Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay
Nikolai Nikolayevich Miklucho - Maklai (also Nikolai Miklouho - Maclay; Russian Николай Николаевич Миклухо - Маклай, scientific transliteration Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklucho - Maklaj; * 5 Julijul / July 17 1846greg in Jasykowo near the city of Novgorod, .. † 2 Apriljul. / April 14 1888greg. St. Petersburg ) was a researcher, artist and humanist, and is known in addition to its biological and zoological works primarily as an anthropologist and explorer of New Guinea.
Life
His father was an engineer and was owned by a young Russian noble family - from Catherine the Great job created hereditary nobility. Another ancestor had immigrated from Scotland to Russia - that's why the second surname Maclay. May anyway be argued about the spelling of his name: from Miklouho - Maclay on Miklukho - Maclay, Mikloucho - Maclay, Miklukho - Maclaj to Nicholas Maclay all possible spellings in use.
Nikolai was eleven years old when his father died and the family impoverished. A 1863 study course in physics and mathematics in St. Petersburg had to be canceled because the young Nikolai participated in illegal political meeting students. Miklucho - Maklai got Studierverbot and went to Germany, where he studied in Heidelberg, Leipzig and Jena philosophy and medicine at the same time and worked to survive.
The nineteen year old fell on the well-known naturalists and Darwinists Ernst Haeckel, who took him as a research assistant on an extended trip to Madeira, the Canary Islands and Morocco. In Jena Miklucho - Maklai continued his studies in zoology and botany, and in 1867 undertook a trip to Sicily and 1869 as a Muslim disguised his first independent trip to the Red Sea and into Arabia.
About Constantine Opel, he returned to St. Petersburg and worked as an assistant of Karl Ernst von Baer, who also Friedrich Engels influenced darwin with his critical views of the equality of men. There he was also a book by the German researcher Otto Finsch South Seas in the hands, which inspired him for the strange and almost unexplored island of New Guinea.
With difficulty he brought to the center for a two-man expedition and left in October 1870 the Russian corvette Vityaz the port Kronstadt. The trip lasted a year and led to Brazil and Chile in the South Seas. After short stays on Easter Island, Tahiti and Samoa sat Captain Nasimov the intrepid explorers on 20 September 1871 in the Astrolabe Bay on the north coast of New Guinea, near the present town of Madang from, on a piece of land that no white man had ever set foot. Here he was 15 months for only accompanied by his fearful and pessimistic servant, the Swedish sailor Olsson.
From 1873 to 1875 conducted research Miklucho - Maklai inside the Malay Peninsula
Miklucho - Maklai is still a legend in Papua New Guinea. He fearlessly met the alleged human meat-eating natives and has been called the "moon man " known - the Papuans had never seen a white man, and believed that he had his supernatural power from the moon god. Miklucho - Maklai became immortal demigod for the Papuans, and he promoted by forces belief in his magical powers. Even today Miklucho - Maklai famous as " the moon man " in his native Russia.
In Australia it is also known as " the white Papuans ". After a further stay from 1876 to 1877 in New Guinea in 1878 he came to Australia and settled there. With its almost namesake Macleay he published three scientific papers and opened the first marine biological station in Australia. But he was less known to the public through his pioneering work on New Guinea, but more. By the way, as he campaigned for the rights of indigenous people and the role of the whites looked critically New Guinea, he attended twice.
He wrote to the British and Russian government to prevent them from further colonization of New Guinea. In 1881 he created a plan which has not yet colonized part of the island should be governed by a " Grand Council of the natives " ( Native Great Council), whose advisor and ambassador he wanted to be.
1884 but the disaster came from a page to which he had not thought of. The German anthropologist Otto Finsch - precisely those whose book had inspired him for Guinea - ended up in the Astrolabe Bay, pretended to be a friend or even brother of Miklucho - Maklai and took the country for Germany in possession. Germany was on the hunt for its own colonial empire and took what the older colonial powers had left left. By the end of 1884 the entire eastern New Guinea was divided between England and Germany - the West New Guinea was already long Dutch.
After the Czar had given him permission, married Miklucho - Maklai in the same year Margaret Emma Robertson, the daughter of a high Australian politician who, incidentally, was against the marriage to the poor Russians. With his two sons, the young family moved to Russia in 1887, where Maklai a year later, died at the age of 42, from a rare disease which he had contracted in the tropics.
Some contemporaries speculated that he kept only hidden. For example, the University of Melbourne believes, based on documents in their possession, that he died on 1 January 1936 at the age of almost ninety years in Melbourne while on the website of the University of Sydney, the generally accepted date of death is 1888 ( see links).
His wife, in any event, who chiseled on his grave stone in St Petersburg: "Nothing but death can separate us ," and returned to Australia. Miklucho - Maklai had three grandchildren and several great-grandchildren, one of whom was an astronomer and named a star after his great-great grandfather.
After Miklucho - Maklai the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences is named.