Ernst Schäfer

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Ernst Schäfer
SS career
Allegiance Nazi Germany
Service/branch Schutzstaffel
RankSS-Sturmbannführer
Battles/warsWorld War II
Signature

Ernst Schäfer (14 March 1910 – 21 July 1992) was a German explorer, hunter and zoologist in the 1930s, specializing in

SS-Sturmbannführer
.

Early life

Schäfer was born in Cologne, and even as a young boy, he spent time in the outdoors shooting with an

Tibetan bear (Ursus arctos pruinosus).[1]

Schäfer married in 1937, but his wife died in a hunting accident in November, which emotionally affected him for months. He completed his Ph.D. in 1938, based on his studies of the birds of Tibet. Schäfer joined the Schutzstaffel in 1933 but, after World War II, he claimed to have been an unwilling recruit who joined only to advance his scientific career.

Expedition

Main article: 1938–1939 German expedition to Tibet

In 1936, he was appointed

SS, and various sponsors. As many as 3,300 bird specimens were collected in these expeditions.[3] A film was produced on the expedition titled Geheimnis Tibet (Secret Tibet).[1] Himmler was personally interested in the project due to various pet pseudo-scientific theories that he subscribed to including ideas such as human origins, and Hanns Hörbiger's Welteislehre ("World Ice Theory").[4]

In July 1934, during his second expedition in Asia, he met the then exiled

Thubten Chökyi Nyima, at a mountain temple near Hangzhou, China. He describes the Lama as a kindly, sympathetic man who enquired about how far Germany was and whether he had been waylaid by any robbers on the way.[5]

The SS

zoologist who could also lead the Tibet Expedition. Schäfer set to work with characteristic vigor. He obtained a staff of seven research scientists, including a British prisoner of war, and set up an experimental research station in Lannach, near the city of Graz in Austria. There the new institute went to work, experimenting with samples of grains that Schäfer had acquired from the granaries of the Tibetan nobility.[6]
: 220 

A statue in a German private collection which has come to be called the "

Vaisravana. Speculation that it belongs to the pre-Buddhist Bon culture that existed in Asia about 1,000 years ago has been brought into question due to certain incoherent features of clothing and style.[9]

In 1945, Schäfer was awarded the War Merit Cross, 2nd class with Swords.[2] He was made an honorary member of the German ornithologists federation (DO-G) on 7 December 1939, his wedding day, a gift from Erwin Stresemann.[10]

Postwar career

Ernst Schäfer in Allied internment

After the 1939 expedition he returned to Germany and he married Ursula in December. In 1945 Schäfer was interned by the Allied Military Government but was exonerated for war crimes in June 1949 and released. In 1950 he moved with his wife and daughter to Venezuela and conducted studies there while also teaching in Maracay and Caracas.[1] From 1949 to 1954 he was a professor in Venezuela, when he returned to Europe to become an adviser to the Belgian King Leopold III.[2] With film-maker Heinz Sielmann, he produced Herrscher des Urwalds (Rulers of the Wild) (1958) in the Congo forests. Schäfer served as the curator of the Department of Natural History at the Lower Saxony State Museum from 1960 until 1970.[11]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ernst Schäfer.
  • 1939 German expedition to Tibet

References

  1. ^
    S2CID 131114714
    .
  2. ^ a b c Klee, Ernst (2005). Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich (in German). Fischer Taschenbuch. p. 523.
  3. doi:10.1002/zoos.200900014
    .
  4. ^ Engelhardt, Isrun (2003). "The Ernst-Schaefer-Tibet-Expedition (1938-1939): New light on the political history of Tibet in the first half of the 20th century.". In McKay, A. (ed.). Tibet and her Neighbours. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. pp. 187–195.
  5. ^ Hale, Christopher (2003). Himmler's crusade: the true story of the 1938 Nazi expedition into Tibet. Bantam. p. 63.
  6. ^ a b Pringle, Heather Anne (2006). The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust. New York: Hyperion Books.
  7. ^ "Ancient statue discovered by Nazis is made from meteorite". BBC News. September 27, 2012.
  8. doi:10.1111/j.1945-5100.2012.01409.x
    .
  9. ^ http://info-buddhism.com/Bayer_2012-Trousers.pdf [bare URL PDF]
  10. ^ "Ernst Schäfer (1910-1992)". Journal für Ornithologie. 134 (3): 368–369. 1993.
  11. ISBN 978-0-306-82455-5.[permanent dead link
    ]

Further reading
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