Hermann Detzner

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hermann Philipp Detzner. Cover picture in his book Four Years Among Cannibals

Hermann Philipp Detzner (born October 16, 1882 in Speyer , Pfalz , † December 11, 1970 in Heidelberg ) was a captain on behalf of the German colonial administration in German New Guinea and a writer . In 1914 he and a few men hid in the bush of New Guinea for four years and only surrendered in December 1918 after the end of the First World War .

Life

Hermann Detzner took part in British- German expeditions in Cameroon from 1907 to 1909 and from 1912 to 1913 . In 1914, Detzner received an order from the Reich Colonial Office to carry out an expedition to German New Guinea in order to monitor the implementation of the provisions of the British-German Border Commission of 1909. Again and again it happened that gold prospectors from the former British part of New Guinea, which was under Australian administration, crossed the border to German New Guinea. This made an exact determination of the borderline necessary.

On January 18, 1914, Detzner arrived - still with the rank of first lieutenant - in Rabaul on the island of Neupommern . In February his expedition began in Kaiser-Wilhelmsland on the island of New Guinea. At the end of March, he had found that the border corridor deviated 650 m in a southerly direction from the agreed border at the 8th parallel south . Hermann Detzner was on his way inland when the First World War began in the Pacific on August 4, 1914 with the British declaration of war on the German Reich - provoked by Germany through the invasion of neutral Belgium . German New Guinea was quickly occupied by Australian forces. When the German colonial troops capitulated on September 21, 1914, Detzner did not surrender. Although he was wanted by the Australians, he managed to hide in the jungles of New Guinea with changing companions until the end of the war.

Hermann Detzner made three attempts to reach the neutral Dutch New Guinea . He was the first European to cross the valleys of the central highlands in the Hagen Mountains. In the Burrumtal on the Sattelberg , near Finschhafen , Detzner had a secret camp, to which he always returned from his expeditions. The missionaries of the nearby Neuendettelsau Mission provided him with food, books and English newspapers in the jungle.

In 1917 Hermann Detzner tried to leave occupied German New Guinea by sea with two canoes. He came to the Erima port near Madang . An Australian warship, the HMAS Una , the former German government steamer Komet , was lying there and blocked the journey. Detzner had to turn back, he fell ill and spent his time researching the people and the flora and fauna of the Huon Peninsula .

On November 11, 1918, a worker from the Neuendettelsauer Mission on the Sattelberg Detzner brought the news of the end of the First World War. Hermann Detzner wrote a letter to the commanding Australian officer Nelson in Morobe , in which he offered to surrender. He was treated with respect. In his full uniform, Detzner surrendered in Finschhafen and was brought to Rabaul on January 5, 1919, to the headquarters of the administrator Johnston. After a brief internment in the Holdsworthy camp near Liverpool , he returned to Germany. His book Four Years Among Cannibals , published in 1921 . From 1914 until the armistice under the German flag in the unexplored interior of New Guinea brought him great popularity in Germany, but also in Great Britain.

After the war he held a leading position in the Reich Colonial Office, dealing with compensation issues.

criticism

As early as the early 1930s, geographical information that Detzner had made in his book Four Years Among Cannibals was questioned . The sharpest criticism came from the missionaries of the Neuendettelsauer Missionsgesellschaft in Finschhafen, Christian Keyser and Otto Thiele, whose research results Detzner had partly processed in his book as personal experiences. In 1932 Herrmann Detzner had to admit that he had mixed scientific knowledge and fiction in his book. A declaration to this effect is printed in the journal of the Society for Geography in Berlin 1932 (p. 307 f.). He admitted that when he tried to flee to Dutch New Guinea in 1914, he had not reached Joseph Berg on the border with the formerly British part of the island. The east-west crossing of Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, which he claimed, had never taken place. The information, possibly also going back to Detzner, that the Society for Geography in Berlin honored him with the Gustav-Nachtigal-Medal in gold for his achievements in exploring New Guinea is wrong. Instead, he received it in a lower grade, in iron.

Detzner withdrew from the public. He later moved to Heidelberg , where he was managing director of a publishing house, and died in 1970 at the age of 88.

Hermann Detzner's exaggerations meant that the real part of his story has so far hardly been appreciated.

Works

  • Four years among cannibals. From 1914 until the armistice under the German flag in the unexplored interior of New Guinea . Scherl, Berlin 1921. archive.org
  • In the land of the Dju-Dju. Travel experiences in the eastern Niger river basin . Scherl, Berlin 1923.

literature

  • Heinrich Schnee (Ed.): German Colonial Lexicon . Volume 1, p. 752, Leipzig 1920.
  • Hermann Joseph Hiery (ed.): The German South Sea 1884-1914, a manual . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2001, ISBN 3-506-73912-3 .
  • Johannes W. Grüntzig , Heinz Mehldorn: Expedition into the realm of epidemics, medical ascension commands of the German imperial and colonial times . Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-8274-1622-1 .
  • Uwe Schulte-Varendorff: “Colonial Hero” or “Baron of Lies”? The story of the Bavarian colonial officer Hermann Detzner. Diplomica Verlag, Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-8428-8982-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographical Handbook German New Guinea . 2nd Edition. Fassberg, 2002, p. 72.
  2. ↑ Uwe Schulte-Varendorff: "Colonial hero" or "Baron of lies"? The story of the Bavarian colonial officer Hermann Detzner . Diplomica Verlag, Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-8428-8982-8 , p. 105 .
  3. ^ Negotiations of the company . In: Journal of the Society for Geography in Berlin . 1923, p. 158 ( online ).
  4. ↑ Jürgen Ritter: The Munchhausen of the South Seas. someday
personal data
SURNAME Detzner, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Detzner, Hermann Philipp (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer and author
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Speyer
DATE OF DEATH 1st December 1970
Place of death Heidelberg