Peter Freuchen

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Peter Freuchen, 1921

Lorentz Peter Elfred Freuchen (born February 20, 1886 in Nykøbing Falster , Denmark , † September 2, 1957 in Anchorage , Alaska ) was a Danish polar explorer and writer . Peter Freuchen founded the North Greenlandic trading post Thule together with Knud Rasmussen and participated in several arctic expeditions.

Life

Peter Freuchen's parents were the businessman Lorentz Bentson Freuchen and his wife Friderikke, nee. Rasmussen. He was the oldest of six children. After attending school, he began studying medicine in Copenhagen in 1904. In 1906 he took part as a stoker and meteorological assistant in the Danmark expedition led by Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen to northeast Greenland. The expedition's meteorologist was Alfred Wegener .

In 1909 he returned to Denmark and began working as a journalist for the left-wing liberal magazine Politiken . He befriended Knud Rasmussen , and together they gave lectures on Greenland . Together they came up with the plan to establish a trading post in North Greenland in order to deliver the goods they need at fair prices to the Polareskimo as well as to explore the area and assert Danish sovereignty claims. In 1910 they traveled to North Greenland with their first goods and set up their station in Uummannaq in North Star Bay , where a mission station had also been established the year before. At Freuchen's suggestion, the station was given the mythical Greek name Thule . In 1911 Freuchen married the Inughuit woman Navarana, a sister of Inuutersuaq Ulloriaq (1906–1986).

In 1912 Freuchen and Rasmussen undertook the first of a total of seven so-called Thule expeditions . Together with two Inuit they crossed the ice sheet in order to find the polar explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen , who was believed to be lost, in East Greenland and to map the Peary Channel . Mikkelsen had by now returned to civilization and the Peary Canal turned out to be nonexistent. In 1913 Freuchen returned to Denmark for five weeks, but spent the following years as a station administrator in Thule. In 1916 his son Merĸusâĸ Kaivigánguaĸ Kilemeĸ Angutdluk Freuchen (1916–1962) was born, in 1918 his daughter Pipaluk (1918–1999).

In December 1919 Freuchen visited his family in Denmark with his wife and children, where he worked as a lecturer, but also fell seriously ill with the Spanish flu, which was rampant at the time, and had to spend weeks in hospital.

In preparation for the fifth Thule expedition that Knud Rasmussen had planned for a long time, he returned to Thule with his wife and son in the summer of 1920, but traveled to Denmark again in the autumn with stays in South Greenland. In May 1921 he traveled to Greenland again to meet Knud Rasmussen and to take part as a cartographer and scientist in the Thulee expedition, which, under Rasmussen's direction , wanted to explore the Eskimos in Canada and Alaska from Hudson Bay . His wife Navarana was supposed to accompany him and work as a seamstress for the expedition, but died of the flu on the way in Upernavik .

In the course of the fifth Thule expedition, Freuchen made many trips in the Hudson Bay area in 1921 and 1922 and, together with Therkel Mathiassen (1892-1967), mapped parts of Southampton Island , the east coast of the Melville Peninsula and large areas of the northern Baffinland . In January 1923, his left foot, which had to be amputated, froze to death at a temperature of −54 degrees Celsius. In the spring of 1924 he traveled back to Denmark by dog sled and ship via Baffinland and Greenland, where he married his childhood friend Magdalene Vang Lauridsen (1881–1960) in November of that year.

Peter Freuchen with guests on Enehøje

In 1926 he bought the small island of Enehøje near Nakskov off Lolland . The farm was provided by an administrator with moderate success, while Freuchen was active as a journalist, speaker, filmmaker and writer. He has written novels - most of which are set in Greenland and Canada - as well as non-fiction, travel stories, and biographies and autobiographies. All of his works are very humorous and show his deep attachment to the Eskimos as well as a critical point of view towards ecclesiastical and secular dignitaries.

In 1927 his foot finally had to be amputated, which made him unsuitable for further polar expeditions. In 1932 and 1933 he worked in Hollywood and Alaska on the film adaptation of his novel Eskimo , including as an actor. The film received good reviews and an Oscar for editing .

Freuchen has been taking in refugees from Germany on its conveniently located island since the mid-1930s. After the occupation of Denmark by German troops in 1940, he also helped the refugees to Sweden . Freuchen was arrested and sentenced for his resistance activities. However, he managed to escape to Sweden. His books have not been published in Germany since 1933 and only appeared again after the war. His marriage ended in divorce in 1944, and a year later he married the fashion illustrator Dagmar Cohn (1907–1991).

Peter Freuchen with his wife Dagmar Cohn in the early 1950s

After the war, Freuchen lived in New York - in the middle of Manhattan  - and had a summer home in Connecticut . He worked mainly as a UN correspondent for Politiken and Danish magazines in the US, but continued to write books. In 1956 he won a fortune in the first major US quiz show "The $ 64,000 Question" by correctly answering 17 arctic-related questions.

In September 1957 he died during a trip that he and the Norwegian-American aviation pioneer Bernt Balchen , the Australian polar explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins and the American Admiral Donald MacMillan (1874-1970) - all of whom were Arctic veterans - by plane from Alaska over the North Pole to Thule, suffered a stroke. His ashes were scattered on Thulefjell .

In 1986, a hundred years after his birth, the asteroid (3369) Freuchen was named after him. The Royal Danish Geographical Society awarded him the Hans Egede Medal in 1921.

Works by Peter Freuchen (selection)

  • The Eskimo . 1928
  • The northern right whale . 1930
  • Ivalu . 1931
  • My Greenlandic youth . 1937
  • Life goes on . 1941
  • The Book of the Seven Seas . 1958

Peter Freuchen's memorabilia can be found in the Thule Museum in Qaanaaq .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eskimo in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  2. ↑ Dagmar Freuchen-Gale; Artist and Illustrator, 83 . In New York Times , March 22, 1991
  3. ^ Sofus Christiansen: Det Kongelige Danske Geografiske Selskab. De første 125 in 1876-2001 . Det Kongelige Danske Geografiske Selskabs, 2005, ISBN 87-87945-74-6 , p. 185 (Danish).
personal data
SURNAME Freuchen, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Freuchen, Lorentz Peter Elfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish polar explorer and writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 20, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Nykøbing Falster , Denmark
DATE OF DEATH 2nd September 1957
Place of death Anchorage