Hermann Steudner

Hermann Steudner ( born September 1, 1832 in Greiffenberg in Silesia, † April 10, 1863 in Wau in Sudan ) was a German naturalist and explorer.

Steudner was born in the Silesian Greiffenberg the son of a canvas merchant, went to school in Görlitz and studied in Berlin and Würzburg, botany, mineralogy and medicine. In Berlin, Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, Heinrich Wilhelm Dove and Carl Ritter were among his teachers. In Würzburg, he was a friend of Ernst Haeckel, with whom he attended lectures together with Rudolf Virchow and August Schenk.

After he returned to Berlin, he became friends with Karl Heinrich Koch, was a member of the Society Nature Research- friends to Berlin and then settled by Heinrich Barth win to take part in a German expedition in the Nile countries under Theodore of Heughlin. The expedition had orders to investigate the fate of the lost African explorer Eduard Vogel.

From Alexandria Coming accompanied Steudner Heughlin 1861 Suez and on the ship across the Red Sea to Massawa. During the voyage, they conducted marine biological studies on the Dahlak Archipelago watching birds. The further journey led through the highlands of Abyssinia about Keren ( in the land of Bogo ) to Adua, where they met the botanist Wilhelm Schimper. From here, they turned to Gondar and south of about Magdala and until the war camp of the Abyssinian Emperor Theodore II ( Twodoros ) at Edschebet to ask for safe conduct. The return journey was from Lake Tana in the north-west to the Blue Nile and Khartoum, which they reached in July 1862.

Heughlin had been revoked due to the deviation from the planned route, the leader of the expedition. The forced break he used together with Steudner for a three-week journey through Kordofan. In 1863 they accompanied the expedition of the Dutch adventurer Alexandrine Tinne from Khartoum to the Bar el Ghazal and the lake Rek. Upon further approach to the west over the Djurfluss Steudner died in the village of Wau in 1863 of malaria.

Steudners careful reports in the Journal of General Geography 1862-1864 were of great importance as far from him traveled routes had previously been explored by any botanist. In Görlitz him was erected in honor of Edward Lürssen a monument. The dwarf desert gecko bears his name as well as some plant species. Karl Koch named after him, a genus in the family Araceae.

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