Richard Parkinson

Richard Parkinson

Richard Parkinson (* 1844 in Augustenborg on the island of Alsen , Denmark; † 1909 ) was a German South Seas explorer and colonist . He was the son of an English coachman who worked for a Danish nobleman. In 1875 he went to Samoa as a representative of the Hamburg trading company JC Godeffroy & Son , where he married Phoebe Forsayth. This was the sister of Emma Forsayth and he took over the management of their companies in 1882. He then settled on the Gazelle Peninsula in New Pomerania ( New Britain ). From there he undertook larger and smaller trips through the Bismarck Archipelago , to the Solomon Islands and to New Guinea , which were part of the German colony of German New Guinea .

His main work, Thirty Years in the South Seas , appeared in several editions (first published in 1907 and 1911 by Bernhard Ankermann , then edited in 1926 by August Eichhorn ). It describes in detail New Pomerania with the island groups Neulauenburg ( Duke of York Islands ), Neumecklenburg ( New Ireland ) and Neuhannover ( Lavongai ), St. Matthias Islands , the Admiralty Islands and the German Solomon Islands, as well as secret societies , totemism , Masks and mask dances, legends and fairy tales of the region and the languages ​​of the local population.

Works

• In the Bismarck Archipelago. Leipzig: Brockhaus 1887 ( online ; repr. 2006 in Verlag Fines Mundi, Saarbrücken)
• Thirty years in the South Seas. Country and people, customs and traditions in the Bismarck Archipelago and on the German Solomon Islands. Edited by Dr. B. Ankermann, assistant director at the Royal Museum of Ethnology in Berlin. Strecker & Schröder, Stuttgart 1907 ( online ; new edition ibid. 1911; 2nd edition edited and edited by Prof. Dr. August Eichhorn , ibid. 1926)
• South Sea Islanders' superstition and magic. Ensslin & Laiblin, Reutlingen 1932

literature

• H. Founder: Dream of the South Seas. Back then. The magazine for history and culture, issue 9/2008, p. 23

Web links

• Literature by and about Richard Parkinson in the catalog of the German National Library
• Catalog of the library of the German Colonial Society in the City and University Library Frankfurt a. M. (PDF; 5.9 MB)
• Short biography
• Reference to the origin in: The "Atlas" - Diercke and his family in Schleswig and in the South Seas in Schleswig City History 2005 , pages 121-133, Chapters A to D and F. (See under H. Relatives in the South Seas there c) The Melanesian bloodline of the Duke of Augustenburg, the grandfather of Nellie Parkinson )
• Christiane Groeben: Impact of Travels on Scientific Knowledge: Ralum (New Britain) : A Research Station (1894-1897) sponsored by the Naples Zoological Station . Proceedings of the California Academy of Science, Vol. 55, Suppl. II, No. 6, pp. 57–76, November 19, 2004. (Text with details on biography and collaboration with Anton Dohrn .)