Otto Protzen

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Otto Protzen

Otto Protzen (born March 24, 1868 in Berlin ; † July 22, 1925 there ) was a German sailor , rower , writer, illustrator and landscape painter or eraser .

Life

Otto Protzen was the eldest son of a carpet manufacturer from Berlin's Stralau peninsula. After attending the Royal French Gymnasium in Berlin, which he graduated with "mediocre success" and a rather sluggish commercial training prescribed by his father, he studied at the Berlin Art Academy with Eugen Bracht and Hans Meyer (1846-1919) and was then for many years chairman of the Free Association of Graphic Artists V. in Berlin.

Otto Protzen was a member of the Seglerhaus am Wannsee association and won the Kaiser Wilhelm Cup for the first time at the Kieler Woche in 1900 as the helmsman of the Wannsee special class yacht . By the time he retired from regatta sailing in 1911, he had 110 victories. His friend, Kaiser Wilhelm II, presented him with the renowned Samoa Cup six times . After the first regatta off Marblehead in 1906, at which Protzen also won a prize, USA President Roosevelt invited him to breakfast. In 1922 Protzen was made an honorary member of the association.

For many years Protzen was the publisher of the magazine " Yacht ", which was first published in 1904 .

Protzen was also a member of the "Association of Touring Rowers Berlin" and befriended its founder Friedrich Eduard Keller . He went on many trips in a rowboat and painted or drew the motifs he found. He also designed and constructed his own rowing boats, which, like his own regatta sailors, had the Hamburg designer Max Oertz built.

In 1895 Protzen drove back in a sailed rowboat, one of the first made of the then new and expensive building material aluminum, from Berlin via the Havel and Elbe to the opening ceremonies of the Kiel Canal and via Lübeck, Wismar, Schwerin, Waren and Oranienburg . First trips to previously untapped rivers are on his account, e.g. B. 1890/92 together with Friedrich Eduard Keller the Wallensteingraben in Mecklenburg, 1892 the then still unregulated Ilmenau and 1893 the Lausitz Neisse from Forst im Einskuller.

In his autobiography Protzen suggests that he volunteered for the Landsturm in 1914 , although at 46 he was already too old for it. His stiff left leg and a hearing damage in his right ear that had occurred over the years made him unfit for military service.

After German troops occupied Romania during the First World War in autumn 1916 and the Danube was thus controlled by the Central Powers for almost its entire length , Protzen set off in a self-built boat that combined the properties of a canoe and a kayak as a "war correspondent for the Work behind the front ”to a Danube trip. It began in Donaueschingen in early summer 1917 and ended after four months in Brăila, Romania (the nearby Danube Delta biosphere reserve was closed to him because the front ran here). The book about this voyage, published in 1922, initiated the development of the Danube for water sports (forerunners such as the 1891 voyage on the Danube by Francis Davis Millet , Poultney Bigelow and Alfred Parsons were not known to Protzen). Today's Danube hiking tour Tour International Danubia is rooted in Protzen's preparatory journalistic work.

Hints in the foreword of his autobiography "Forty Years on the Water" suggest that Protzen lost all of his fortune in the inflation of the post-war years.

Otto Protzen died of cancer in 1925.

family

Protzen was married to Tilli Protzen, b. Lange, from Olpenitz . He lived with her and the children in a villa on Berlin's Wannsee . The marriage resulted in the children Else (born 1896), Hans (born 1897) and Anneliese (born 1905). His younger brother Walter Protzen was a co-founder of the "German Cruiser Yacht Association" in 1911, a successful cruiser and yacht designer.

Fonts

  • A trip to the Baltic Sea in Einskuller. Verlag A. Braun & Co. Berlin 1894, also published as a series of articles in the magazine “Wassersport” in 1894, 1895 and 1898; reprinted in the magazine "Seekajak":
    • Part 1: “Seekajak” 43/1994, pp. 63–64
    • Part 2: “Seekajak” 45/1994, pp. 51–56
    • Part 3: “Seekajak” 46/1994, pp. 60–63
    • Part 4: “Seekajak” 48/1995, pp. 62–64
  • A study trip. Three months in a rowboat on Germany's waters. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt Stuttgart and Leipzig 1900
  • Yacht building and yacht sailing. A guide to buying, maintaining and sailing small boats and yachts. Authors: Peter Haentjens and Alfred Techow, illustrated by Otto Protzen. (= Yacht Library, edited by the editors of the magazine "Die Yacht", Vol. II) Verlag Dr. Wedekind & Co. Berlin 1908
  • Thirty years on the water. From the logbooks and study folders of Otto Protzen. (= Yacht Library, edited by the editors of the magazine "Die Yacht", Vol. IV) Verlag Dr. Wedekind & Co. Berlin 1911
  • The art of sailing . Authors: Peter Haentjes and Dr. C. Hüttner, illustrated by Otto Protzen. (= Yacht Library, edited by the editors of the magazine "Die Yacht", Vol. IX) Verlag Dr. Wedekind & Co. Berlin 1914, reissued as a reprint, Salzwasser-Verlag Bremen 2010, ISBN 978-3-86195-324-1
  • Sailing on classic yachts. Berlin 1914, reprinted by the European University Publishing House Bremen / Oxford 2011, ISBN 978-3-86741-727-3
  • From the Black Forest to the Black Sea: a war trip in a kayak down the Danube. With an overview map and a kayak construction drawing. Georg Westermann Verlag Braunschweig / Hamburg 1922
  • Rowing - touring rowing and paddling (co-author: Robert Rauscher). With 7 construction drawings, 7 explanatory sketches and 20 illustrations. (= Westermanns Sportbücherei, Vol. 3) Georg Westermann Verlag Braunschweig / Hamburg 1923
  • Forty years on the water. From the logbooks and study portfolios of Otto Protzen. Georg Westermann Verlag Braunschweig / Hamburg 1924, reissued by Quick Maritim Medien Rechlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-9808910-4-2
  • The history of our sailing house. Self-published by the Seglerhaus am Wannsee Association in 1924, additional reprint under the title Herrensegler. The history of our sailing house. Book on Demand 2010, ISBN 978-3-8391-8342-7

Web links

Commons : Otto Protzen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Otto Protzen: From the Black Forest to the Black Sea. A war trip in a kayak down the Danube. With an overview map and a kayak construction drawing. Georg Westermann Verlag Braunschweig / Hamburg 1922, p. 196
  2. ↑ Otto Protzen: Thirty Years on the Water. From the logbooks and study folders of Otto Protzen. Publishing house Dr. Wedekind Berlin 1911, p. 35f.
  3. ^ Otto Protzen: gentlemen sailors. The history of our sailing house. Book on Demand 2010, ISBN 978-3-8391-8342-7 , pp. 88 f. and 260
  4. ^ Otto Protzen: gentlemen sailors. The history of our sailing house. Book on Demand 2010, ISBN 978-3-8391-8342-7 , pp. 264 f.
  5. ↑ Forty years on the water. From the logbooks and study portfolios of Otto Protzen. Quick Maritim Medien Rechlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-9808910-4-2 , pp. 233-269
  6. ^ Otto Protzen: gentlemen sailors. The history of our sailing house. Book on Demand 2010, ISBN 978-3-8391-8342-7 , p. 256
  7. ^ Otto Protzen: gentlemen sailors. The history of our sailing house. Book on Demand 2010, ISBN 978-3-8391-8342-7 , p. 67 f.
  8. ^ Otto Protzen: A study trip. Three months in a rowboat on Germany's waters. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt Stuttgart and Leipzig 1900
  9. ^ Friedrich Eduard Keller: Hip Hip Hurray! Straube's guide for water hikers on the waterways of Germany, part II. Geographical Institute and Map Publisher Julius Straube Berlin 1922, p. 175
  10. ^ Friedrich Eduard Keller: Hip Hip Hurray! Straube's guide for water hikers on the waterways of Germany, part II. Geographical Institute and Map Publisher Julius Straube Berlin 1922, p. 109
  11. ↑ “And then the great, the terrible war really came. You didn't need me for this craft. ”Forty years on the water. From the logbooks and study portfolios of Otto Protzen. Quick Maritim Medien Rechlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-9808910-4-2 , p. 343 - "Even to be shot to death, I seemed unsuitable to the military authorities." Forty Years on the Water 2011, p. 9
  12. ↑ Otto Protzen: From the Black Forest to the Black Sea. A war trip in a kayak down the Danube. With an overview map and a kayak construction drawing. Georg Westermann Verlag Braunschweig / Hamburg 1922, p. 194
  13. ↑ Forty years on the water. From the logbooks and study portfolios of Otto Protzen. Quick Maritim Medien Rechlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-9808910-4-2 , p. 344
  14. ↑ Otto Protzen: From the Black Forest to the Black Sea. A war trip in a kayak down the Danube. With an overview map and a kayak construction drawing. Georg Westermann Verlag Braunschweig / Hamburg 1922
  15. ↑ Otto Protzen: From the Black Forest to the Black Sea. A war trip in a kayak down the Danube. With an overview map and a kayak construction drawing. Georg Westermann Verlag Braunschweig / Hamburg 1922
  16. ↑ z. B: “So the foundation stone was laid for this work; like everything, made of paper today. It should by no means be humorous or even burlesque; but life can only be endured today if you look at it from the ridiculous side at least for a while. ”Forty years on the water. From the logbooks and study portfolios of Otto Protzen. Quick Maritim Medien Rechlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-9808910-4-2 , p. 10
  17. ↑ Forty years on the water. From the logbooks and study portfolios of Otto Protzen. Quick Maritim Medien Rechlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-9808910-4-2 , pp. 142, 287, 289, 301, 313, 341; Since, according to p. 313 and 341, the youngest daughter was nine years old at the beginning of the war in 1914, the age information given on the other pages of the older children can be used to calculate their years of birth.
  18. ↑ Call for the founding of a German cruiser yacht association, in: Die Yacht, 7th year (1911), No. 4, p. 79.
personal data
SURNAME Show off, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Protzen, Gottfried Carl Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sailor, rowers and landscape painter
DATE OF BIRTH March 24, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH July 22, 1925
Place of death Berlin