussian".

In New Zealand Tempsky also worked as a watercolor painter ; he painted landscapes and scenes from his battles against the Māoris.

Publications

  • Gustav Ferdinand von Tempsky: Mitla . a Narrative of Incidents and Personal Adventures on a Journey in Mexico, Guatemala and Salvador in the Years 1853 to 1855. Ed .: James Stanislaus Bel. Longman, Brown, Green and Longman & Roberts, London 1858.
  • Gustav Ferdinand von Tempsky: Mitla . Travel adventures in Mexico, Guatemala and Salvador 1853–1855. Ed .: Ulrich Esser-Simon. Books on Demand, 2016, ISBN 978-3-7392-3516-5 .

Works (selection)

  • General Chute's March - West Coast 1866

  • The confluence of the Karapiro Stream into the Waikato River

  • Return from the war

literature

  • Ronald Jones: Tempsky, Gustavus Ferdinand von . In: Alexander Hare McLintock (Ed.): An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand . Wellington 1966 ( online [accessed December 18, 2015]).
  • James Belich: The New Zealand Wars , Penguin Books, 1986
  • Michael King, Rose Young: GF von Tempsky, artist and adventurer , 1981
  • WT Parham: Von Tempsky: Adventurer , Hodder & Stoughton Publishing, London 1969, ISBN 0-340-10798-7
  • Richard Stowers: Forest Rangers , self-published, Hamilton, 1996
  • W. Walker: The War in Nicaragua , New York, 1860
  • Genealogical handbook of the nobility , noble houses B, volume V, volume 26 of the complete series, CA Starke Verlag, Limburg (Lahn) 1961, p. 411
  • Genealogical paperback of the knights and Aristocratic families , second year, Brno 1877, p. 677

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Information according to GHdA from 1961; thus all other place information is refuted.
  2. ↑ If it were a regiment stationed in Liegnitz, where he grew up and his father was stationed during these years, it would have to be Infantry Regiment No. 43 of 1741/9 (fusilier regiment of 1741).
  3. ^ Götz Dieter Freiherr von Houwald : German life in Nicaragua. Emigrant fates , page 209, Nicaragua Society (ed.), 1986, ISBN 3-925290-60-5 or ISBN 978-3-925290-60-2 ( excerpt )
  4. ↑ Hartmut Fröschle : The Germans in Latin America , Volume 15 of the book series German-Foreign Relations of the Institute for Foreign Relations, Erdmann Verlag, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-7711-0293-6 and ISBN 978-3-7711-0293-7
  5. ↑ Henry Mills Alden (Ed.): Harper's new monthly magazine , Volume 17, Page 170, 1858 ( digitized version )
  6. ^ Emilie's brother Charles Napier Bell published his book Tangweera in 1899 , in which Tempsky is also mentioned. ( Digitized version )
  7. ↑ Descendants of both sons live in Hawaii .
  8. ↑ Jürgen Tampke, Colin Doxford: Australia, welcome. A history of the Germans in Australia , page 52, New South Wales University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-86840-307-5 or ISBN 978-0-86840-307-6 ( excerpt )
  9. ↑ Stevan Eldred-Grigg: Diggers, hatters, whores. The New Zealand gold rushes , page 350, Random House, 2008, ISBN 1-86941-925-1 or ISBN 978-1-86941-925-7 ( excerpt )
  10. ↑ Christine Morton-Evans, Michael Morton-Evans: The Flower Hunter. The Remarkable Life of Ellis Rowan , p. 297, footnote 7 ( excerpt )
  11. ^ William John Schafer: Mapping the Godzone. A primer on New Zealand literature and culture , page 108 ( digitized )
personal data
SURNAME Tempsky, Gustav von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tempsky, Gustavus Ferdinand von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian adventurer, officer and painter
DATE OF BIRTH February 15, 1828
PLACE OF BIRTH Braunsberg , East Prussia Province , Kingdom of Prussia
DATE OF DEATH September 8, 1868
Place of death Te Ngutu-o-te-manu , Taranaki , New Zealand , British Empire