Herdemerten-Greenland-Expedition
The Herdemerten-Greenland-Expedition in 1938 was a German expedition to research the Greenland flora and fauna.
The primary goal of the expedition, financed by the Braunschweig Hermann Göring Foundation , was to investigate the living conditions of the white ger or polar falcon native to Greenland . At the instigation of the foundation-related Reichsjägerhof in Riddagshausen near Braunschweig, a few specimens should, if possible, be caught and brought to Germany in order to get them used to the Central European climate and to settle here.
Leader of the expedition was the German polar explorer and mining engineer Kurt Herdemerten (1900-1951), who at the already 1930/31 German Greenland Expedition of Alfred Wegener had participated. Hans-Robert Knoespel accompanied the Herdemerten expedition as a falconer . A doctor named K. Magerstedt acted as the expedition doctor who also carried out examinations on the Greenlanders. He took blood samples from the locals.
Expedition course
The expedition members of the first German Greenland expedition after Wegener's death embarked on May 20, 1938 in the port of Copenhagen on board Gertrud Rask, launched in 1923 . On June 15, the expedition reached Egedesminde on the west coast of Greenland. This is where the base was built. The area of operation was the west coast of the island between the 68th and 71st parallel. The Danish trade inspector Axel Malmquist (1900–1980) provided the expedition with a motorized walrus fishing boat , the Ane-Marie , for the purposes of the investigation . The expedition set up stations on Disko Island (Station I), the Drygalski Peninsula (Station II) and the south coast of Storøen (now Salliaruseq ) in the Uummannaq District (Station III). The British Oxford University Greenland Expedition 1938 of the Oxford University Exploration Club , which was operating in the area at the same time and in which the German geophysicist Erich Etienne also participated, Herdemerten does not mention a word in his expedition report.
In memory of Rasmus Villumsen (1909–1930), Alfred Wegener's Greenlandic companion, who died with him in 1930, Herdemerten put a plaque on the schoolhouse in Villumsen's place of birth, Uvkusigssat.
On October 9, 1938, the Herdemerten expedition left Greenland with the Hans Egede .
Ornithological results
In the course of the expedition it was possible to capture six gyrfalcons alive. Five of these birds, including four juveniles from a nest near Qeqertarsuaq (Godhavn) on Disko Island and an adult specimen from the area near Uummannaq, were transferred to Germany for further work. After a short stay at the Reichsjägerhof in Riddagshausen, the falcons came to the specially established research station Goldhöhe in the Giant Mountains . This step became necessary after the birds' health deteriorated due to the climatic conditions in the Harz Mountains. The high mountain climate in the Giant Mountains is similar to the environmental conditions in Greenland.
In addition, numerous ringing of wild birds, primarily kittiwakes , was carried out during the expedition .
Herdemerten and Knoespel were also able to collect numerous brats from native bird species in West Greenland . Forty-five of these brats are today in the collection of the Zoological Department of the Prague National Museum, along with the handwritten notes by Knoespel .
Geological results
The results of the expedition include, in addition to weather observations, Herdemerten's geological investigations of the Precambrian Agpatformation of western Greenland, as well as the continuation of Alfred Wegener's glacier measurements and ice thickness measurements.
Goldhöhe research station
Based on the experience gained in 1937 through a failed attempt to settle a group of gyrfalcons in the Reichsjägerhof in the Harz foreland, the wild falcons captured during the Herdemerten expedition were to be brought to a high mountain climate. After the expedition returned, Herdemerten, again financed by the Hermann Göring Foundation, set up the polar experimental station " Goldhöhe " in the Giant Mountains at an altitude of around 1400 meters in the Dolní Dvůr (Niederhof) district, which was used for acclimatization and research into the gyrfalcon. The results of the expedition should also be evaluated here. Herdemerten was able to fall back on a building infrastructure that had been built by the Czechoslovak Army before 1938 to secure the border. After the incorporation of the Sudetenland into the German Reich , the buildings had stood empty. Knoespel was also a member of the staff at the research station. In cooperation with the Reich Agency for Nature Conservation and the University of Breslau , research on biological issues in the Arctic should also be carried out here. During the Second World War , the station's area of responsibility changed. At Knoespel's suggestion, Admiral Fritz Conrad had the station expanded into an Arctic training camp in the winter of 1942/43, of which Knoespel became the first head.
literature
- William Barr: Gyrfalcons to Germany: Herdemerten's expedition to west Greenland, 1938. Polar Record, Cambridge University Press 2010. ( Abstract )
- Wilhelm Dege , William Barr: War north of 80. Univ. of Calgary Press, Calgary 2004. ISBN 1-55238-110-2
- Kurt Herdemerten: Jakunguaq. The Greenland Book of the Hermann Göring Foundation. Georg Westermann publishing house, Braunschweig 1939.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Theodor Guspietsch: Hans-Robert Knoespel for memory. In: Polar Research . Volume 15, No. 1/2, 1945, pp. 25-27. doi: 10.2312 / polar research.15.1-2.25
- ↑ Kurt Ruthe : The Greenland Expedition of the University of Oxford 1938. Polarforschung, 11, 1, 1941 pp. 1-6.
- ↑ Jiří Mlíkovský : Birds collected during the Herdemerten's 1938 Expedition to western Greenland. In: Journal of the National Museum (Prague), Natural History Series . Volume 181, No. 6, 2012, pp. 59-62 (English). (Digitized version)
- ↑ Czech : Zlaté návrši
- ↑ Franz Selinger: From 'Nanok' to 'Eismitte'. Meteorological ventures in the Arctic 1940–1945. Hamburg 2001. p. 151.