Wilczek Island
Template: Infobox Island / Maintenance / image missing
The Wilczek Island (Russian остров Вильчека, Ostrow Wiltscheka ) is the zweitsüdlichste island of the Franz -Josef- country ( south is just the Lamont - island) in the Arctic Ocean, and also the first island, which entered the Austria - Hungarian North Pole Expedition. You should not be with Wilczek Land, the second largest island in the same archipelago, confused. Both islands are named after Johann Nepomuk Graf Wilczek. The surface of the twelve -kilometer Wilczek Island is covered with ice. Like everywhere else in Franz Josef Land may be encountered on their polar bears.
History
On November 1, 1873, the newly discovered land was first entered. It was built on the Wilczek Island an approximately 100 centimeters tall stone man and left him a message to the world public about the discovery. The letter was deposited in a barrel and then covered with stones. On 5 August 1991, the Dagmar Aaen with Arved Fuchs reached the Wilczek Island became the first Western ship. The Fox Expedition ICESAIL found the stone man and the grave of the only victim of the payer Weyprecht expedition, Otto Krisch. Arved Fuchs contributed from the stone pyramid and came across the more than 100 year old document that was no longer readable, however. Only through the hard work of the Federal in Wiesbaden, it was possible to make the document readable. It actually came from the polar explorers Julius Payer and Carl Weyprecht and is now in the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven.
Arved Fuchs put in this August 5, 1991 also a document ( three A4 pages), tightly sealed in a plastic bottle into the stone man, in the upper third. The Steinmann was closed over the bottle and Arved Fuchs remarked in his diary: "We build the stone man back on exactly how we found it. Last we deposit in the upper part of a bottle with a note about our ICESAIL expedition and then seal it permanently. Who knows when the next visitor comes along here ... " The fox expedition could be in trouble, and search teams would then be pushed through this bottle on the right track.
In 2004 Helfried Weyer sought Wilczek Island for a day together with Reinhold Messner in vain for the grave - Krisch from. Messner concluded, both no longer existed, neither the stone man, nor the grave - Krisch. But Weyer did not give up and went again with a Russian icebreaker to Wilczek Island. He found the grave and the stone man, and the Russian Konstantin Pankov, belonging to the crew of the icebreaker, pushed 250 meters from the stone pyramid on a gray plastic bottle which lay in the snow and was bitten by a polar bear.
In April / May 2005, the payer Weyprecht memory expedition was carried out with a special travel permit to Franz Josef Land. The modern small expedition, consisting of the Austrians Christoph Höbenreich ( expedition leader ) and Robert Mühlthaler, the Russians Viktor Boyarsky and Nikita Ovsianikov and the Polar dog Nanuk, launched on the island Wilczek and crossed Franz Josef Land with ski and sled in the footsteps of Julius Payer, to celebrate the historic achievement of the pioneers.