Paul-Émile Victor

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Drawing by Paul-Émile Victor

Paul-Émile Victor (born June 28, 1907 in Geneva , † March 7, 1995 in Bora Bora ) was a French polar explorer , ethnologist and writer . He initiated the French polar expeditions after the Second World War .

Life

Victor came from a Jewish family from Bohemia . His father, Erich Heinrich Victor Steinschneider, had only changed his name to Eric Victor in June 1907. Born in Geneva, Switzerland, Victor spent early childhood in nearby Saint-Claude , France , where his father owned a tobacco pipe factory . In 1919 the family moved to Lons-le-Saunier to set up another factory there. In 1925, Victor began to study engineering at the École Centrale de Lyon , but after three years without a degree he switched to the National Maritime School ( École nationale de navigation maritime ) in Marseille . In the Navy he also did his military service. In 1931 he acquired his pilot's license. In 1933 he received his license from the Institut d'ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris , now the Musée de l'Homme . Through his contact with Jean-Baptiste Charcot , whom he had met in 1933, he was able to organize his first polar expedition to Greenland in 1934/35 . In 1936 he crossed the Greenland ice sheet in a dog sled from west to east and then spent the winter with the Inuit on the east coast in Ammassalik . In 1939 he conducted ethnological studies in Lapland .

After the beginning of the Second World War he was drafted into the French Navy in Stockholm . Until the armistice of 1940 he also worked for the French secret service and as a liaison officer in Finland . In the autumn of that year he left France and came to the USA in July 1941 via Morocco and Martinique , where he carried out ethnological research. He joined the US Air Force and trained pilots and parachutists. Finally, he organized the planning and implementation of search and rescue operations for pilots who have disappeared in arctic regions. He also took American citizenship in addition to his French citizenship. After his discharge from the army, he married Éliane Decrais on July 30, 1946. In 1947, Jean-Christophe , who became a television presenter and specialist in geopolitics , was born. In 1952 the twins Daphné and Stéphane followed.

On February 28, 1947, Victor founded the Expéditions Polaires Françaises , of which he was director until 1976. Of the approximately 150 expeditions undertaken during this period, he personally led 17 to Adélieland in the Antarctic and 14 to Greenland in the Arctic. In 1956 he internationalized polar research by founding the Expedition Glaciologique International au Groenland (EGIG), in which France, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark and Belgium were also involved. Victor was the organizational and technical director of the two main campaigns 1959/60 and 1967/68.

In 1976 Victor retired. With his second wife, Colette Faure, whom he married in 1965, and their son Teva, he settled in French Polynesia on Motu Tane in the Bora Bora Atoll , where he continued to work as a writer. He died in 1995 at the age of 87.

Honors

The French Polar Institute ( Institut polaire français Paul-Émile Victor , IPEV ), Mount Victor and Victor Bay in Antarctica and some schools in France are named after Victor . In 1973 he received the Académie française prize (for his literary life's work) and the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor . On March 23, 1960, he was elected satrap of the Collège de 'Pataphysique . In 1989 the Paul-Émile Victor polar museum ( Musée polaire Paul-Émile Victor ) was founded in Prémanon (since 1998 Polarzentrum Paul-Émile Victor or Center polaire Paul-Émile Victor ). The Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography awarded Victor the Vega Medal in 1955 , and the German Society for Polar Research in 1967 the Weyprecht Medal . He is shown on the postage stamps of several countries.

Works (selection)

  • Boréal , PB Grasset, Paris 1938
  • Aventure esquimau , René Julliard, Paris 1949
  • Pôle Sud , Hachette, Paris 1958
  • Pôle Nord , Hachette, Paris 1963
  • Eskimos, nomades des glaces , Hachette, Paris 1972 (German: Eskimos. Nomaden der Arktis . Mondo Verlag, Lausanne 1972)
  • La Mansarde , Stock, Paris 1981, ISBN 2234019389
  • L'Iglou , Stock, Paris 1987, ISBN 273820130X
  • Mémoires d'un humaniste , Agep, Paris 1992, ISBN 2902634668

Films about Paul-Émile Victor

  • Les Quatre du Groenland , film about the 1938 expedition (30 minutes), by Fred Matter
  • Dans les pas de Paul-Emile Victor, l'aventure polaire , documentary (52 minutes), by Stéphane Dugast
  • Paul-Emile Victor, Voyage (s) d'un Humaniste , documentary by Aubin Hellot (1999)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thierry Fournier: Paul-Émile Victor, biography d'un explorateur polaire , thèse de l'École nationale des chartes, 2001 (French)
  2. ↑ Dietrich Möller: In Memoriam Paul-Emile Victor (PDF file; 240 kB). In: Polarforschung 64, 1994, pp. 135-136 (published 1996)

Web links

Commons : Paul-Émile Victor  - album with pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Victor, Paul-Émile
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French polar explorer, ethnologist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 28, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Geneva
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 1995
Place of death Bora Bora