Hermann Detzner
Encyclopedia
Hermann Philipp Detzner (16 October 1882 – 1 December 1970) was an officer in the German colonial security force (Schutztruppe
) in Kamerun
and German New Guinea
, as well as a surveyor, an engineer, an adventurer, and a writer.
In early 1914, the German government sent Detzner to explore and chart the interior of Kaiser-Wilhelmsland
, the imperial protectorate on the island of New Guinea. When World War I broke out in Europe, he was well into the interior and without radio contact. He refused to surrender to Australian troops
when they occupied German New Guinea, concealing himself in the jungle with a band of approximately 20 soldiers. For four years, Detzner and his troops provocatively marched through the bush, singing "Watch on the Rhine
" and flying the German Imperial flag. He led at least one expedition from the Huon Peninsula
to the north coast, and a second by a mountain route, to attempt an escape to the neutral Dutch colony
to the west. He explored areas of the Guinean interior formerly unseen by Europeans and surrendered in full dress uniform, flying the Imperial flag, to Australian forces in January 1919.
Detzner received a hero's welcome when he returned to Germany. He wrote a book about his adventures—Four Years Among the Cannibals in the Interior of German New Guinea under the Imperial Flag, from 1914 until the Armistice—that achieved notoriety in Great Britain and Germany, entered three printings, and was translated into French, English, Finnish and Swedish. He received a position in the Imperial Colonial Archives, and appeared frequently on the lecture circuit throughout the 1920s. In the late 1920s, scientific portions of his book were discredited. In 1932, he admitted that he had mixed fact and fiction and, after that time, eschewed public life.
, in the Bavarian Palatinate, a cultural, economic, and historical center on the Rhine River. His father, Johann Philipp Detzner (12 July 1846–1907), received his degree from Heidelberg University and was licensed to practice by the Kingdom of Bavaria
in 1867; Detzner's father pioneered innovations in dental prosthetics. Hermann Detzner was trained as a topographer, surveyor, and an engineer, and received his promotion to Fahnrich
in the 6 Infantry Regiment (Prussian), 2nd Pioneer Battalion, in February 1902.
in 1908 and 1909 and again in 1912–1913. He and one Captain Nugent, Royal Artillery
, identified and marked the frontiers of Kamerun and explored the Niger
valley. Detzner later published a paper on the marking of the boundary.
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Navigators charted the coastline of the northern and eastern portions of New Guinea in the early 17th century and, later in the century, British Admiralty navigators named the visible mountain ranges. Most German surveying efforts had focused on coastal regions and river basins, where Germans had established plantations, leaving the interior unexplored. In late 1913, the Imperial Colonial office appointed Detzner to lead an expedition to survey the border between the British protectorate, called Papua
, and the German territory, called Kaiser-Wilhelmsland
, and to survey and map the interior.
Detzner's mission was also to be the first serious attempt to explore the unknown interior and to evaluate and describe its contents. The boundary between Papua and Kaiser Wilhelmsland had been broadly established by a joint British-German expedition in 1909, but the interior had not been mapped and the German colonial administration maintained that the boundary was imprecise. Since then, Papuan gold prospectors may have crossed into the German territory which, from the German perspective, made the accuracy of the border essential. Detzner had had experience in joint operations in Kamerun in 1907–08 and could be expected to understand the challenges faced by the previous commission; he had a reputation as a methodical and precise engineer. Although small, he was tough and wiry, extremely focused and determined, and seemed like the right man for the job.
on New Pomerania (now New Britain
). In February, he began his expedition into Kaiser-Wilhelmsland
. His survey immediately revealed inaccuracies in the 1909 joint survey; by March, Detzner had concluded that the border corridor was already showing a discrepancy of more than 650 metres (2,133 ft) from the 8°0'S parallel
. The discrepancy increased the further west he traveled, revealing a widening wedge in the boundary as it was agreed upon, and as it was marked. The discrepancy favored German interests.
He was well into the interior when, on 4 August 1914, Britain declared war on Germany. As World War I spread to the Pacific, Australian troops
invaded German New Guinea, taking the German barracks in Herbertshöhe (Kokopo
) and forcing the defending German colonial troops to capitulate on 21 September after their defeat at Bita Paka
. At the beginning of October, still unaware of the state of war that now existed between his country and the Commonwealth
, Detzner hiked toward a temporary camp, expecting to find there his second in command, a non-commissioned officer named Konradt. Instead he was met by a messenger sent by Konradt and handed a note that Konradt had found in the hand of a dead native; the note, written by the Australian commander, informed him of the state of war between Germany and Great Britain, and advised him to surrender. Detzner was horrified to discover, he later wrote, that while he was safe at his base camp in the vicinity of Mount Chapman, in an idyllic setting filled with flowers, his fellow Germans were dying at Bita Paka.
on the Huon peninsula, narrowly escaping from Madang
ahead of an Australian patrol. His second in command, Sergeant Konradt, who suffered from frequent bouts of malaria
, and another German officer, were captured by the Australians by spring 1915. Eventually, Detzner found his way to the vicinity of Lutheran mission at the Sattelberg, at a foggy, cool area at 800 metres (2,625 ft), above Finschhafen. The Sattelberg mission was one of the Neuendettelsau Mission Society enterprises established by the Old Lutheran missionary, Johann Flierl
, in 1885. This station, and additional mission stations in Heldbach, Simbang, Tami Islands
, and Simbu, were an important evangelical presence in the Morobe Province
. The missionaries had signed oaths of neutrality for the Australians, who allowed them to remain at their Stations and continue their work.
Once Detzner reached the vicinity of the Sattelberg Mission, nearby villagers in the Borrum valley housed him and his remaining men, which had dwindled to about 20 soldiers, plus four European officers and, on his behalf, the villagers sought assistance from the Sattelberg director, Christian Keyser
, and another missionary, Otto Thiele. They reluctantly agreed to keep Detzner's presence a secret. Among the villagers, Detzner established a base camp from which he could mount his expeditions. The valley was relatively secure for him, and inaccessible for the Australians, but if they ventured too close to his base, Detzner and his men would retreat into the mountainous Saruwaged
, or, if necessary, further into the Finisterre
mountains. These were rugged and remote locations, accessible to Detzner, who had the help of native guides, but which the Australians, who usually traveled in larger patrols, could not penetrate.
For four years, Detzner and his band roamed throughout the eastern jungles of the island, eluded the Australian patrols, and maintained contact with the few remaining German colonists and missionaries, who supplied them with food, books, and newspapers. Reportedly, he recruited the indigenous population to help him, but he apparently made little effort to hide: he flew the German flag (sewn from dyed loincloths) in villages throughout the bush, and marched his command through the jungle, loudly singing such patriotic German songs as "Watch on the Rhine
" (Wacht am Rhein) and such popular, sentimental ones as "The Linden Tree
" (Der Lindenbaum).
, and in doing so, became the first European to see the central highlands. In 1915, and again in 1917, Detzner and some of his men tried to escape along the coast in two canoes. In 1917, they reached the vicinity of Friedrich-Wilhelmshafen, which today is Madang
. There lay anchored the Australian ship, HMAS Una
, which earlier had been the German imperial yacht, the , designated for use by the German governor of the colony. The ship blocked any further travel, and ended any notions they had of a water escape to Dutch Guinea. On this escape attempt, Detzner also learned the Australians had orders to shoot him on sight. He made one further attempt to escape overland to Dutch New Guinea, but had to be carried back suffering from an internal hemorrhage. He spent the remainder of the time investigating the island's inhabitants and its flora and fauna, particularly in the Huon peninsula
and Huon gulf
.
in which he offered his capitulation. On 5 January 1919, he surrendered at the Finschhafen District headquarters, marching with his remaining German troops in a column, and wearing his carefully preserved full-dress uniform. He was brought to Rabaul
, the Australian headquarters, and on 8 February 1919, was transferred to Sydney aboard the Melusia; after a brief internment in the prisoner of war camp at Holdsworthy
, he was repatriated to Germany.
, Major General Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck
, who tied down British forces in Africa for the duration of the war. Detzner had been promoted to the rank of captain during the war; upon his return, he was promoted to major. In that year, he wrote Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, nach dem Stande der Forschung im Jahre 1919, (Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, According to the State of Research in the Year 1919), which was widely read in scientific circles. The information that the Geographical Society of Berlin honored him with the Nachtigal medal, named after the German explorer Gustav Nachtigal
, in 1919 is false; this misinformation may have been planted by Detzner himself. Nevertheless, the Geographic Society of Hamburg awarded him their gold medal in 1921; the University of Bonn
granted him an honorary degree; and the military awarded him the Iron Cross
(1st Class). He received a position in the colonial administration’s archive in Berlin.
To satisfy the public curiosity about his adventures, Detzner wrote Four Years among the Cannibals, from 1914 to the Armistice, under the German Flag, in the Unexplored Interior of New Guinea. The book brought him fame in Germany and Britain, and he became a sought-after speaker on the lecture circuit. In the 1920s, in addition to several articles and two maps of New Guinea, Detzner published a memoir of his adventures in the Niger valley—In the land of the Dju-Dju: travel experiences in the eastern watershed of the Niger—in 1923, but it did not achieve the popularity of his previous work.
In a speech at the Berlin Geographical Society in 1919, Detzner claimed that the natives of New Guinea had opposed Australian domination and resisted a military recruitment that amounted to slavery, that even the English plantation holders wished to remain independent of Australia, and that the natives were collecting money to build a war memorial for the Germans. The report on Detzner's speech, transmitted from a news agency in London, caused a small flutter in Australian government circles, but generally was dismissed; an earlier report by the Australian judiciary had absolved the Australian force of improper recruiting or treatment of the New Guineans. An angry letter to the editor from another Australian source, who claimed to have been in service in Morobe from 1914–1915, received little attention.
In the scientific world, several of his descriptive passages generated excitement and curiosity. In early 1914, he had been surveying a portion of the international boundary in the Upper Waria River
between the German and British protectorates. By late September, he had passed into a different portion of the highlands, where the clay-slate mountains changed into limestone highlands. In this geologic transition, he said, he also found a change in the ethnographic character of the population, whom he described as a "new" people. They were stocky, powerfully built, and long–limbed; they wore their hair in knots on the centre of their heads, which were otherwise shaven, and painted yellow and black lines across their chests. They also wore grass skirts, so he called them the skirted ones. They used bows and arrows, slings and stone axes. As he pushed west to Mount Joseph, Detzner claimed, he had found the southern hills of the central watershed cut by numerous rivers flowing north to south. He had surmised that there were no insurmountable obstacles between him and the Sepik
river. In 1917, he had travelled through the Ramu valley into the Bismarck range, northwest of the Kratke Mountains, and had continued on that route for 100 kilometres (62.1 mi). He also described the presence of an indigenous variation of German
, called Unserdeutsch (our German), in several Guinean dialects.
, a Melbourne newspaper, and described what he claimed were Detzner's lies. "There was no mystery about the disappearance of Captain Detzner and his party", he claimed. The writer attributed Detzner's success at staying ahead of the Australians to the perfidy of the German missionaries, who had agreed to remain neutral and in return for such agreement were allowed to continue their mission work. Detzner was a civilian [emphasis in the original] surveyor, the writer claimed, not a soldier and he survived on mission station rations supplied by public subscription from the German plantation owners. Furthermore, this writer asserted, Detzner's movements were so well known to the district officer at Morobe that he was prevented from escaping; they could have shot him several times, but did not. The writer dismissed Detzner's claims about Australian recruitment of the natives as "in keeping with his dozens of other lying statements in all cases endeavoring to belittle Englishmen or British officers, in every case pure fabrications and typical scurrilous Hun lies".
While such criticism of Detzner's adventures might have been dismissed as post-bellum bellicosity, in 1929, Detzner's assertions came under more serious assault. Two of the German missionaries in the Finschhafen District, Christian Keyser (also spelled Kayser or Keysser) and Otto Thiele, claimed Detzner had not spent the war roaming the jungle, one step ahead of the Australians, but had been under the Mission's protection the entire time. Keyser's additional accusations were particularly specific: Detzner had appropriated his own scientific observations. Keyser's claims carried some weight. He had published a dictionary of the Kâte language, and was a reliable expert on Guinean dialects, and the German-based creole languages
that had arisen in New Guinea; he was also a bona fide explorer and adventurer, having lived from 1899 to 1920 among the mountain peoples of the island. In 1913, Keyser climbed the 4121 metres (13,520 ft) Saruwaged Massif
; over the course of his 21 years in New Guinea, he had identified hundreds of new plant and animal species, and had maintained a regular correspondence with the German Geographical Society in Berlin. Ernst Mayr
, a rising star in ornithology, had heard about Detzner from Australians on a research trip to New Guinea. In Germany, during a meeting with Keyser, they discussed Detzner's claims, and Mayr lost no time in broadcasting the discrepancy to his scientific contacts in Europe and the United States.
More problematically, Detzner had no documentation of his findings. As he explained in his many speeches, although he had kept notebooks with drawings of plants, animals, maps, and people, and journals recounting his day–to–day experiences, some of his notebooks and journals had been destroyed by the Australians as they over–ran his hiding places; others, which he had buried to keep them from being destroyed, had rotted beyond repair in the jungle humidity. He implied that what remained of his notes had been confiscated when he surrendered. Detzner's narrative also was rife with contradictions and omissions: Detzner named few villages or streams and stated that the valleys he discovered were thinly populated, whereas they actually contained large populations, at least by New Guinea standards. He also stated that the highest point in the range was 3600 metres (11,811 ft), a 1200 metres (3,937 ft) miscalculation, which, for a mapmaker and a surveyor, needed to be explained.
These specific ambiguities, contradictions, and errors were explainable. In 1915, he had lost his surveying instruments while eluding an Australian patrol, which explained why many of his assertions were vague and inconclusive, and his calculations inaccurate. There was, furthermore, some independent verification that this was indeed true. The Australians had found a box of Detzner's equipment in the location where the missionary Johann Flierl's oldest son, Wilhelm, had kept (or stored) his small canoe. Although Wilhelm denied helping Detzner and his men, the Australians arrested and incarcerated him. This event coincided with one of Detzner's narrow escapes from Australian patrols in 1915 and was inadvertently corroborated in 1919 by the angry letter to The Argus's editor. Some of Detzner's assertions could be sustained through observable physical evidence: he had reportedly wasted to a mere 40 kilograms (88.2 lb) while roaming in the bush, which should not have happened, some supporters claimed, if he had indeed been under the protection of Keyser and Thiele, but this weight loss could also have been due to his debilitating illness in 1917.
Despite his explanations, the missionaries Thiele and Keyser, whose own autobiography appeared in 1929, and the widely respected Mayr, who by this time had become the leader of the Whitney South Seas Expedition
s, continued to challenge the bulk of Detzner's scientific "discoveries". Detzner's position became increasingly untenable. In 1932, he admitted that he had mixed fact and fiction in his book, explaining that he had never intended it to be taken as science, but rather at its face-value, as the story of his adventurous years in the jungles of New Guinea. The following year, Detzner resigned from the prestigious Geographical Society of Berlin.
After this, he withdrew entirely from public life, although he retained his position in the colonial archive. He lived in Schmargendorf, Berlin, on Auguste-Viktoria-Straße, and later became the director of the Carl-Pfeffer Verlag, a publishing house in Heidelberg
. He died there in 1970, at the age of 88.
Since the mid–1970s, references to Four Years Among the Cannibals have continued to appear in studies on New Guinea. In the 1990s, Detzner's work received some rehabilitation from ethnographer Terence Hays, who placed Detzner's work in its contemporary context: Four Years Among the Cannibals, he wrote, "paved the way for me [to become an ethnographer] by creating romanticized images that served as a backdrop for more serious readings". Since then, geographer Robert Linke has raised some important questions: "Why did Detzner resort to lies to embellish his wonderful story? The unadorned truth would have been enough to establish him as one of the great figures in New Guinea history." Detzner had remained at large for four years, as a fugitive in enemy-held territory: surely, Linke concluded, this was an exceptional feat. No doubt the Australians could have made a more broadly organized attempt to capture him, and probably would have succeeded, but they did not make the effort; they preferred instead the more convenient "shoot-at-sight" method. "It is impossible", Linke wrote, "not to admire his [Detzner's] sheer elan, his courage and tenacity." In 2008, Detzner's book was retranslated, reprinted, and marketed as a modern translation of a rare and valuable book about the exploration of the Guinean interior during World War I.
Schutztruppe
Schutztruppe was the African colonial armed force of Imperial Germany from the late 19th century to 1918, when Germany lost its colonies. Similar to other colonial forces, the Schutztruppe consisted of volunteer European commissioned and non-commissioned officers, medical and veterinary officers. ...
) in Kamerun
Kamerun
German Cameroon was a West African colony of the German Empire from 1884 to 1916 in the region of today's Republic of Cameroon.-History:-1800s:...
and German New Guinea
German New Guinea
German New Guinea was the first part of the German colonial empire. It was a protectorate from 1884 until 1914 when it fell to Australia following the outbreak of the First World War. It consisted of the northeastern part of New Guinea and several nearby island groups...
, as well as a surveyor, an engineer, an adventurer, and a writer.
In early 1914, the German government sent Detzner to explore and chart the interior of Kaiser-Wilhelmsland
Kaiser-Wilhelmsland
Kaiser-Wilhelmsland was part of the German New Guinea, the South Pacific protectorate of the German Empire. Named in honor of Wilhelm II, who was the German Emperor and King of Prussia, it included the north-eastern part of the present day Papua New Guinea. From 1884 until 1918, the territory...
, the imperial protectorate on the island of New Guinea. When World War I broke out in Europe, he was well into the interior and without radio contact. He refused to surrender to Australian troops
Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force
The Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force was a small volunteer force of approximately 2,000 men, raised in Australia shortly after the outbreak of the First World War to seize and destroy German wireless stations in German New Guinea in the south-west Pacific...
when they occupied German New Guinea, concealing himself in the jungle with a band of approximately 20 soldiers. For four years, Detzner and his troops provocatively marched through the bush, singing "Watch on the Rhine
Die Wacht am Rhein
"Die Wacht am Rhein" is a German patriotic anthem. The song's origins are rooted in historical conflicts with France, and it was particularly popular in Germany during the Franco-Prussian War and the First World War....
" and flying the German Imperial flag. He led at least one expedition from the Huon Peninsula
Huon Peninsula
Huon Peninsula is a large rugged peninsula on the island of New Guinea in Morobe Province, eastern Papua New Guinea. It is named after French explorer Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec who discovered it along with his personal assistant and porter, Henry Ole. The peninsula is dominated by the steep...
to the north coast, and a second by a mountain route, to attempt an escape to the neutral Dutch colony
Netherlands New Guinea
Netherlands New Guinea refers to the West Papua region while it was an overseas territory of the Kingdom of the Netherlands from 1949 to 1962. Until 1949 it was a part of the Netherlands Indies. It was commonly known as Dutch New Guinea...
to the west. He explored areas of the Guinean interior formerly unseen by Europeans and surrendered in full dress uniform, flying the Imperial flag, to Australian forces in January 1919.
Detzner received a hero's welcome when he returned to Germany. He wrote a book about his adventures—Four Years Among the Cannibals in the Interior of German New Guinea under the Imperial Flag, from 1914 until the Armistice—that achieved notoriety in Great Britain and Germany, entered three printings, and was translated into French, English, Finnish and Swedish. He received a position in the Imperial Colonial Archives, and appeared frequently on the lecture circuit throughout the 1920s. In the late 1920s, scientific portions of his book were discredited. In 1932, he admitted that he had mixed fact and fiction and, after that time, eschewed public life.
Family
Detzner was the son of a dentist in the city of SpeyerSpeyer
Speyer is a city of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany with approximately 50,000 inhabitants. Located beside the river Rhine, Speyer is 25 km south of Ludwigshafen and Mannheim. Founded by the Romans, it is one of Germany's oldest cities...
, in the Bavarian Palatinate, a cultural, economic, and historical center on the Rhine River. His father, Johann Philipp Detzner (12 July 1846–1907), received his degree from Heidelberg University and was licensed to practice by the Kingdom of Bavaria
Kingdom of Bavaria
The Kingdom of Bavaria was a German state that existed from 1806 to 1918. The Bavarian Elector Maximilian IV Joseph of the House of Wittelsbach became the first King of Bavaria in 1806 as Maximilian I Joseph. The monarchy would remain held by the Wittelsbachs until the kingdom's dissolution in 1918...
in 1867; Detzner's father pioneered innovations in dental prosthetics. Hermann Detzner was trained as a topographer, surveyor, and an engineer, and received his promotion to Fahnrich
Fähnrich
Fähnrich is a German and Austrian military rank in armed forces which translates as "Ensign" in English. The rank also exists in a few other European military organizations, often with historical ties to the German system. Examples are Sweden, Norway and Finland . The French Army has a similar...
in the 6 Infantry Regiment (Prussian), 2nd Pioneer Battalion, in February 1902.
Early explorations
Hermann Detzner participated in a joint British-German scientific and surveying expedition to KamerunKamerun
German Cameroon was a West African colony of the German Empire from 1884 to 1916 in the region of today's Republic of Cameroon.-History:-1800s:...
in 1908 and 1909 and again in 1912–1913. He and one Captain Nugent, Royal Artillery
Royal Artillery
The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery , is the artillery arm of the British Army. Despite its name, it comprises a number of regiments.-History:...
, identified and marked the frontiers of Kamerun and explored the Niger
Niger River
The Niger River is the principal river of western Africa, extending about . Its drainage basin is in area. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in southeastern Guinea...
valley. Detzner later published a paper on the marking of the boundary.
Papua Region
Papua Region is one of four regions of Papua New Guinea. The region includes the national capital Port Moresby.-Subdivision:The Region is administratively divided into six provinces:* Central Province* Gulf Province* Milne Bay Province...
, and the German territory, called Kaiser-Wilhelmsland
German New Guinea
German New Guinea was the first part of the German colonial empire. It was a protectorate from 1884 until 1914 when it fell to Australia following the outbreak of the First World War. It consisted of the northeastern part of New Guinea and several nearby island groups...
, and to survey and map the interior.
Detzner's mission was also to be the first serious attempt to explore the unknown interior and to evaluate and describe its contents. The boundary between Papua and Kaiser Wilhelmsland had been broadly established by a joint British-German expedition in 1909, but the interior had not been mapped and the German colonial administration maintained that the boundary was imprecise. Since then, Papuan gold prospectors may have crossed into the German territory which, from the German perspective, made the accuracy of the border essential. Detzner had had experience in joint operations in Kamerun in 1907–08 and could be expected to understand the challenges faced by the previous commission; he had a reputation as a methodical and precise engineer. Although small, he was tough and wiry, extremely focused and determined, and seemed like the right man for the job.
Adventures in New Guinea
In January 1914, Detzner travelled to RabaulRabaul
Rabaul is a township in East New Britain province, Papua New Guinea. The town was the provincial capital and most important settlement in the province until it was destroyed in 1994 by falling ash of a volcanic eruption. During the eruption, ash was sent thousands of metres into the air and the...
on New Pomerania (now New Britain
New Britain
New Britain, or Niu Briten, is the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea. It is separated from the island of New Guinea by the Dampier and Vitiaz Straits and from New Ireland by St. George's Channel...
). In February, he began his expedition into Kaiser-Wilhelmsland
Kaiser-Wilhelmsland
Kaiser-Wilhelmsland was part of the German New Guinea, the South Pacific protectorate of the German Empire. Named in honor of Wilhelm II, who was the German Emperor and King of Prussia, it included the north-eastern part of the present day Papua New Guinea. From 1884 until 1918, the territory...
. His survey immediately revealed inaccuracies in the 1909 joint survey; by March, Detzner had concluded that the border corridor was already showing a discrepancy of more than 650 metres (2,133 ft) from the 8°0'S parallel
8th parallel south
The 8th parallel south is a circle of latitude that is 8 degrees south of the Earth's equatorial plane. It crosses the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, Australasia, the Pacific Ocean and South America....
. The discrepancy increased the further west he traveled, revealing a widening wedge in the boundary as it was agreed upon, and as it was marked. The discrepancy favored German interests.
Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force
The Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force was a small volunteer force of approximately 2,000 men, raised in Australia shortly after the outbreak of the First World War to seize and destroy German wireless stations in German New Guinea in the south-west Pacific...
invaded German New Guinea, taking the German barracks in Herbertshöhe (Kokopo
Kokopo
Kokopo is the capital of East New Britain in Papua New Guinea. The capital was moved from Rabaul in 1994 when the volcanoes Tavurvur and Vulcan erupted. As a result, the population of the town increased more than sixfold from 3,150 in 1990 to 20,262 in 2000....
) and forcing the defending German colonial troops to capitulate on 21 September after their defeat at Bita Paka
Battle of Bita Paka
The Battle of Bita Paka was fought south of Kabakaul, on the island of New Britain, and was a part of the invasion and subsequent occupation of German New Guinea by the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force shortly after the outbreak of the First World War...
. At the beginning of October, still unaware of the state of war that now existed between his country and the Commonwealth
Commonwealth
Commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Historically, it has sometimes been synonymous with "republic."More recently it has been used for fraternal associations of some sovereign nations...
, Detzner hiked toward a temporary camp, expecting to find there his second in command, a non-commissioned officer named Konradt. Instead he was met by a messenger sent by Konradt and handed a note that Konradt had found in the hand of a dead native; the note, written by the Australian commander, informed him of the state of war between Germany and Great Britain, and advised him to surrender. Detzner was horrified to discover, he later wrote, that while he was safe at his base camp in the vicinity of Mount Chapman, in an idyllic setting filled with flowers, his fellow Germans were dying at Bita Paka.
Four years in the unexplored interior of New Guinea
Detzner refused to go into captivity. He led his party, consisting of four other European officers, and about 200 well-armed natives—a formidable jungle force—south toward the SattelbergSattelberg
Sattelberg, also spelt Sattelberg or Satelberg , is a village on the Huon Peninsula, in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. The village is set on a peak about 900 metres above sea level, and dominates the area, with Finschhafen below. A Lutheran mission was founded by Johann Flierl in 1892, when...
on the Huon peninsula, narrowly escaping from Madang
Madang
Madang is the capital of Madang Province and is a town with a population of 27,420 on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. It was first settled by the Germans in the 19th century....
ahead of an Australian patrol. His second in command, Sergeant Konradt, who suffered from frequent bouts of malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
, and another German officer, were captured by the Australians by spring 1915. Eventually, Detzner found his way to the vicinity of Lutheran mission at the Sattelberg, at a foggy, cool area at 800 metres (2,625 ft), above Finschhafen. The Sattelberg mission was one of the Neuendettelsau Mission Society enterprises established by the Old Lutheran missionary, Johann Flierl
Johann Flierl
Johann Flierl , was a pioneer Lutheran missionary in New Guinea. He established mission schools and organized the construction of roads and communication between otherwise remote interior locations. Under his leadership, Lutheran evangelicalism flourished in New Guinea...
, in 1885. This station, and additional mission stations in Heldbach, Simbang, Tami Islands
Tami Islands
The Tami Islands are a small island group located seven nautical miles SSE of Finschhafen in the Huon Gulf . It is part of today's Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea....
, and Simbu, were an important evangelical presence in the Morobe Province
Morobe Province
Morobe Province is a province on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea. The provincial capital, and largest city, is Lae. The province covers 34,500 km², including 719 km² maritime area, with a population of 539,725...
. The missionaries had signed oaths of neutrality for the Australians, who allowed them to remain at their Stations and continue their work.
Once Detzner reached the vicinity of the Sattelberg Mission, nearby villagers in the Borrum valley housed him and his remaining men, which had dwindled to about 20 soldiers, plus four European officers and, on his behalf, the villagers sought assistance from the Sattelberg director, Christian Keyser
Christian Keyser
Christian Gottlob Keyser was a Lutheran missionary of the Neuendettelsau Mission Society. He served for almost 22 years at the Neuendettelsau Mission Station in the Finschhafen District of New Guinea, which had been founded in 1892 by Johann Flierl...
, and another missionary, Otto Thiele. They reluctantly agreed to keep Detzner's presence a secret. Among the villagers, Detzner established a base camp from which he could mount his expeditions. The valley was relatively secure for him, and inaccessible for the Australians, but if they ventured too close to his base, Detzner and his men would retreat into the mountainous Saruwaged
Saruwaged Range
The Saruwaged Range is a mountain range on the Huon Peninsula in Morobe Province, north-eastern Papua New Guinea...
, or, if necessary, further into the Finisterre
Finisterre Range
Finisterre Range is a mountain range in north-eastern Papua New Guinea, at . The unnamed highest point of the range , which is ranked 45th in the world by prominence, is usually quoted at 4,175 m, but SRTM data suggests that it is nearer to 4,120 m...
mountains. These were rugged and remote locations, accessible to Detzner, who had the help of native guides, but which the Australians, who usually traveled in larger patrols, could not penetrate.
For four years, Detzner and his band roamed throughout the eastern jungles of the island, eluded the Australian patrols, and maintained contact with the few remaining German colonists and missionaries, who supplied them with food, books, and newspapers. Reportedly, he recruited the indigenous population to help him, but he apparently made little effort to hide: he flew the German flag (sewn from dyed loincloths) in villages throughout the bush, and marched his command through the jungle, loudly singing such patriotic German songs as "Watch on the Rhine
Die Wacht am Rhein
"Die Wacht am Rhein" is a German patriotic anthem. The song's origins are rooted in historical conflicts with France, and it was particularly popular in Germany during the Franco-Prussian War and the First World War....
" (Wacht am Rhein) and such popular, sentimental ones as "The Linden Tree
The Linden Tree
The Linden Tree is a 1947 play by the English dramatist J. B. Priestley. It makes use of the Elgar Cello Concerto.It was revived at the Orange Tree Theatre in 2006 and at the Pentameters Theatre in 2011...
" (Der Lindenbaum).
Escape attempts
Detzner made three attempts to reach West New Guinea, which was then neutral Dutch New GuineaNetherlands New Guinea
Netherlands New Guinea refers to the West Papua region while it was an overseas territory of the Kingdom of the Netherlands from 1949 to 1962. Until 1949 it was a part of the Netherlands Indies. It was commonly known as Dutch New Guinea...
, and in doing so, became the first European to see the central highlands. In 1915, and again in 1917, Detzner and some of his men tried to escape along the coast in two canoes. In 1917, they reached the vicinity of Friedrich-Wilhelmshafen, which today is Madang
Madang
Madang is the capital of Madang Province and is a town with a population of 27,420 on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. It was first settled by the Germans in the 19th century....
. There lay anchored the Australian ship, HMAS Una
HMAS Una
HMAS Una was a Royal Australian Navy sloop that began its life as the German motor launch Komet. The ship and her 57 crew was captured by an infantry detachment of the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force led by John Paton on 9 October 1914, with no loss of life...
, which earlier had been the German imperial yacht, the , designated for use by the German governor of the colony. The ship blocked any further travel, and ended any notions they had of a water escape to Dutch Guinea. On this escape attempt, Detzner also learned the Australians had orders to shoot him on sight. He made one further attempt to escape overland to Dutch New Guinea, but had to be carried back suffering from an internal hemorrhage. He spent the remainder of the time investigating the island's inhabitants and its flora and fauna, particularly in the Huon peninsula
Huon Peninsula
Huon Peninsula is a large rugged peninsula on the island of New Guinea in Morobe Province, eastern Papua New Guinea. It is named after French explorer Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec who discovered it along with his personal assistant and porter, Henry Ole. The peninsula is dominated by the steep...
and Huon gulf
Huon Gulf
Huon Gulf is a large gulf in eastern Papua New Guinea, at . It is bordered by Huon Peninsula in the north. Both are named after French explorer Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec. Huon Gulf is a part of the Solomon Sea. Lae, capital of the Morobe Province is located on the northern coast of the...
.
Surrender
In late November 1918, Detzner received the news of the end of the war from a worker at the Sattelberg Mission Station. He wrote a letter to the Australian commander in MorobeMorobe Province
Morobe Province is a province on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea. The provincial capital, and largest city, is Lae. The province covers 34,500 km², including 719 km² maritime area, with a population of 539,725...
in which he offered his capitulation. On 5 January 1919, he surrendered at the Finschhafen District headquarters, marching with his remaining German troops in a column, and wearing his carefully preserved full-dress uniform. He was brought to Rabaul
Rabaul
Rabaul is a township in East New Britain province, Papua New Guinea. The town was the provincial capital and most important settlement in the province until it was destroyed in 1994 by falling ash of a volcanic eruption. During the eruption, ash was sent thousands of metres into the air and the...
, the Australian headquarters, and on 8 February 1919, was transferred to Sydney aboard the Melusia; after a brief internment in the prisoner of war camp at Holdsworthy
Holsworthy, New South Wales
Holsworthy is a suburb in south-western Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Holsworthy is located 31 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Liverpool and partly in the Sutherland Shire.Holsworthy is most notable for...
, he was repatriated to Germany.
Book and honours
On his arrival home, Detzner received a hero's welcome. The press likened him to the successful commander of German East AfricaGerman East Africa
German East Africa was a German colony in East Africa, which included what are now :Burundi, :Rwanda and Tanganyika . Its area was , nearly three times the size of Germany today....
, Major General Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck
Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck
Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck was a general in the Imperial German Army and the commander of the German East Africa campaign. For four years, with a force that never exceeded about 14,000 , he held in check a much larger force of 300,000 British, Belgian, and Portuguese troops...
, who tied down British forces in Africa for the duration of the war. Detzner had been promoted to the rank of captain during the war; upon his return, he was promoted to major. In that year, he wrote Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, nach dem Stande der Forschung im Jahre 1919, (Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, According to the State of Research in the Year 1919), which was widely read in scientific circles. The information that the Geographical Society of Berlin honored him with the Nachtigal medal, named after the German explorer Gustav Nachtigal
Gustav Nachtigal
Gustav Nachtigal was a German explorer of Central and West Africa. He is further known as the German Empire's consul-general for Tunisia and Commissioner for West Africa. His mission as commissioner resulted in Togoland and Kamerun becoming the first colonies of a German colonial empire...
, in 1919 is false; this misinformation may have been planted by Detzner himself. Nevertheless, the Geographic Society of Hamburg awarded him their gold medal in 1921; the University of Bonn
University of Bonn
The University of Bonn is a public research university located in Bonn, Germany. Founded in its present form in 1818, as the linear successor of earlier academic institutions, the University of Bonn is today one of the leading universities in Germany. The University of Bonn offers a large number...
granted him an honorary degree; and the military awarded him the Iron Cross
Iron Cross
The Iron Cross is a cross symbol typically in black with a white or silver outline that originated after 1219 when the Kingdom of Jerusalem granted the Teutonic Order the right to combine the Teutonic Black Cross placed above a silver Cross of Jerusalem....
(1st Class). He received a position in the colonial administration’s archive in Berlin.
To satisfy the public curiosity about his adventures, Detzner wrote Four Years among the Cannibals, from 1914 to the Armistice, under the German Flag, in the Unexplored Interior of New Guinea. The book brought him fame in Germany and Britain, and he became a sought-after speaker on the lecture circuit. In the 1920s, in addition to several articles and two maps of New Guinea, Detzner published a memoir of his adventures in the Niger valley—In the land of the Dju-Dju: travel experiences in the eastern watershed of the Niger—in 1923, but it did not achieve the popularity of his previous work.
Book reception
Detzner's book was wildly popular among the general population for its incredible tales of stubborn patriotism and its narratives describing the exotic locales of the lost imperial colonies. His descriptions touched a chord in the German imagination: one of their own had explored the colony, walked its paths, seen its mountains and valleys, and met its people. His vivid descriptions brought to life the images Germans had seen on postcards (such as the one to left), newspapers, and in school books. Furthermore, he had defended Germany's "place in the sun" when others had failed to do so. His book was translated into English, Finnish, Swedish and eventually French. (See below.)In a speech at the Berlin Geographical Society in 1919, Detzner claimed that the natives of New Guinea had opposed Australian domination and resisted a military recruitment that amounted to slavery, that even the English plantation holders wished to remain independent of Australia, and that the natives were collecting money to build a war memorial for the Germans. The report on Detzner's speech, transmitted from a news agency in London, caused a small flutter in Australian government circles, but generally was dismissed; an earlier report by the Australian judiciary had absolved the Australian force of improper recruiting or treatment of the New Guineans. An angry letter to the editor from another Australian source, who claimed to have been in service in Morobe from 1914–1915, received little attention.
In the scientific world, several of his descriptive passages generated excitement and curiosity. In early 1914, he had been surveying a portion of the international boundary in the Upper Waria River
Waria River
The Waria River is a river in Oro Province and Morobe Province in south-eastern Papua New Guinea. It flows into the Solomon Sea. The river is fast-flowing with heavy sediment. The lower Waria Valley is home to the indigenous Zia tribe, flowing through the communities of Pema, Popoe and Saigara...
between the German and British protectorates. By late September, he had passed into a different portion of the highlands, where the clay-slate mountains changed into limestone highlands. In this geologic transition, he said, he also found a change in the ethnographic character of the population, whom he described as a "new" people. They were stocky, powerfully built, and long–limbed; they wore their hair in knots on the centre of their heads, which were otherwise shaven, and painted yellow and black lines across their chests. They also wore grass skirts, so he called them the skirted ones. They used bows and arrows, slings and stone axes. As he pushed west to Mount Joseph, Detzner claimed, he had found the southern hills of the central watershed cut by numerous rivers flowing north to south. He had surmised that there were no insurmountable obstacles between him and the Sepik
Sepik
Sepik may refer to places in Papua New Guinea:*Sepik River*East Sepik - a province*Sandaun - a province formerly known as West Sepik*Sepik region - consisting of East Sepik and Sandaun provincesIn languages it may refer to:...
river. In 1917, he had travelled through the Ramu valley into the Bismarck range, northwest of the Kratke Mountains, and had continued on that route for 100 kilometres (62.1 mi). He also described the presence of an indigenous variation of German
Unserdeutsch language
Unserdeutsch , or Rabaul Creole German, is a German-based creole language spoken primarily in Papua New Guinea. It was formed among the New Guinean children residing in a German-run orphanage...
, called Unserdeutsch (our German), in several Guinean dialects.
Controversy
In 1919, after an account of Detzner's speech in Berlin to the Geographical Society was published in Australia, an angry Australian wrote anonymously to the editor of The ArgusThe Argus (Australia)
The Argus was a morning daily newspaper in Melbourne established in 1846 and closed in 1957. Widely known as a conservative newspaper for most of its history, it adopted a left leaning approach from 1949...
, a Melbourne newspaper, and described what he claimed were Detzner's lies. "There was no mystery about the disappearance of Captain Detzner and his party", he claimed. The writer attributed Detzner's success at staying ahead of the Australians to the perfidy of the German missionaries, who had agreed to remain neutral and in return for such agreement were allowed to continue their mission work. Detzner was a civilian [emphasis in the original] surveyor, the writer claimed, not a soldier and he survived on mission station rations supplied by public subscription from the German plantation owners. Furthermore, this writer asserted, Detzner's movements were so well known to the district officer at Morobe that he was prevented from escaping; they could have shot him several times, but did not. The writer dismissed Detzner's claims about Australian recruitment of the natives as "in keeping with his dozens of other lying statements in all cases endeavoring to belittle Englishmen or British officers, in every case pure fabrications and typical scurrilous Hun lies".
While such criticism of Detzner's adventures might have been dismissed as post-bellum bellicosity, in 1929, Detzner's assertions came under more serious assault. Two of the German missionaries in the Finschhafen District, Christian Keyser (also spelled Kayser or Keysser) and Otto Thiele, claimed Detzner had not spent the war roaming the jungle, one step ahead of the Australians, but had been under the Mission's protection the entire time. Keyser's additional accusations were particularly specific: Detzner had appropriated his own scientific observations. Keyser's claims carried some weight. He had published a dictionary of the Kâte language, and was a reliable expert on Guinean dialects, and the German-based creole languages
German-based creole languages
A German creole, more properly a German-based creole language, is a creole language with a significant influence from the German language....
that had arisen in New Guinea; he was also a bona fide explorer and adventurer, having lived from 1899 to 1920 among the mountain peoples of the island. In 1913, Keyser climbed the 4121 metres (13,520 ft) Saruwaged Massif
Saruwaged Range
The Saruwaged Range is a mountain range on the Huon Peninsula in Morobe Province, north-eastern Papua New Guinea...
; over the course of his 21 years in New Guinea, he had identified hundreds of new plant and animal species, and had maintained a regular correspondence with the German Geographical Society in Berlin. Ernst Mayr
Ernst Mayr
Ernst Walter Mayr was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist...
, a rising star in ornithology, had heard about Detzner from Australians on a research trip to New Guinea. In Germany, during a meeting with Keyser, they discussed Detzner's claims, and Mayr lost no time in broadcasting the discrepancy to his scientific contacts in Europe and the United States.
More problematically, Detzner had no documentation of his findings. As he explained in his many speeches, although he had kept notebooks with drawings of plants, animals, maps, and people, and journals recounting his day–to–day experiences, some of his notebooks and journals had been destroyed by the Australians as they over–ran his hiding places; others, which he had buried to keep them from being destroyed, had rotted beyond repair in the jungle humidity. He implied that what remained of his notes had been confiscated when he surrendered. Detzner's narrative also was rife with contradictions and omissions: Detzner named few villages or streams and stated that the valleys he discovered were thinly populated, whereas they actually contained large populations, at least by New Guinea standards. He also stated that the highest point in the range was 3600 metres (11,811 ft), a 1200 metres (3,937 ft) miscalculation, which, for a mapmaker and a surveyor, needed to be explained.
These specific ambiguities, contradictions, and errors were explainable. In 1915, he had lost his surveying instruments while eluding an Australian patrol, which explained why many of his assertions were vague and inconclusive, and his calculations inaccurate. There was, furthermore, some independent verification that this was indeed true. The Australians had found a box of Detzner's equipment in the location where the missionary Johann Flierl's oldest son, Wilhelm, had kept (or stored) his small canoe. Although Wilhelm denied helping Detzner and his men, the Australians arrested and incarcerated him. This event coincided with one of Detzner's narrow escapes from Australian patrols in 1915 and was inadvertently corroborated in 1919 by the angry letter to The Argus's editor. Some of Detzner's assertions could be sustained through observable physical evidence: he had reportedly wasted to a mere 40 kilograms (88.2 lb) while roaming in the bush, which should not have happened, some supporters claimed, if he had indeed been under the protection of Keyser and Thiele, but this weight loss could also have been due to his debilitating illness in 1917.
Despite his explanations, the missionaries Thiele and Keyser, whose own autobiography appeared in 1929, and the widely respected Mayr, who by this time had become the leader of the Whitney South Seas Expedition
Whitney South Seas Expedition
The Whitney South Seas Expedition to collect bird specimens for the American Museum of Natural History , under the initial leadership of Rollo Beck, was instigated by Dr Leonard C. Sanford and financed by Harry Payne Whitney, a thoroughbred horse-breeder and philanthropist.Beck, an expert bird...
s, continued to challenge the bulk of Detzner's scientific "discoveries". Detzner's position became increasingly untenable. In 1932, he admitted that he had mixed fact and fiction in his book, explaining that he had never intended it to be taken as science, but rather at its face-value, as the story of his adventurous years in the jungles of New Guinea. The following year, Detzner resigned from the prestigious Geographical Society of Berlin.
I wish to state that my book, Vier Jahre unter Kannibalen, contains a number of misrepresentations regarding my journeys in New Guinea. The book in question is a scientific report in part only; it is primarily a fictional account of my experiences in New Guinea and owes its origin to the unusual circumstances prevailing in Germany at the time of my return. Some of the journeys I had actually undertaken are not described at all; on the other hand it contains passages that do not correspond with the facts.
After this, he withdrew entirely from public life, although he retained his position in the colonial archive. He lived in Schmargendorf, Berlin, on Auguste-Viktoria-Straße, and later became the director of the Carl-Pfeffer Verlag, a publishing house in Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
. He died there in 1970, at the age of 88.
Legacy
The ambiguous wording of Detzner's resignation from the Geographical Society of Berlin—the use of such phrases as contains misrepresentations, scientific report in part only, primarily fictional, unusual circumstances in Germany, and so on—misled later scholars, many of whom remained unaware of the controversy surrounding his book. Consequently, his work continued to inform the geographical, linguistic, and anthropological investigations of New Guinean culture and geography well into the 1950s and 1960s, much to the dismay of Ernst Mayr, who had been instrumental in discrediting Detzner in the 1920s.Since the mid–1970s, references to Four Years Among the Cannibals have continued to appear in studies on New Guinea. In the 1990s, Detzner's work received some rehabilitation from ethnographer Terence Hays, who placed Detzner's work in its contemporary context: Four Years Among the Cannibals, he wrote, "paved the way for me [to become an ethnographer] by creating romanticized images that served as a backdrop for more serious readings". Since then, geographer Robert Linke has raised some important questions: "Why did Detzner resort to lies to embellish his wonderful story? The unadorned truth would have been enough to establish him as one of the great figures in New Guinea history." Detzner had remained at large for four years, as a fugitive in enemy-held territory: surely, Linke concluded, this was an exceptional feat. No doubt the Australians could have made a more broadly organized attempt to capture him, and probably would have succeeded, but they did not make the effort; they preferred instead the more convenient "shoot-at-sight" method. "It is impossible", Linke wrote, "not to admire his [Detzner's] sheer elan, his courage and tenacity." In 2008, Detzner's book was retranslated, reprinted, and marketed as a modern translation of a rare and valuable book about the exploration of the Guinean interior during World War I.
Detzner's works
"Kamerun-Boundary: Die nigerische Grenze von Kamerun zwischen Yola und dem Cross-Fluss". Mitteilungen aus den Deutschen Schutzgebieten. 26:13, pp. 317–338. "Der Saruwaged und seine östlichen und südöstlichen Anschlussgebiete". Kolonial Rundschau. Number 25 (1919) (Booklets, 8, 9, 10) pp. 209–221. "Kreuz- und Querzüge in Kaiser-Wilhelmsland während des Weltkrieges: Februar 1914 bis November 1918". Mitteilungen aus den Deutschen Schutzgebieten. Volume 32 (1919), pp. 4–19. Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, nach dem Stande der Forschung im Jahre 1919, with Max Moisel, Map. Berlin [Mittler], 1919. Vier Jahre unter Kannibalen. Von 1914 bis zum Waffenstillstand unter deutscher Flagge im unerforschten Innern von Neuguinea, Scherl, Berlin, 1920, 1921.- Four Years among the Cannibals, from 1914 to the Armistice under the German Flag in unexplored interior of New Guinea. Berlin, August Scherl, [1921].
- Neljä vuotta ihmissyöjien parissa : Saksan lipun suojassa Uuden-Guinean tutkimattomissa sisäosissa 1914–1918. Porvoo, WSOY, 1925.
- Mœurs et coutumes des Papous: quatre ans chez les cannibales de Nouvelle-Guinée (1914–1918) Avec une carte. Paris, Payot, 1923, 1935.
- Fyra år bland kannibaler. Ani Mari Nordman, trans. Helsingfors, Schildt, 1925.
- Four Years Among the Cannibals ... Gisela Batt, (Trans.), Pacific Press, Gold Coast, Australia, 2008. (Retranslation and reprint). "Medizinische und hygienische Streiflichter aus dem Innern von Neuguinea". Archiv für Schiffs- und Tropen-Hygiene, Pathologie und Therapie exotischer Krankheiten. 1921, 25(3): pp. 67–79. Im Lande der Dju-Dju. Reiseerlebnisse im östlichen Stromgebiet des Niger, Scherl, Berlin 1923. "Stammesgemeinschaften im Zentralgebiet von Deutsch-Neuguinea". Mitteilungen aus den deutschen Schutzgebieten, Volume 36 (1928), pp. 112–130. "Unter Unbekannten Kannibalen", Die Woche, 24. 1. 1925, Nr. 4. Die Kolonien unter Mandatsherrschaft. Berlin, Deutscher Wille, 1927. Das "Zentralgebirge" Neuguineas im Gebiet der Wasserscheide zwischen Hüon- und Papua-Golf. Map. Mitteilungen aus den deutschen Schutzgebieten, Kt. 3 im 2. Heft, Bd. XXXVI, 1928.