Hans Krüger (polar explorer)

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Hans Krüger around 1925

Hans Kurt Erich Krüger (born June 24, 1886 in Lissa ; † 1930 at Ellesmere Island or Axel Heiberg Island ) was a German geologist and polar explorer .

Life

Hans Krüger was born in Lissa near Posen in 1886 as the son of the factory director Emil Krüger and his wife Olga . He attended elementary school in Lauchhammer and Bautzen and grammar school in Bautzen, Nuremberg , Augsburg , Hörde , Dortmund and Neustadt an der Haardt , where he passed the school leaving examination in 1905.

After studying law at the universities of Jena and Göttingen , Krüger traveled to German South West Africa , where, among other things, he managed a game reserve and tried his hand at prospecting for gold in the Kalahari and the Namib Desert . He met Herbert Schröder-Stranz and was preparing to take part in his German Arctic Expedition through the Northeast Passage in 1913 . After the tragic pre-expedition to Spitzbergen in 1912 , the main expedition no longer took place. During the First World War , Krüger initially served in the protection force for German South West Africa before he fought against the British troops as the leader of a Boer partisan unit. He was captured and sentenced to death, escaped, recaptured, and finally pardoned.

After the war, Krüger stayed in South West Africa and most recently worked as manager of the Bobos vanadium mine at Tsumeb for the Otavi Exploration Syndicate of London . In 1923 he returned to Germany, where he attended lectures in geology at the Technical University of Darmstadt and was employed as an assistant at the Geological and Mineralogical Institute in the summer of 1924. He planned an Arctic - Expedition to geological surveys and soundings to prove that it north of the Canadian would Arctic islands no more land. Influenced by the Canadian polar researcher and nutritionist Vilhjálmur Stefánsson , with whom he corresponded, he wanted to live primarily from the hunt and largely avoid taking food with him. With Fritz Klute he undertook a pre-expedition to West Greenland in 1925 , the First Hessian Greenland Expedition , to gain experience in the Arctic. He then did his doctorate with a thesis on the geology of Disko Bay .

The main expedition , the Second Hessian Greenland Expedition , began in 1929. After spending the winter in Neqi on the Robertson Fjord in north-west Greenland , Krüger broke on March 19, 1930 together with the Danish translator Åge Rose Bjare, the Inuit guide Akqioq, who had already worked on Knud Rasmussen's 5th Thule expedition , and fifteen sled dogs from the Bache Peninsula on Ellesmere Island to the west. A care team accompanied them to the Eureka Sound and then turned back. The expedition has since been lost. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police , which had a post on the Bache Peninsula, started the first search expedition in the spring of 1931, which was followed by another in 1932 with eight teams and a total of 124 sled dogs. Ultimately, however, all search expeditions commissioned by Canada and Denmark were unsuccessful. By 1957, three written messages from Kruger had been found. Accordingly, the expedition turned first north along the east and then west along the north coast of Axel Heiberg Island and reached Meighen Island on May 5, 1930 . The message found there states Amund Ringnes Island as the next destination . After that, all trace was initially lost. It was not until 1999 that the remains of a wooden box with rock samples and objects that can be assigned to Kruger were found near the southwestern cape of Axel Heiberg Island. These included a theodolite from the Hildebrandt-Wichmann-Werke in Freiberg , a pocket compass, a heavy petrol can, an unopened can, an enamelled cup and a plate. A piece of underwear with a German brand label was found nearby. It is believed that at this point a member of the expedition had already died and that heavy and unnecessary items were deposited here to relieve the sled.

Honor

An island in Nansen Sound , across from Cape Stallsworthy, where a message from Kruger was found, is now called Krueger Island ( 81 ° 34 ′  N , 91 ° 41 ′  W ). A river on Meighen Island is called the Krueger River.

Fonts

  • Fritz Klute, Hans Krüger: The Hessian Greenland Expedition 1925 . In: Petermann's communications . Volume 72, 1926, pp. 105-111.
  • Hans Krüger: On the geology of West Greenland, especially the area around Disko Bay and the Umanak Fjord . In: Meddelelser om Grønland . Volume 74, 1928, pp. 97-136.
  • Hans Krüger: Recent Geological Research in the Arctic . In: American Journal of Science . Volume 5, 1929, pp. 50-62 (English).

literature

  • Arnulf Scholz: Krüger polar expedition lost . In: Polar Research . tape 2 , no. 1 , 1932, p. 4–5 ( article online [PDF; 181 kB ]).
  • Frank Berger: Frankfurt and the North Pole. Researchers and explorers in the eternal ice . In: Jan Gerchow (Ed.): Writings of the Historisches Museum Frankfurt am Main . tape 26 . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2007, ISBN 978-3-86568-285-7 .
  • Randall Brooks, John England, Arthur Dyke, James Savelle: Krüger's Final Camp in Arctic Canada? In: Arctic . tape 57 , no. 2 , 2004, p. 225–232 (English, article online [PDF; 2.5 MB ; accessed on October 29, 2018]).
  • Robert W. Park, Douglas R. Stenton: A Hans Krüger Arctic Expedition Cache on Axel Heiberg Island, Nunavut . In: Arctic . tape 60 , no. 1 , 2007, p. 1–6 (English, article online [PDF; 2.7 MB ; accessed on February 28, 2010]).
  • Kurt Hassert : The polar research. History of voyages of discovery to the North and South Poles . Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, Munich 1956, p. 85 .
  • William Barr: The career and disappearance of Hans KE Krüger, Arctic geologist, 1886-1930 . In: Polar Record . tape 29 , 1993, pp. 277-304 , doi : 10.1017 / S0032247400023949 (English).
  • William Barr: Red serge and polar bear pants. The biography of Harry Stallworthy, RCMP . The University of Alberta Press, Edmonton 2004, ISBN 0-88864-433-7 , pp. 141-170 (English).
  • Jerry Kobalenko: The Horizontal Everest. Extreme Journeys on Ellesmere Island . Soho Press Inc., 2002, ISBN 1-56947-327-7 , pp. 173-187 (English).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cornelia Lüdecke: On the 100th birthday of Max Grotewahl (1894–1958), founder of the archive for polar research . In: Polar Research . tape 65 , no. 2. , 1997, p. 99 ( article online [PDF; 2.2 MB ; accessed on December 3, 2013]).
  2. ↑ a b c Barr, 1993
  3. ↑ Peter Schledermann: The Muskox Patrol: High Arctic Sovereignty Revisited . In: Arctic . tape 56 , no. 1 , 2003, p. 101–109 (English, article online [PDF; 2.4 MB ; accessed on March 2, 2010]).
  4. ^ Park and Stenton, 2007
  5. ↑ The Atlas of Canada: Krueger Island , topographic map on atlas.gc.ca
  6. ↑ G. Hattersley-Smith et al. a .: Northern Ellesmere Island, 1953 and 1954 . In: Arctic . tape 8 , no. 1 , 1955, pp. 1–36 (English, article online [PDF; 7.6 MB ; accessed on February 5, 2019]).
  7. ↑ The Atlas of Canada: Krueger River on atlas.gc.ca

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kruger, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Krüger, Hans Kurt Erich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geologist and polar researcher
DATE OF BIRTH June 24, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Lissa
DATE OF DEATH 1930
Place of death Arctic