Michael Rockefeller
Michael Clark Rockefeller (* 1938 ; missing in Dutch New Guinea ( Western New Guinea ) since November 18, 1961 , pronounced dead three years later ) was a member of the Rockefeller family, the youngest son of the New York governor and the 41st Vice President of the United States Nelson Rockefeller . Michael Rockefeller disappeared during an expedition to the Asmat region in southwest New Guinea.
Life
Rockefeller graduated from Harvard with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and economics with honors in 1960. After six months of service as a soldier (private) in the US Army , he went on an expedition for the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology at Harvard University . In the central highlands of Dutch New Guinea, archaeological and ethnological studies on the Dani should be made. The expedition produced Dead Birds , dt. Dead birds (1965), a famous 1964 completed ethnographic documentary by Robert Gardner ; Rockefeller was the sound engineer in 1961. Rockefeller and his companion René Wassing , a Dutch anthropologist, left the expedition with the Asmat in the area of the Lorentz National Park in southern New Guinea for more detailed studies. Wassing returned from this excursion, but not Rockefeller.
Its whereabouts are still unclear. So far, it has been speculated that Rockefeller, who was traveling in a catamaran off the coast in the area of the mouth of the Eilanden River ( 5 ° 46 ′ S , 138 ° 7 ′ E ) , either drowned or was attacked by a shark or a crocodile could. Based on footage showing a fairer skinned native eight years after his disappearance, it has been speculated that Rockefeller might have joined an Asmat tribe , but this is considered highly unlikely. However, the uncovered footage stimulated renewed investigation; In 2015, the fate of a shipwrecked white man became known in tales of older Asmat. In the 1960s, the Asmat were still familiar with headhunting and cannibalism and may still stab the white man in a canoe while saving.
additional
The feature film Cannibals - Welcome to the Jungle takes Michael Rockefeller's disappearance as a hook for his - purely fictional - plot.
literature
- Carl Hoffman: Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art . HarperCollins, 2014
- dt .: Deadly Paradise: About cannibals, colonialists and Michael Rockefeller's mysterious death . btb Verlag, 2014
Web links
- Literature by and about Michael Rockefeller in the WorldCat bibliographic database
- Michael Nelson Rockefeller in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Photos Michael Rockefellers at the Peabody Museum
- Outside Magazine: "Lost Scion: What Michael Rockefeller eats by cannibals?"
- Agamemnon Films: The Search for Michael Rockefeller by Fraser Clarke Heston
- Art of Asmat in the Michael C. Rockefeller Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Individual evidence
- ↑ 1961: Michael Rockefeller (son of the Vice-President) disappears in the cannibal terroritorium Papua New Guinea
- ^ Carl Hoffman: What Really Happened to Michael Rockefeller. smithsonian.com, March 2014, accessed September 30, 2019 .
- ↑ Dead Birds. IMDb, accessed on September 30, 2019 .
- ↑ The cannibal riddle about the young Rockefeller in Die Welt from February 20, 2015
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rockefeller, Michael |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Rockefeller, Michael Clark (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American ethnologist and photographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1938 |
| DATE OF DEATH | after November 18, 1961 |
| Place of death | Dutch New Guinea |