Hans Pothorst

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Hans Pothorst (Latin called Johannes ) was a German explorer of the 15th century. He is considered one of the potential explorers of North America .

Life

Figure plaque by Hoetger at the House of the Glockenspiel in Bremen

Johannes Pothorst was one of those daring sea adventurers who swarmed around the sea and always stopped where there was something to be earned.
This is how Hans Nirnheim describes him in 1908. Hans Pothorst, who presumably came from Northern Germany, worked as a pirate driver (Utligger) for the city of Hamburg until July 1473 .
After returning from the North Atlantic expedition, Pothorst married the councilor's daughter Ideke Brand in Hamburg in 1476, who was previously married to Tideke Kopeke, a bone cutter . This gave him access to the patrician circles of Hamburg. From 1473 to 1477 he was a member of the Flanders Driver Society. But that did not mean that he also had to go to Flanders. In 1477 he was involved in a cargo of sea fish that the English ship Jacob was supposed to bring from Iceland to London . The ship ran aground and was sacked by two knights.
In the Marienkirche (German Church) in Helsingör , Pothorst had ceiling pictures painted by himself and another person ( Didrik Pining ?) Around 1480 at his own expense. The fact that the pictures were not later destroyed proves that Pothorst did not fall out of favor, as Olaus Magnus claimed.
Pothorst died before March 3, 1489.

Hans Pothorst (seated right) ceiling painting from St. Mary's Church in Elsinore , Denmark

North Atlantic expedition

From 1473 to 1476 he led an expedition to the North Atlantic together with Didrik Pining , who came from Hildesheim , on behalf of King Christian I of Denmark and Norway . They got to Greenland , and part of the expedition also to Newfoundland and Labrador, and thus to the North American mainland. Pothorst admitted in 1484 that he had looted the American mainland. However, the details of this trip have to be reconstructed from scattered sources and are therefore controversial in research. So it is not clear whether Pining and Pothorst should look for a western route to India. From the Portuguese side, João Vaz Corte-Real (also: João Vaz Cortereal) and Alvaro Martins Homen took part in this trip as emissaries of King Alfonso V of Portugal . They went on their own ship. During the expedition they separated from the other participants and sailed to the Azores, where they arrived at the end of 1473. From there they drove on to Lisbon to report to the court. Johannes Scolvus (also called Joan Scolvo) is associated with the expedition as a navigator . According to an entry on the globes by Gemma R. Frisius (Zerbst, Vienna) around 1476 it reached the latitude of 70 ° to 74 ° N on the west coast of Greenland. According to the entry on the globes, he was a Dane.

Further reading on Hans Pothorst and Didrik Pining

Newer literature

  • Norman Berdichevsky: The role of "sibling rivalry" in the "(re) discovery" of America controversy. In: Journal of Cultural Geography. 12/1 (1991), pp. 59-68. (National competitiveness among Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and Denmark led in the period 1425-1476 to a joint expedition by the Danes and Portuguese involving Pothorst, Pining, and Corte Real which discovered the North American mainland) and Sibling Rivalry and the Discovery of America; What Portuguese-Danish Cooperation Involved? (PDF)
  • Thomas L. Hughes: The German discovery of America. A review of the controversy over Pining's 1473 voyage of exploration . In: German studies review. Vol. 27, No. 3, October 2004, pp. 503-526. Abstract (PDF) Current research overview, which lists the open questions of the various interpretations and comes to the conclusion that it cannot be clearly decided how far Pining's journey led
  • Helge Ingstad: The Norse discovery of North America. In: Lund studies in English. Volume 78/1988, pp. 149-155.
  • Klaus-Peter Kiedel: An expedition to Greenland in 1473 . In: German Shipping Archive. Vol. 3, 1980, pp. 115-140.
  • Anton Josef Knott, Günther EH Baumann, Hans Schlotter: Dietrich Pining from Hildesheim landed in America 20 years before Columbus. (Publications of the Hildesheimer Heimat- und Geschichtsverein). Hildesheim 1992.
  • Robert McGhee: Northern Approaches. Before Columbus: Early European Visitors to the Shores of the "New World". In: Beaver. Volume 72 June / July 1992, pp. 6-23. (Excerpts available on the Internet ( Memento from February 1, 2006 in the Internet Archive ))
  • Paul Pini: Didrik Pining from Hildesheim as discoverer of America, as admiral and as governor of Iceland in the service of the kings of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Hildesheim 1971, DNB 457813431 .
  • The Dansk Biografisk Leksikon. vol. XI, pp. 381, 459.

Older literature

  • Johannes Heinrich Gebauer: The Hildesheimer Dietrich Pining as a Nordic sea hero and explorer. In: Alt-Hildesheim. Volume 12/1933, pp. 3-18.
  • Gunnar Gunnarson: The Mystery of Didrik Pining: A Report. Stuttgart 1939.
  • Dietrich Kohl: Dietrich Pining and Hans Pothorst. Two skippers from the days of the Hanseatic League and the great discoveries. In: Hansische Geschichtsblätter. ll. 57/1932, p. 152ff.
  • Sophus Larsen: The Discovery of North America Twenty Years Before Columbus. 1925.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hinrich Murmeister, a hambg. Mayor, in: Pfingstblatt des Hansischen Geschichtsverein 1908, 38
  2. ↑ Klaus-Peter Kiedel, An Expedition to Greenland in 1473, in: Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv 3/1980, p. 122
  3. ↑ Hildegard von Marchtaler: Hans Pothorst, one of the early discoverers of America, and his Hamburg relatives in: Journal of the Association for Hamburg History , Volume 58, 1972 - Pages 83 to 90 (PDF) accessed on July 9, 2014.
  4. ↑ Hildegard von Marchtaler: Hans Pothorst, one of the early discoverers of America, and his Hamburg relatives in: Journal of the Association for Hamburg History , Volume 58, 1972, p. 84 f.
  5. ↑ a b Hildegard von Marchtaler: Hans Pothorst, one of the early discoverers of America, and his Hamburg relatives in: Journal of the Association for Hamburg History , Volume 58, 1972, p. 88.
  6. ^ Olaus Magnus, Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus, p. 70
  7. ↑ Bent rying, Danish in the South and the North, Vol. II, p 87
  8. ↑ The assertion made by the Peruvian Louis Ulloa in 1934 that the mysterious figure of John Scolvus could have been the young Christopher Columbus cannot be taken seriously.
personal data
SURNAME Pothorst, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German navigator and explorer
DATE OF BIRTH between 1400 and 1450
PLACE OF BIRTH Hildesheim
DATE OF DEATH after 1473