Hermann Burchardt

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Hermann Burchardt

Hermann Burchardt (born November 18, 1857 in Berlin , † December 19, 1909 between Mokka and Taizz in Yemen ) was a German explorer and photographer of Jewish descent.

Life

Burchardt was able to give up his trade at the age of 30 and became a privateer . He systematically learned Arabic , Turkish and Swahili and some Persian (Farsi) at the seminar for oriental languages in Berlin from 1890 to 1892 . His inherited fortune enabled him to go to Damascus in Syria , rent an apartment there and, accompanied by his Arab confidante , travel the Muslim world from Tangier in Morocco to Samarkand in Inner Asia . These trips took him to East Africa and especially to the south of the Arabian Peninsula . On each of these trips he carried a complete set of photographic equipment including the necessary aids for developing the plates and making prints.

On the third of these extended trips he was shot by robbers on the way from Mocha to Taizz in what is now Yemen.

Effects

After his death, Burchardt's nephew, Max Ginsberg, handed over 500 photo plates and contact prints of the traveler to the Berlin Völkerkundemuseum (today: Ethnological Museum , Berlin), where they were restored, scientifically evaluated and published after 2000 with the support of the German Research Foundation .

The results of this work were partially exhibited in Yemen and in the states of the Arabian Gulf Coast and received there with great interest.

Publications / literature

During his stays in Germany, Burchardt gave lectures at the Berlin Geography Society . Some of these were published in the company's journal.

  • Hermann Burchardt, August Fischer (ed.): Arabic and Persian manuscripts: from the property of the late traveler Dr. Burchardt. Private printing in the bookstore Gustav Fock 1921.
  • Eugen Wednesday (editor): From Yemen .: Hermann Burchardt's last trip through southern Arabia . Ceremony for the 4th German Orientalist Day in Hamburg. German Oriental Society , Brockhaus, Leipzig 1926.
  • Annegret Nippa: Reading in old photographs from Baalbek . Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich , Zurich 1994, ISBN 3-909105-29-7 .
  • Annegret Nippa, Peter Herbstreuth (Ed.): On the way on the Gulf: From Basra to Muscat . Verlag Schiler, Berlin, 2006, ISBN 3-89930-070-X . (German English)
  • Franziska Bloch: With a trained eye. Hermann Burchardt's journey in southern Syria in 1895. Photographs by a German traveler to the Orient . Catalog brochure for the exhibition of the same name by the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin, Damascus branch, in collaboration with the Ethnological Museum, Berlin 2010. (German, Arabic).
  • Hermann Burchardt (1857–1909). Explorer . In: Ekkehard Vollbach: Poets, Thinkers, Directors. Portraits of German Jews , Leipzig: edition chrismon, ISBN 978-3-96038-243-0 , pp. 42–52.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Burchardt, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German explorer and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1857
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH December 19, 1909
Place of death Yemen