Wilhelm Joest

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Wilhelm Joest (1891)

Wilhelm Joest (born March 15, 1852 in Cologne , † November 25, 1897 on the Banks Islands (Vanuatu) ) was a German scientist and world traveler.

Career

He was the grandson of the wealthy Cologne sugar manufacturer Carl Joest and grew up in a villa on Rosenallee (today Am Kurpark 7 ) built by his father Eduard Joest (1821-1892) in Godesberg . In 1831 Carl Joest had founded a branch of his Solingen company Schimmelbusch & Joest on the Holzmarkt . With his father-in-law Schimmelbusch, he exported steel goods to Brazil, for which he received cane sugar in return. He initially sold this to Holland, but then got into the sugar business himself. After just a few years, the company was the largest refinery in Cologne, and between 1839 and 1842 Carl Joest was even the largest taxpayer.

Joest studied in Heidelberg and Bonn and was a member of the Corps Guestphalia Heidelberg (1872) and Guestphalia Bonn (1875).

He studied natural sciences and languages ​​in Bonn, Heidelberg and Berlin before he started his world trips - financially supported by his parents.

to travel

At the age of 22, Wilhelm Joest traveled to the Orient and the North African coastal countries in 1874, and all of America from northern Canada to southern Argentina from 1876 to 1879, crossing some parts repeatedly and building a very rich ethnographic, anthropological and zoological collection. At the beginning of 1879 he went to Ceylon, from there traveled through India to the Himalayas, accompanied the British army in the Afghan war, then went to Burma and Siam, studied the wild peoples there on Borneo, Ceram and Celebes, fought in Achin with the Dutch against the rebels, traveled through Cambodia and the Philippines and lived for a long time among the wild tribes of Formosa. From Beijing he then went on a trip to Mongolia, then went to Japan, stayed on Jesus among the Aino and returned in 1881 from Vladivostok through Manchuria, Mongolia and Siberia to Germany, where he published his travel records: From Japan to Germany through Siberia (Cologne 1882, 2nd edition 1887) and Das Holontalo, a contribution to the knowledge of the languages ​​of Celebes (Berlin 1884). In 1883 he circumnavigated from Madeira all over Africa, studying South Africa in particular, and put his observations into the work Um Afrika (Cologne 1885). After that he lived in Berlin. Together with the orientalist Max von Oppenheim (1860–1946), he traveled to Spain and the Maghreb states in 1892. Here their ways parted. In 1896 he participated in one of Wilhelm bathing organized trip to Spitsbergen , where he on Danskoya with Salomon August Andrée met, who was waiting for good weather to his balloon to go to the North Pole.

Collections

His long research trips almost all over the world brought him well-founded ethnographic knowledge; he systematically collected a large number of ethnographic objects on all continents. On his last trip to the South Seas, he died of black fever ( leishmaniasis ) at the age of 45 after leaving Santa Cruz off the island of Ureparapara in the northeast of the New Hebrides . According to his will, his extensive ethnographic collection went to his sister Adele Rautenstrauch , who gave it to the city of Cologne in 1899. The collection was used in 1901 to establish the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum für Völkerkunde. Apart from a small but valuable collection of Benin antiquities, which Kommerzienrat Eugen Rautenstrauch donated to the city of Cologne in 1897, Wilhelm Joest's collections of around 3,400 objects form the basis of the museum. Particularly noteworthy is the collection from Santa Cruz, which is unparalleled in its size and relative completeness.

In 1900 Ms. Rautenstrauch donated 250,000 marks to the city as a share capital to build a museum for ethnology. At the same time, it is due to their initiative that from October 1, 1901, the museum was given its own administration and director. As early as 1906, the collections extended to most of the non-European living peoples and comprised around 18,500 items. The extraordinary increase compared to the basic stock from 1899 is primarily due to the many valuable gifts with which the Rautenstrauch family and their close relatives completed the museum.

Joest was a member of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory and bequeathed it 10,000 marks in addition to valuable books. In 1885 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . He was a member of the united Cologne Freemason Lodge Minerva to the patriotic association and Rhenana to humanity .

Honor

In Cologne's Lindenthal district , Wilhelm Joest's work was honored by naming Joeststrasse .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Association for Homeland Care and Local History Bad Godesberg eV (Ed.); Martin Ammermüller : Walk through Alt-Godesberg , Bonn-Bad Godesberg 2012, p. 12.
  2. ↑ Ulrich S. Soénius: New impulses in Cologne's economy through Protestant immigrants . ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 91 kB) 2002, p. 5 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kirche-koeln.de
  3. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 64 , 716; 10 , 571
  4. ↑ Arthur von Sachsenheim in: M. von Kimakowicz: Dr. med. Arthur von Sachsenheim's mollusc harvest in the northern Arctic Ocean on the west and north coast of Svalbard , p. 72
  5. ↑ Excerpt from the Kölnische Zeitung , evening edition of November 12, 1906 ( Memento of the original of October 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rjmkoeln.de
  6. ↑ Konrad Adenauer and Volker Gröbe: Streets and squares in Lindenthal , JP Bachem, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-7616-1018-1 , p. 80f.

literature

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Joest  - Collection of Images
personal data
SURNAME Joest, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ethnographer and world traveler
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH November 25, 1897
Place of death Banks Islands (Vanuatu)