Rudolf Lasarewitsch Samoilowitsch

Rudolf Samoilovich

Rudolf Samoylovich ( Russian Рудольф Лазаревич Самойлович ., Scientific transliteration Rudol'f Lazarevič Samojlovič ; born September 1, ^jul. / 13. September  1881 ^greg. In Azov , † 4. March 1939 in Leningrad , according to other sources in 1940 ) was a Russian or Soviet polar explorer and geologist .

Life

Early years

Samoilovich was born into a wealthy family in 1881. From 1900 he studied at the Royal Saxon Mining Academy in Freiberg . From 1905 he took an active part in the first revolutionary unrest in Russia , was arrested several times and finally exiled to Siberia . After his return he devoted himself to exploring the Arctic . In 1912 he took part in an expedition to Spitsbergen under the leadership of Vladimir Russanov to explore the natural resources. Samoilowitsch made detailed studies of the coal deposits on the Isfjord . Russanov then set out with 13 men on his plan to cross the Northeast Passage, while Samoyovich and two companions returned to Russia.

Until 1915 Samoilowitsch regularly spent the summer months on Spitzbergen and carried out geological surveys. In March 1920, he founded a company for the exploration of the Soviet polar regions, which later became the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute ( Russian Арктический и антарктический научно-исследовательский институт , ААНИИ ; English Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute , AARI was). In the following years he led expeditions to Novaya Zemlya and Karastraße (1921), Franz Josef Land (1923–1925, 1927), Wrangel Island (1924) and the New Siberian Islands (1927).

Rescue of the survivors of the airship Italia

When contact with Umberto Nobile and his airship Italia near Spitzbergen was lost on May 24, 1928 , the AARI initiated a rescue mission to which the three icebreakers Krassin , Malygin and Sedow were made available. Two weeks later, on June 16, Samoyilovich set out on board the Krassin . The survivors of the Italia had meanwhile been sighted near Foyn Island off the north-east coast of Svalbard, but no one had yet been able to get as far as them. First, Samoilowitsch went in search of Roald Amundsen , who had set out to rescue Nobile and who has since gone missing. On July 1, near the North Cape of Northeast Country and about 80 km from the Foyninsel away the rather battered by rudder and propeller damage has already been Krasin eventually stopped by thick pack ice. Samoyilovich then sent a Junkers flying boat , which a little later made out a group of survivors around 25 to 30 kilometers away. Finally, by the day after that, seven survivors of the Italia were taken on board, who were then brought into the Kongsfjord . From there, the Krassin went to Stavanger to have the necessary repairs carried out, but on the way Monte Cervantes had to provide help with 1500 people on board, which had leaked in the Recherchefjord. She was only able to leave the dock in Stavanger on August 24th. Seven days later, the expedition received news that a life raft and fuel tank had been sighted from Amundsen's flying boat. Since Amundsen could no longer be recovered alive in all probability, Samoilowitsch concentrated entirely on rescuing the other six members of the Italia expedition who were suspected to be on the wreck. On September 17, they were north of the North Cape at latitude 81 ° 47 'N, which no ship in this region had yet reached, but no trace of the missing was found. Continuing on an easterly course, the expedition arrived off the coast of Prince George Land on September 22, where Samoyilovich hoisted the Soviet flag and thus took possession of it for the Soviet Union; Prince Georg Land was also claimed by Norway at that time . He was then ordered to abandon the search and return to Leningrad .

After their return, the expedition members were celebrated as heroes. Samoyilovich was awarded the Order of the Red Labor Banner . Stalin had the budget of the AARI increased, which enabled several research stations to be set up in the Arctic. In 1930 he was replaced as director of the AARI by Otto Schmidt . In December 1932 the head office Nördlicher Seeweg ( Glavsevmorput , GUSMP for short ) was founded under Schmidt, into which the AARI was incorporated. Samoyilovich was reinstated as director of the AARI in 1932, but since he did not have good relations with Schmidt - he thought he was an upstart - he was passed over on several Soviet expeditions in the following years.

The Arctic voyage of the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin airship

Samoilowitsch (left), together with Hugo Eckener (July 1931)

The Aeroarctic was founded in Berlin in 1924 , a society that had set itself the goal of exploring the Arctic with the help of aircraft . In the absence of government support, however, there had been no specific company until the death of its founding president Fridtjof Nansen in May 1930. Under the new President Hugo Eckener , the head of the Deutsche Luftschifffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft , the plan arose to meet the Australian Hubert Wilkins' submarine Nautilus at the North Pole in July 1931 . Technical problems with the decrepit submarine made Eckener look for alternatives at short notice. When he learned that the Malygin was going to go on a study trip to Franz Josef Land at the beginning of July, negotiations with the Soviet government began. The changed plans now envisaged a meeting between the airship and the icebreaker in the Silent Bay ( Russian Бухта Тихая , Buchta Tichaja ) on Hooker Island . Samoilowitsch, who had headed the Aeroarctic Research Council since 1930, was appointed scientific leader of the expedition. The radio operator Ernst Krenkel and the meteorologist and inventor of the radiosonde Pawel Moltschanow (1893–1941) were also involved from the Soviet side, and the German meteorologist Ludwig Weickmann . As a representative of the American Geographical Society, Lincoln Ellsworth was also on board, who in 1926 had already flown over the pole with Amundsen and Nobile in the airship Norge .

The scientific program primarily provided for the photogrammetric recording and mapping of the still little-known Arctic regions flown over, meteorological observations, also through the use of radiosondes, and measurements of the earth's magnetic field . The latter in particular was a novelty. Geomagnetic measurements from the air had not yet been made in the Arctic. The airship LZ 127 rose on July 24, 1931 in Friedrichshafen and flew to Leningrad with a stopover in Berlin-Staaken . The actual Arctic voyage began here on July 26th with the flight to the Kanin Peninsula in the Barents Sea . From there it went north to Franz Josef Land , where the meeting with the Malygin took place, and then west to Severnaya Zemlya . The airship flew on to Cape Chelyuskin and across the Taimyr Peninsula to Dikson , from there to the North Cape of Novaya Zemlya and the coast of this double island via Kolgujew back to Leningrad, which was reached on the night of July 30th. In the Franz Josef Archipelago, it was possible to correct the existing maps several times, for example by exposing the Harmsworth and Albert Edward Islands as phantom islands .

Expeditions 1935–1937

From 1935, the ARI under Samoyovich organized a series of expeditions on board the icebreaker Sadko , which were supposed to advance as far north as possible and collect meteorological and oceanographic data. This was important for the northern sea route sought, as the climatic conditions in the Central Arctic Basin have a major influence on the conditions off the north coast of Russia. After the first expedition in 1935 was led by Georgi Uschakow , Samoilowitsch took over the leadership of the following two expeditions.

Samoilovich wanted to explore the area north of the New Siberian Islands . On the first expedition in 1936, however , the Sadko had to come to the aid of a ship trapped in the western Kara Sea on the outward journey , so that in the end it could only penetrate as far as Franz Josef Land . In 1937 he was able to explore the Laptev Sea north of the New Siberian Islands on the second expedition and carry out extensive investigations. Then the Sadko was ordered to Wilkizkistraße , where she was supposed to help the shipping traffic together with the icebreakers Malygin and Sedow . However, the ships themselves were trapped in the ice on the way there and subsequently drifted northwards. A total of 217 men and women, including Konstantin Badigin , were forced to spend the winter on their ships. The now 65-year-old Samoilowitsch, more a scientist than a seaman, initially did not want to take over command of the fleet in this situation, but was urged to do so by Schmidt and the two other captains. He was finally rescued by one of the first aircraft against his will.

Arrest and death

Samoilowitsch was given responsibility for the forced wintering of the icebreaker and 26 other ships in Wilkizkistraße . Soon after, he fell victim to Stalin's " Great Purge ". In March 1938 he was arrested by agents of the NKVD in a sanatorium and disappeared without any trial. He was shot in custody between 1939 and 1940, and his name was systematically deleted from all publications in the period that followed. It was not until 1957 that his daughter received a letter about the fate of her father in which he was posthumously rehabilitated.

Honors

The island of the same name belonging to the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago in the Kara Sea, an ice cap of the Karl Alexander Island in Franz Josef Land, a bay of Novaya Zemlya as well as the Samoyovich Nunatak and the Samoyovich Peninsula in the Antarctic are named after Samoilovich .

In 1929, Samoilowitsch was the first foreign scientist to receive the commemorative medal for the German Atlantic Expedition Meteor 1925–1927 from the Emergency Association of German Science .

Works

• SOS in the Arctic. The Krassin rescue expedition , Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin 1929

literature

• Dietmar Felden: A life for the Arctic. The North Polar Expeditions by Rudolf Samoilowitsch . Brockhaus, Leipzig 1986. ISBN 3-325-00109-2
• William James Mills: Exploring Polar Frontiers: A Historical Encyclopedia . tape 2 . ABC-CLIO, 2003, ISBN 1-57607-422-6 , pp. 575 f . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
• Umberto Nobile: Flights over the Pol , FA Brockhaus Verlag, Leipzig 1980, pp. 197-207 and pp. 214-216

Web links

Commons : Rudolf Lasarewitsch Samoilowitsch  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Rudolf Lasarewitsch Samoilowitsch in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Rudolf Lasarewitsch Samoilowitsch in the press kit 20th Century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Short biography for the 125th birthday on the homepage of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (Russian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Entry in the list of victims of the Stalinist terror on listmemo.ru , (accessed on March 13, 2013)
2. ↑ ^{a b} Mills (2003), p. 576
3. ^ Diedrich Fritzsche: Walther Bruns and the Aeroarctic . In: Polar Research . tape 88 , no. 1 , 2018, p. 7-22 , doi : 10.2312 / polarforschung.88.1.7 .
4. ↑ OM Raspopov, SN Sokolov, IM Demina, R. Pellinen, and AA Petrova: The first aeromagnetic survey in the Arctic: results of the Graf Zeppelin airship flight of 1931 (PDF; 9.8 MB). In: History of Geo- and Space Sciences 4, 2013, pp. 35–46
5. ^ Lincoln Ellsworth, Edward H. Smith: Report of the Preliminary Results of the Aeroarctic Expedition with "Graf Zeppelin." 1931 (PDF; 2.1 MB). In: Geographical Review 22, No. 1, January 1932, pp. 61-82, p. 66
6. ↑ Meteor Medal for Prof. Samoilowitsch ( Memento from January 9, 2019 in the Internet Archive ) In: Leipziger Jüdische Wochenschau , No. 15, April 12, 1929, p. 4.