Xavier Mertz

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Xavier Guillaume Mertz (born October 6, 1882 in Basel ; † January 7, 1913 in Georg-V-Land , Antarctica ) was a Swiss researcher who was mainly known as an expedition member under Douglas Mawson with the Aurora .

Xavier Mertz (around 1911)

Life

He had academic degrees from the universities of Leipzig and Bern (Dr. jur.), Was a Swiss master in skiing and also a successful mountaineer .

Mertz was a member of the Australian Antarctic Expedition under Douglas Mawson from 1911 to 1914. The main task of this expedition was the mapping of the Antarctic coast from the Oates coast to the Queen Mary coast . The base was on Adelie land ; Together with Belgrave Edward Sutton Ninnis, Mertz was responsible for the Greenland sled dogs .

On November 10, 1912 Mawson, Ninnis and Mertz left the base to explore the King George V country . When you came across the Ninnis glacier , which was later named after him, Ninnis fell into a crevasse. Six dogs, a large part of the food and other important items were lost with him. The two survivors only had food for ten days, but were 315 miles from camp. To survive, Mawson and Mertz killed the dogs to eat. On January 1, 1913, Mertz complained of stomach ache, then fell into disrepair and had to be transported by sledge from Mawson. 100 miles from the rescue camp, Mertz fell into delirium and died.

The main cause of death is assumed to be the result of vitamin A poisoning ( hypervitaminosis A ), which he contracted through eating the dog's liver. A more recent article doubts fatal hypervitaminosis and hypothesizes that the organism of the man, who had previously been a vegetarian and was under severe psychological stress, could not have tolerated the switch to a purely meat-based diet that led to ketosis, although the author has a verifiable one Mechanism of action does not describe. The objection was made that Mertz had been eating just as rich in meat as the other expedition participants for a year and a half before his death.

The Mertz Glacier and the Mertz-Ninnis Valley lake ditch not far from the glacier were named after him.

Works

  • The license under patent law, in particular the license obligation . Stämpfli, Bern 1907 (also dissertation, University of Bern)

literature

  • Anton Holzer: Journey of No Return . In: Photo history. Contributions to the history and aesthetics of photography , vol. 23 (2003), vol. 90, pp. 21–37
  • Martin Riggenbach: Almost all mountains in Switzerland. Xavier Mertz, skier, adventurer, photographer . In: Photo history. Contributions to the history and aesthetics of photography , vol. 23 (2003), vol. 90, pp. 39–42.
  • Douglas Mawson: The Home of the Blizzard , Vol. I and Vol. II , William Heinemann, London 1915 (in English, accessed May 26, 2010).
  • Jost Auf der Maur, Martin Riggenbach: Xavier Mertz, missing in the Antarctic: The Diary. The pictures. Real time, Basel 2013, ISBN 978-3-905800-74-6 .

Web links

Commons : Xavier Mertz  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 1914, newspaper article about Xavier Mertz South Pole research
  2. ^ J. Cleland and RV Southcott: Hypervitaminosis A in the Antarctic in the Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1914: a possible explanation of the illness of Mertz and Mawson . In: Med. J. Aust. 1, 1969, pp. 1337-1342 (Eng.)
  3. ↑ DJ Shearman: Vitamin A and Sir Douglas Mawson . In: Brit. Med. J. 1, 1978, pp. 283-285 (Eng.)
  4. ↑ Denise Carrington-Smith: Mawson and Mertz: a re-evaluation of their ill-fated mapping journey during the 1911–1914 Australasian Antarctic Expedition . In: Med. J. Aust. 183, 2005, pp. 638-641 (Eng.)
  5. ↑ Elizabeth Leane, Helen Tiffin: [1] . In: Australian Humanities Review 51, 2011, pp. 185-199
personal data
SURNAME Mertz, Xavier
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mertz, Xavier Guillaume (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss polar explorer
DATE OF BIRTH October 6, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH January 7, 1913
Place of death Antarctic