Oskar Baumann (geographer)

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Oskar Baumann

Oskar Baumann , also Oscar Baumann (born June 25, 1864 in Vienna ; † October 12, 1899 ibid) was an Austrian explorer , philosopher , ethnologist , geographer and cartographer .

education

Oskar Baumann, son of the bank clerk Heinrich Baumann (1822–1902), attended secondary school and grammar school in Vienna, heard geographic and natural history colleges at the University of Vienna and studied terrain mapping at the Military Geographical Institute .

Research trips

Map of Zanzibar by Baumann, 1892

As a 19-year-old Baumann traveled to unexplored areas of Montenegro , especially the Durmitor group. The studies and maps he brought with him resulted in his acceptance into the Austrian Congo expedition (1885–1887) under the direction of Oskar Lenz . Although Baumann had to return earlier due to illness, he managed the first useful mapping of the Congo River .

In 1886 Baumann toured the island of Fernando Póo , whose ethnology and geography he explored. Back in Europe, he received his doctorate in philosophy in Leipzig in 1888 .

In the following years (1888) he researched East Africa at the side of the German Hans Meyer and helped with the colonization of German East Africa . He traveled to large parts of today's Tanzania . In particular, he researched Usambara , where however, together with Hans Meyer, he fell into the hands of the Arab leader Buschiri , was put in chains and only released after paying a ransom .

His cartographic and ethnological records were invaluable for the country's rapid economic development.

In 1889 Baumann returned to Montenegro and took care of the mapping of the central mountain range.

In January 1890 Baumann completed the research into Usambara on behalf of the German-East African Society and then traveled the Pare Mountains to Kilimanjaro and northern Useguha . Here he made, among other things, preliminary studies for the planned Tanga - Korogwe railway connection .

The sources of the Nile

After he returned to Europe in December 1890, he returned to East Africa in 1891 on behalf of the Anti-Slavery Committee . Baumann's best-known venture was the so-called " Maasai Expedition", which took him from 1892 (January 17) to 1893 with 200 companions from the coast to Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika and then far into the unexplored kingdoms of Burundi and Rwanda , where he was named first European was received. The main result of the expedition was the mapping of the Maasai steppe and the inter -lake area . In the course of this undertaking, Baumann discovered the Eyassi and Manyara lakes , the Ngorongoro crater and Baumann Bay in Lake Victoria.

In 1893 Baumann was the first European to reach the source of the Kagera-Nile on Luvironza , which corresponds to the actual source of the Nile . The exact geographic definition of this source of the Nile was only made in 1937 by the German Burkhart Waldecker . Baumann reached the coast again on February 25, 1893.

In 1895 Baumann traveled to East Africa on behalf of the Sugar Syndicate and recorded the lower reaches of the Pangani until it fell. In 1896 Baumann was appointed Austro-Hungarian consul in Zanzibar , but had to return to Austria three years later due to an infectious disease, where he died of the consequences - only 35 years old. Baumann was buried in a crypt in the Salzburg municipal cemetery .

In 1902 Baumannstrasse in Wien- Landstrasse (3rd district) was named after him.

Fonts

  • Contributions to the ethnology of the Congo . Vienna 1887
  • Fernando Po and the boy . Vienna 1888
  • In German East Africa during the uprising . Vienna 1890 ( online here )
  • Usambara and its neighboring areas. General representation of north-eastern German East Africa and its inhabitants , Berlin 1891 online here
  • Map of northeastern German East Africa . Berlin 1893
  • Through Maasailand to the source of the Nile . Berlin 1894
  • The cartographic results of the Maasai expedition . In: Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen , booklet of results 111, Gotha 1894
  • The Zanzibar Archipelago . 3 issues Leipzig 1896–1899
  • Contra sexual phenomena among the negro population of Zanzibar. In: Journal of Ethnology. Volume 31, 1899, pp. 668-670 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  • "Five letters from Dr. Oskar Baumann from his ... research trip in the Zanzibar archipelago", 1895, in: Mitteilungen des Verein für Gekunde zu Leipzig, volume 1896, date of publication 1897, signature of the Saxon State Library - Dresden State and University Library: Eph.geogr .68-1894 / 96 (p. 231ff of the pdf digital version )
  • African sketches . Berlin 1900 (Reprint Salzwasser-Verlag 2011, ISBN 9783864441745 )

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Club history. (...) K. k. geographical society in Vienna. In: Das Vaterland , November 25, 1886, p. 7, center left
personal data
SURNAME Baumann, Oskar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Baumann, Oscar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian explorer, philosopher, ethnologist, geographer and cartographer
DATE OF BIRTH June 25, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1899
Place of death Vienna