Hendrikus Albertus Lorentz

Hendrikus Albertus Lorentz (top left) on the New Guinea expedition in 1903

Hendrikus Albertus Lorentz (born September 18, 1871 in Oudewater , † September 2, 1944 in Klerksdorp , South Africa ) was a Dutch expedition leader to New Guinea and a diplomat in South Africa.

Life

Lorentz was the son of a Dutch tobacco farmer in East Java who had returned to the Netherlands before he was born. He studied law and biology at the University of Utrecht .

Lorentz took part in three expeditions to Dutch New Guinea , what is now the Indonesian western part of the island of New Guinea . In 1903 he was able to take part in the North New Guinea expedition of the German geologist Carl Ernst Arthur Wichmann , during which he wrote his first travel report.

In 1907 he led his first expedition, called the South New Guinea Expedition; from 1909 to 1910 he was the leader of a second expedition to southern New Guinea, which he recorded in a book. Both expeditions are referred to as Lorentz expeditions in the literature. All three expeditions were organized and financed by the Society for the Promotion of Physical Exploration of the Dutch Colonies.

One of the rivers that originate in the mountains of New Guinea and flow into the southern Arafura Sea was initially called the North River during the Dutch colonial era and later named after Lorentz. After the transfer of Dutch New Guinea to Indonesia, almost all topographical names from the Dutch past were replaced. Since then the Lorentz , which leads to the Flamingo Bay ( Teluk Flamingo ), has the name Unir - also called Undir. The Lorentz National Park named after him still bears his name: "Taman Nasional Lorentz". It has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List as a natural monument since 1999 and is thus a World Heritage Site.

After his travels to New Guinea, Lorentz entered the diplomatic service of the Dutch government. After several years of diplomatic work in Copenhagen , he became Vice Consul in Cape Town, South Africa , in 1916 . In 1921 he was appointed Consul General in Pretoria . During his tenure, Lorentz promoted trade between the Netherlands and South Africa and helped Dutch people immigrate to South Africa. Later he held the position of director of the Dutch cultural-historical institute in Pretoria and was chairman of the Netherlands-South Africa Committee ("Nederland-Zuid-Afrika Comité"). In the years after his retirement in 1937, he lived with his wife and children on his farm in Klerksdorp.

further reading

• EJ Brill: Eenige maanden onder de Papoea's (“A few months among the Papuans ).” Leiden, 1905.
• EJBrill: Zwarte Menschen - witte bergen: verhaal van den tocht naar het sneeuwgebergte van Nieuw-Guinea ("Black people - white mountains: The story of the trip to the snow-capped mountains of New Guinea"). Leiden, 1913. (Second edition 2005, Amsterdam / Antwerp: Uitgeverij Atlas; with a foreword by Tijs Goldschmidt and an introduction by AS Troelstra. ISBN 90-450-0508-5 ).
• Schepers, JHG: In Memoriam Mr. HA Lorentz . Journal of the Koninklijk Aardrijkskundig Genootschap 63, 1946, pp. 1-7.