Gertrude Blom
Gertrude " Trudi " Duby Blom - (* July 7, 1901 in Brodhüsi, Switzerland, † December 23, 1993 in San Cristóbal, Mexico) was a Swiss Socialist, photographer, anthropologist, environmentalist and journalist who five decades of her life, the Mayan has documented cultures of Chiapas in Mexico, especially the culture of the Lacandon. In 1991 she was awarded the UN organization UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) award Global 500 Award for their "merits to maintaining a healthy world."
Journalism and socialism
Gertrude Elizabeth Lörtscher was born on 7 July 1901 as the second of three children of the Protestant minister Otto Lörtscher in Brodhüsi in the Swiss canton of Bern. Her sister Johanna came to the world in 1895, her brother Hans Otto 1904. Parents and friends called her " Trudi ".
At the age of 17 years, Gertrude left her parents' house, got two years horticultural and made in Zurich with a degree in social work. She then spent a year at a Quaker family in England, and several months in the Italian city of Florence.
1925 had to leave and return to their home country because of their journalistic work for socialist newspapers in Switzerland had noticed the Italian fascists unpleasant Gertrude Lörtscher Italy. On 20 June 1925 she married in Lausanne 25- year-old Kurt Düby ( 1900-1951 ).
From 1925 Gertrude Düby worked as a secretary of the Women's Section of the German SPD, for which she traveled to Germany in 1928. On 3 September 1930, she divorced her husband because of political and private differences of Kurt Düby. In 1933, she entered into a sham marriage with the German workers Otto Piel ( 1906-1999 ) to obtain German citizenship.
After coming to power in 1933, Gertrude Düby could not continue her political work in Germany and had to emigrate. She organized the World Women's Congress in Paris and the United States and engaged until 1939 in the resistance movement against the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.
1940 Gertrude Düby was admitted into the French internment camp de Rieucros at Mende in Lozère, France could not be outside with the help of the Swiss Embassy on March 6, 1940 and emigrated first to the U.S., a few months later to Mexico, where she is now " Duby " called. During these years she was associated with the German journalist Rudolf Feistmann.
Photography and Anthropology
In Mexico, Gertrude Duby worked as a social worker and a journalist for the Ministry of Labour and examined the working conditions of factory workers. Second hand she bought her first camera and began as an expedition escort 1943 to document the culture and landscape of the Chiapas Indians. On their second expedition to the Lacandon Indians she met the Danish archaeologists and cartographers Frans Blom (1893-1963) know.
The couple married on February 16, 1950 and moved to San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas. There they bought a semi- ruined seminary, restored it and named it because of the similarity with their family name " Na Bolom " ( "Jaguar" ).
In order to finance their expeditions into the rain forest, they took paying guests in the Casa Na Bolom on, and by and by Na Bolom developed, also because of the cooking skills of " Doña Trudi ", a popular meeting place for visitors from around the world, including archaeologists major U.S. universities and personalities such as Diego Rivera and Henry Kissinger.
1947 Gertrude Duby traveled for a few days back to Europe to participate in Germany on building a new society in the Soviet zone of occupation, but returned after a few days back to Mexico. Until the death of Frans Blom on June 24, 1963, the pair took over again expeditions in the tropical forest in search of long-lost Mayan ruins, and on these expeditions originated those documentary footage of the Lacandon, the Gertrude on a par with leading documentary photographers such as Laura Gilpin, Dorothea Lange and Eugene Smith presented.
Conservation
The systematic deforestation of the Lacandon forests by logging companies, new settlers and the Mexican government gave their lives another twist. As an environmental activist, she has traveled since the 1970s the world to draw attention with their documentary photos on the death of the tropical forest. In three languages , she wrote hundreds of articles in order to fight against the policies of the Mexican government. In 1975 she founded a nursery that still gives free today native trees if they are planted in the state of Chiapas. "I am without hope, but I plant more trees ," she said.
In 1983 published The Center for Documentary Photography, Duke University (USA), her documentary photographs in the band Gertrude Blom - Bearing Witness. In one of her most powerful essays, The Jungle is burning, she writes: "If mankind Continues abusing the planet as we are today, the effects in the near future will be far worse than the devastation did would be Caused by any atomic bomb. " - " If man this planet continues as abused as he does now, the consequences in the near future will be far more terrible than any devastation that can cause a nuclear bomb. "
At the age of 92 years Gertrude Duby Blom, died on 23 December 1993 in San Cristóbal. Casa Na Bolom is since then as a charitable foundation La Asociación Cultural Na Bolom AC continued and supported in their sense continue the preservation of the Lacandon forests and their inhabitants.