Jiří Jaeger

Jiří Jaeger (* around 1899 ; † 1975 ) was an Austro-Czech explorer and author.

Life

Jiří Jaeger traveled to Labrador in the summer of 1914 at the age of 15 on the HMS Harmony . The ship belonged to the Moravian Church and was used to supply the mission stations in Newfoundland and Labrador. The Bohemian Jaeger, who tried to escape military service in Austria-Hungary, got a job as a warehouse assistant in the shop in Okak , where he lived for the next six years. The place had a little over 300 inhabitants, including missionaries, settlers and Inuit . The latter interested Jaeger, who worked in the store, which for safety reasons, was particularly interested. He went hunting and fishing with them, examined their huts and learned about their customs. He documented his impressions in drawings and numerous photos. His knowledge of the Eskimo language, however, never developed beyond everyday needs.

In 1918 the crew or passengers of the Harmony brought the Spanish flu to Okak. Numerous residents were infected and died. The flu epidemic killed around a third of the Inuit population on the Labrador coast. So many people died in Okak that the mission station was given up and Jaeger returned to Europe on the Harmony in 1919. In the 1920s and 1930s Jiří Jaeger gave numerous lectures about his time in Labrador in Bohemia and Germany. In 1961 his book about six years with the Eskimos was published by Orbis Verlag in Prague. Jaeger left behind a son who became alcoholic and after the turn of the millennium sold his father's inheritance to an antique shop in Prague. These included not only items of clothing made from polar bear , seal and sealskin as well as items made from walrus teeth, but above all several boxes with hand-colored glass slides. The antique dealer informed Michael Šíp, an employee of the Bavarian Forest National Park , about the purchase of the Jaeger estate. This ultimately led to an article by Maik Brandenburg in the magazine mare , in the context of which numerous photographs by Jaeger were published. The Jaeger collection is now in the Národní muzeum .

literature

• Maik Brandenburg, It was in a distant land , in: mare 41, December 2003 / January 2004, pp. 12–27

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.nm.cz/expozice-detail.php?f_id=60  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.