Hendrikus Albertus Lorentz

Hendrikus Albertus Lorentz ( born September 18, 1871 in Oudewater, † September 2, 1944 in Klerksdorp, South Africa) was a Dutch expedition leader and diplomat in New Guinea in South Africa.

Life

Lorentz was the son of a Dutch Tabakanbauers in East Java, who had returned before its birth in the Netherlands. He studied law and biology at the University of Utrecht.

Lorentz participated in three expeditions to Dutch New Guinea in part, today's Indonesia in the western part of the island of New Guinea ( West Papua ). In 1903 he was able to attend the North New Guinea Expedition of the German geologist Carl Ernst Arthur Wichmann, during which he wrote his first trip report.

In 1907, he led his first expedition, called the South New Guinea expedition; 1909 to 1910 he was leader of a second expedition to southern New Guinea, which he recorded in a book. Both expeditions are referred to in the literature as Lorentz expeditions. All three expeditions were organized and funded by the Society for the Promotion of physical exploration of the Dutch colonies.

One of the rivers that rise in the mountains of New Guinea and open in the southern Arafura Sea was, during the Dutch colonial era, first called North River and later named after Lorentz. After the transfer, Dutch New Guinea to Indonesia almost all topographical indications of the Dutch past have been replaced. Since then, the Lorentz, leading to Teluk Flamingo ( Flamingo Bay ), the name Unir - also called Undir. The eponymous Lorentz National Park continues to bear his name: " Taman Nasional Lorentz ". He is since 1999 as a natural monument on the World Heritage List of UNESCO and thus part of the World Heritage Site.

After his travels to New Guinea Lorentz entered the diplomatic service of the Dutch government. After several years of diplomatic work in Copenhagen in 1916, he was vice-consul in South Africa's Cape Town. In 1921 he was appointed Consul General in Pretoria. Lorentz promoted in his tenure trade between the Netherlands and South Africa supported the Dutch in the immigration to South Africa. Later he held the post of Director of the Dutch cultural history institution in Pretoria and was chairman of the Netherlands -South Africa Committee ( " Comité Nederland - Zuid-Afrika "). In the years following his retirement in 1937 he lived with his wife and children on his farm in Klerksdorp.

Hendrikus Albertus Lorentz

Life

Further Reading