Oscar Baumann

Oscar Baumann ( born June 25, 1864 in Vienna, † October 12, 1899 ) was an Austrian explorer, philosopher, anthropologist, geographer and cartographer.

Training

Oscar Baumann attended secondary school and high school in Vienna, heard geographical and natural history colleges at the University of Vienna and studied at the Military- terrain recording Geographical Institute.

Research trips

Even as a 19 -year-old traveled Baumann yet unexplored territories of Montenegro, in particular the Durmitor group. The studies brought cards and caused its inclusion in the Austrian Congo Expedition (1885-1887) under the direction of Oskar Lenz. While Baumann had to return early due to illness, yet he managed to first useful mapping of the Congo River.

1886 Baumann traveled the island of Fernando Poo, whose ethnology and geography he explored. Back in Europe he received his doctorate in 1888 in Leipzig as a doctor of philosophy.

In subsequent years (1888 ) he explored on the side of the German Hans Meyer East Africa and helped with the colonization of German East Africa with. He traveled widely in the present-day Tanzania. In particular, he explored Usambara, where, however, he got together with Hans Meyer in the hands of the Arabs Buschiri leader, was put in chains and was released only after payment of a ransom.

His cartographic and ethnographic records were for the rapidly following economic development of the country is invaluable.

In 1889, Baumann went again to Montenegro and provided for the cartographic recording of the central massif.

In January 1890, Baumann completed then the exploration Usambaras on behalf of the German East Africa Company and then toured the Pare Mountains to Mount Kilimanjaro and to North Useguha. Here he made, among other studies for the planned rail link thong Korogwe.

The sources of the Nile

After he returned in December 1890 to Europe, he came to pass in 1891 on behalf of the anti-slavery committee again to East Africa. Baumann's most famous undertaking was the so-called " Maasai Expedition", with 200 attendants from the coast to Victoria and then far led him from 1892 (17 January ) to 1893 for Lake Tanganyika and in the unexplored kingdoms of Burundi and Rwanda, where he was received as the first Europeans. The main result of the expedition was the cartographic recording the Maasai Steppe and Lakes region. In the course of this undertaking Baumann discovered the lakes Eyassi and Manyara, Ngorongoro Crater and the Baumann- Bay in Lake Victoria.

1893 reached Baumann also the first European to the source of the Kagera Nile on Luvironza that corresponds to the actual source of the Nile. The exact geographical definition of this source of the Nile, however, was made ​​only in 1937 by the German Burkhart Waldecker. On February 25, 1893 Baumann reached the coast again.

1895 Baumann traveled on behalf of the sugar syndicate East Africa and took the lower reaches of the Pangani up to its cases. 1896 Baumann was appointed Austro-Hungarian Consul in Zanzibar, but had just three years later compete due to an infectious disease, the return trip to Austria, where he worked on the consequences - only 35 years old - died. Baumann was buried in a crypt at the Salzburg municipal cemetery.

In 1902 in Vienna Landstrasse ( 3rd district ), the Baumann street named after him.

Works

  • Contributions to the Ethnology of the Congo. Vienna ( 1877)
  • Fernando Po and Jack. Vienna ( 1888)
  • In German East Africa during the uprising. Vienna ( 1890)
  • Usambara. Berlin ( 1891)
  • Map of the northeastern German East Africa. Berlin ( 1893)
  • By Massailand the source of the Nile. Berlin ( 1894)
  • The cartographic results of the Maasai expedition. In: Peter 's Geographical releases, result booklet 111, Gotha (1894 )
  • The Zanzibar archipelago. 3 issues Leipzig ( 1896-1899 | 99)
  • African sketches. Berlin ( 1900). ISBN 9783864441745 (reprint of the original from 1900. Saltwater -Verlag, 2011)
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