Wilfred Thesiger

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Sir Wilfred Patrick Thesiger KBE , DSO (born June 3, 1910 in Addis Ababa , † August 24, 2003 in London ) was a British researcher and author of travelogues . His Arabic name was Mubarak bin London ("The Blessed One of London").

Life

He came from a noble family: his grandfather Frederic Augustus Thesiger, 2nd Baron Chelmsford, was a participant in the Ethiopia expedition of 1868 and was later commander-in-chief in the Zulu War ; his uncle Frederic John Napier, 3rd Baron Chelmsford , was Viceroy of India 1916–1921.

He was born in Addis Ababa , in what was then Abyssinia , the son of the British envoy Wilfred Gilbert Thesiger, and was educated at Eton College , which was followed by a degree in history from the University of Oxford . From 1930 Thesiger boxed in the university team and was their captain in 1933.

Thesiger visited Ethiopia again in 1930 at the invitation of Emperor Haile Selassie for his coronation . In 1933 he took part in an expedition of the Royal Geographical Society to explore the Awash River . During this expedition he was the first European to reach the Muslim Aussa Sultanate of the Afar people and visit Lake Abbe .

From 1935 he worked in the British political service in Sudan and was stationed in Darfur and on the Upper Nile . He took part in several companies of the Sudan Defense Force (SDF), in which he served with the beginning of the Second World War as well as Siegfried Ferdinand Nadel . In 1941 he took part with the Gideon Force founded by Orde Wingate in the fighting in the East African campaign against the Italian troops in occupied Ethiopia. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for the capture of the Italian garrison of Agibar .

He later served as an agent of the Special Operations Executive in Syria and under Major David Stirling in the Long Range Desert Group in North Africa. Thesiger was then used as a liaison officer for the special unit, the Holy Horde , which was formed from Greek officers . He reached the rank of major.

After 1945 he carried out expeditions to the Arabian Peninsula in the Rub al-Chali for the Desert Locusts Research Organization . One of the “reasons” for these expeditions was the search for the breeding area of ​​the grasshoppers that repeatedly haunted Africa. His travels took him to Iraq , Persia , Kurdistan , Abyssinia , Sudan, French West Africa , Pakistan and Kenya , where he mainly lived from 1968. In 1994 he returned to England. In 1995 he was knighted.

Thesiger is known for his travelogues. Arabian Sands (1959), published in Germany under the title The Fountains of the Desert , is about his travels in the Rub al-Chali desert between 1946 and 1950 and describes the dissolving culture of the Bedouins . The Marsh Arabs (1964) is about the traditional life of the marsh Arabs in southern Iraq.

Thesiger photographed extensively during his travels and donated his collection of 25,000 negatives to the Pitt Rivers Museum Oxford.

At the Al Jahili Fort in Al Ain there is a permanent exhibition entitled "Wilfred Thesiger and the freedom of desert" .

honors and awards

literature

Representations
  • Michael Asher : Thesiger - A Biography , Penguin, London 1995, ISBN 0-140147497 .
  • Alexander Maitland: Wilfred Thesiger: The Life of the Great Explorer , London [u. a.] 2011.
Works
  • Arabian Sands , German: With the Bedouins through the hinterland of Arabia . 1959.
  • The Marsh Arabs . Longmans, Green, London 1964; Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England 1967, ISBN 0-14-002573-1 .
Works in German translation
  • Wilfred Thesiger: The wells of the desert . Special edition. Malik, Munich March 2002, ISBN 3-89029-225-9 .
  • Wilfred Thesiger: My life in Africa and Arabia . Malik, Munich March 2004, ISBN 3-89029-273-9 .
  • Wilfred Thesiger: Desert, Swamp & Mountains. His travel reports from the Arab world . Frederking & Thaler, Munich November 2005, ISBN 3-89405-261-9 , ( National Geographic 261).
Others
  • Bruce Kirkby: In the empty neighborhood. On the camel through the Arabian desert . Preface by Wilfred Thesiger. Translated from the English by Maurus Pacher. Unabridged paperback edition. Piper, Munich a. a. April 2003, ISBN 3-492-23865-3 , ( Piper series 3865 A Malik book ).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Thesiger, Wilfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thesiger, Wilfred Patrick
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British explorer and explorer
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Addis Ababa
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 2003
Place of death London