Kurt Faber

Kurt Faber (born December 6, 1883 in Mulhouse , Alsace ; † winter 1929 at Great Slave Lake , Canada ) was a German adventurer, journalist and travel writer .

Life

Kurt Faber was born in Mulhouse as the son of a teacher from the Palatinate and grew up in Lambrecht . His father was the director of the trade school in Mulhouse and a sideline writer.

At the age of 19 he dropped out of school before graduating from high school and began an apprenticeship as a bookseller , which he also gave up in order to travel instead. In 1901 he went to New York via France . He lived on the income from odd jobs in the respective places and sometimes worked under great privation as a seaman , cotton picker, baker , mine worker and nurse . At times he rode illegally as a hobo on trains in the United States and was imprisoned as a tramp .

As a stowaway, he took the transcontinental railroad to San Francisco and was hired here in 1902 on the whaler Bowhead , on which he worked under great strain for three years. An attempt to escape from the Bowhead was initially prevented by force of arms. The Bowhead froze in the ice near Herschel Island in the North Sea for several winters . From there, in the course of an adventurous escape, he was the first European with the help of Eskimos to walk several thousand kilometers to Edmonton and Vancouver .

He came back to Germany via Australia , Sumatra , Aden and Marseille , where he became a certified trade teacher. From 1910 to 1912 he made his second big trip. It took him to South America , which he crossed in all directions. He reported on the Chilean ports and the adjacent saltpetre deserts that they “were overrun with runaway sailors. In 90 cases out of a hundred they were Germans ”. He signed on to the sailor Selena and circled Cape Horn .

Now he returned to his homeland and made up for his Abitur. He wrote articles about his travels in German newspapers and published them in book form from 1916 onwards. Faber studied political science in Tübingen and received his doctorate in 1919. rer. pole. After his studies he continued his travels and became a permanent newspaper correspondent for the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger . There and in other papers he reported on his travels, and shortly afterwards these reports also appeared in book form. In 1925 Faber became a member of the NSDAP .

Faber died of freezing to death at the age of 46 after a cold snap at Great Slave Lake in northern Canada. His animal-eaten corpse was found by Eskimos on February 26, 1929 on the Hay River, about 25 km from Great Slave Lake.

Several of his books were edited by his brother Walther Faber .

Works

Among Eskimos and whalers. Arctic Ocean trips by a young German . Stuttgart: Robert Lutz. circa 1916
Fortunately through South America. Memories of a restless man . Stuttgart: Robert Lutz 1919
Foreign trade and balance of payments in Argentina under the influence of war , dissertation, Tübingen, university, dissertation, 1923
Around the world. Wanderings and adventures of a greenhorn . Ludwigshafen: H. Lhotzky 1924
Days and nights in the jungle and sierra. Peru, Bolivia, Brazil . Stuttgart: R. Lutz 1926
Backpacking to India . Berlin: Gutenberg Book Guild 1927
The soul sellers . An adventure story. Berlin: Scherl 1927
A thousand and one adventures. A new hiking book . Tübingen: R. Wunderlich 1929
Weltwanderer's last journeys and adventures. Baltic States, Balkans, South Seas, Japan, Korea, China, Siberia, Moscow, Palestine, Syria, Canada. With an appendix . Edited by Walter Faber, Stuttgart: Robert Lutz 1930
The gold on the Crow River. Alaskan Adventures and three other stories . Stuttgart: Thienemann 1931
In the wildest Patagonia. Adventurous travel experiences by world traveler Kurt Fabers in southernmost South America . Stuttgart: Thienemann 1932
Backpacking through Persia . (Excerpt from With the rucksack to India ) (Dt. Jugendbücherei 407) Berlin: Hillger 1932
As a cabin boy in the Arctic Ocean. Adventure of a German boy on a whale catcher . (Excerpt from Unter Eskimos und Walfischfänger ) (Bunte Bücher 232) Reutlingen: Enßlin u. Laiblin 1933
Adventurous journey through darkest Africa . National construction in 1936
The divine vagabond. Selection ad works d. World wanderer . Edited by Walter Faber Dt. People's books 1936
Wandering forever. Adventure in North and South America . Leipzig: The national structure 1939
As a tramp through Australia. Experiences of a German among tramps and sheep shearers . Reutlingen: Enßlin u. Laiblin 1943

literature

Roland Betsch , Karl Graf: Kurt Faber, the world wanderer . Speyer, 1933
Walter Faber: In memory of the world traveler Kurt Faber . In: Ostdeutsche Monatshefte 11, 1930
Walter Faber: The German Wanderer. The life of Kurt Faber . In: Die Westmark 1933-34
Wilhelm Kosch : Literature Lexicon. Francken, Bern, 3rd A. 1968, pp. 664-665
Carl Lange : Kurt Faber in memory . In: Ostdeutsche Monatshefte Vol. 11, 1930, H. 2, P. 127
Fred Larsen: The mysterious Dr. Faber. In: RCMP. Men in red skirt. Adventure of a Northeast Canadian Police Officer . Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1955, 1957
Armin Stöckhert: Kurt Faber, the world wanderer . In: Magazine for adventure, travel and entertainment literature . 1979. 24, pp. 10-15.
Heinrich Pleticha, Siegfried Augustin: Lexicon of adventure and travel literature from Africa to Winnetou. Edition Erdmann in K. Thienemanns Verlag, Stuttgart, Vienna, Bern 1999, ISBN 3 522 60002 9

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ Norbert Höfler scrap ahoy! The resurrection of the "Peking" , stern no. 21/2020, p. 52 ff

personal data
SURNAME	Faber, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German political scientist and author
DATE OF BIRTH	December 6, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH	Mulhouse
DATE OF DEATH	before February 26, 1929
Place of death	at Great Slave Lake , Canada

[1] Norbert Höfler scrap ahoy! The resurrection of the "Peking" , stern no. 21/2020, p. 52 ff