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Herbert Schroder Stranz

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Nationality
  
German

Name
  
Herbert Schroder-Stranz

Occupation
  
Explorer

Herbert Schroder-Stranz
Born
  
9 June 1884 (
1884-06-09
)
Stranz, West Prussia, German Empire

Disappeared
  
15 August 1912(1912-08-15) (aged 28) Nordaustlandet, Norway

Known for
  
expedition to the Northeast Passage

Herbert Schroder-Stranz (9 June 1884 – c. 15 August 1912) was a German officer and explorer of polar regions. He led the German Arctic Expedition of 1912.

Biography

Schroder-Stranz was born at his family estate at Stranz, West Prussia (modern Straczno, Poland) and later added the name of his birthplace to his family's name (Schroder is a common name in Germany).

Schroder-Stranz joined the German Army and was deployed in German South-West Africa, he later travelled the Russian Kola peninsula, where he began to plan an expedition to discover the Northeast Passage.

In 1912 a preliminary expedition started aboard of the schooner "Herzog Ernst", a ship under the command of Alfred Ritscher and named after Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg, the main sponsor of the project.

The crew, among them the illustrator Christopher Rave, assembled on 1 August 1912 in Tromso. As the public fund-raising had been less successful than expected, Schroder-Stranz searched for a way to improve the publicity. He changed the initial plans and proposed to cross Spitsbergen's Nordaustlandet from the South to the North, the first expedition to do so.

The expedition left Tromso on 5 August 1912. On 13 August 1912 the "Herzog Ernst" was halted by pack ice three miles beyond Nordaustlandet's North Cape. On 15 August 1912 Schroder-Stranz and three crew members disembarked and tried to cross the pack ice, ten miles away from the nearest mainland, with kayaks and sledges. This was the last time Schroder-Stranz was seen alive, only 7 out of 15 members of his crew survived the following winter.

References

Herbert Schroder-Stranz Wikipedia