Karl Martin Alexander Helbig (March 18, 1903 – October 9, 1991) was a German explorer, geographer, and ethnologist. His travels took him to Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and Central America, among other places.
Helbig's works are characterized by sharp powers of observation, instructive content, and clear, understandable language. In addition to his scientific works on geography and ethnography, he wrote popular travelogues, books for young people, and adventure novellas in which he presented his experiences to a wider public in a vivid and entertaining manner. The same applies to his lectures, which he gave at home and abroad in schools and scientific institutes. He spoke fluent English, Spanish, and Malay.
Helbig was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany with Ribbon and the State Prize for Science of the State of Mexico.
Life Helbig was born on March 18, 1903, in Hildesheim. Since the last quarter of the 19th century, professional surveying expeditions were active on behalf of the Dutch East Indian colonial government, which in decades of work surveyed and mapped large areas of the Malay Archipelago. The achievements of Karl Helbig deserve all the more recognition. Even in the 1930s, he succeeded in erasing white spots with traditional field research. He succeeded not only on the island of Borneo, whose interior was still unexplored over long distances, but also - following the research of Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn and Hermann von Rosenberg in the southern Batak - on the island of Sumatra, which was already relatively well developed at that time.
His travels in Central America were no less important. Here, too, Helbig entered unexplored areas. In Chiapas and in northeastern Honduras, his research led to a fundamental revision of the existing map material.
Helbig's research, however, was not limited to land surveys, which he - as a scientist left to his own devices - could only conduct in broad outlines, but also included geological, botanical, climatographic, ethnological and economic geographic studies. In his endeavors to create all-encompassing comprehensive representations, he often saw himself as a successor to his role model Junghuhn, whose writings he admired.Siehe Helbigs Aufsatz Junghuhn. 1809–1864. In: Kurt Kayser (Hrsg.): Die berühmten Entdecker und Erforscher der Erde. Köln 1965, pp. 179–181 (zitiert im Artikel Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn im Kapitel „Werke“) The intensity with which he studied all available sources for this versatility is shown by his two thematically arranged and annotated bibliographies on Hind and Island India and Borneo.
Youth Karl Helbig was born in Hildesheim on March 18, 1903, the son of the engineer Otto Helbig and his wife Ida, née Manß. In 1912 he transferred from the preschool to the Realgymnasium there and passed the school-leaving examination in 1921. In between, from 1919 to 1920, he served as a volunteer in the Border Guard East.
A difficult time followed for Helbig. In the winter of 1921, he worked at depths of up to 900 meters at 42 °C as a digger in a potash shaft near Diekholzen. His mother died at the end of 1921, and after his father suffered a severe heart attack in the spring of 1922, he was forced to support his sister Elisabeth, his father and himself alone. After working as a delivery man in a Thuringian brickyard, as a laborer on a farm near Peine, and as a helper on a stud farm near Celle, he began studying agriculture at the University of Göttingen in the fall of 1922. His attempt to finance his studies and the family upkeep as a stoker in a Göttingen hospital failed because of inflation, whereupon he had to abandon his studies in the summer of 1923.
His irresistible urge to see the wide world eventually led him to merchant navy, where he served as a coal trimmer and ship's stoker until 1951, and then as a greaser and assistant paymaster. His passages overseas were thus free of charge and with the pays he could at least partially finance his excursions, which were carried out with minimal effort.
His first trip was in 1923 on the steamer Drachenfels through the Red Sea to India, with stops in Karachi, Bombay, Colombo and Calcutta. In the port of Calcutta, he was handed a letter from his sister with the news of his father's death. Returning to Hamburg, the two siblings had become so destitute due to inflation that the urn containing their father's ashes had to be buried secretly at night in the family grave in Eisenach.Rutz, Sibeth: Karl Helbig. Wissenschaftler und Schiffsheizer. Olms Vlg., Hildesheim 2004, p. 13.
Eight more sea voyages followed until his study visit to Java. More than 60 ports were visited in the Malay Archipelago, in Mexico and the West Indies, in the Mediterranean in Istanbul and on the Levant coast.
Study and dissertation In the fall of 1927, Helbig enrolled to study at the University of Hamburg. He studied geography with Siegfried Passarge, oceanography with Schultz and Schott, economic geography with Lütgens, climatology with Kuhlbrodt, geology and paleontology with Georg Gürich, Karl Gripp and Johann Wysogórski, and Indonesian languages with Dempwolff and Aichele. He financed his studies by working late and night shifts as a dockworker.
In the summer semester of 1929, Helbig was on leave. With the agreement of his doctoral advisor Siegfried Passarge, he traveled to Java as a stoker on the steamer Menes. He spent nine months in Batavia and its surroundings. Financially supported by Emil Helfferich, director of a German plantation syndicate, Helbig collected material for his dissertation, which focused on the development, the architectural structures, as well as the economic, colonial and cultural significance of Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East Indies. The result of this work, the dissertation Batavia. Eine tropische Stadtlandschaftskunde im Rahmen der Insel Java, complete with pictures, maps and drawings, was graded with distinction by the Faculty of Mathematics/Natural Sciences of the University of Hamburg on June 28, 1930; it was the first ever scientific account of a tropical urban landscape.Rutz, Sibeth, pp. 15 f.
Since Batavia's sphere of influence was also important for its development, trips to Java and its neighboring island of Madura were also undertaken as part of these studies. Volcanoes and high plateaus were climbed and less frequented retreats were investigated. In 1929, his first work, Eine Diengwanderung,Deutsche Wacht. 15. Jg. 1935, pp. 16–17. Dieng ist der Name eines vulkanischen Hochplateaus in Mitteljava. was published, followed in 1935 by the essays Der Kendeng, eine Kalklandschaft auf SüdostjavaGeographische Wochenschrift. 3. Jg., Heft 37, pp. 881–887, Breslau 1935. Der Kendeng ist ein karger und wenig besiedelter Gebirgszug an der Südküste Javas. and Bau und Bild der Insel Java.Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin. Jg. 1935, pp. 102–125. His book Ferne Tropen-Insel Java,Gundert, Stuttgart 1946 a youth narrative about the life of a peasant boy in a Javanese village on the western slope of the Merapi volcano, is considered one of his most successful fiction publications. He recorded his travel experiences in his book Zu Mahamerus Füßen. Wanderungen auf JavaBrockhaus, Leipzig 1954.
Research in Sumatra On September 4, 1930, Helbig sailed from Hamburg to Sumatra as a laundryman on the steamer S. S. Menes. It was not until October 19 that Belawan, the port of Medan on the Strait of Malacca, was reached.
For almost a year, extensive areas southeast and south of Lake Toba and the island of Nias off the west coast were explored. Accompanied by only one native porter, Helbig covered more than 2,000 kilometers on foot on partly still unknown paths. The research area extended on the one hand to the Batak south and southeast of Lake Toba, lying at a healthy altitude, and on the other hand to the sultanates of Asahan, Kualu, Bila, Kota Pinang and Pane in the then province of "East Coast of Sumatra", lying in the hot and unhealthy lowlands. These landscapes had never been described coherently before Helbig's research, and the extensive Simanalaksa Mountains, often referred to as the "Bila-Ketten", as well as large parts of the Habinsaran and Dolok landscapes were still largely unknown geographically and geologically. Helbig chose a mission house in Parsoburan in Habinsaran as his base. His longest march, which he undertook from here, lasted over three months. Ethnologically significant was his three-week visit in the summer of 1931 to the Orang Lubu, a remnant of the indigenous people of North Sumatra, who, with only 2190 individuals left, inhabited the eastern slopes of the Mandailing steppe valley in Central Sumatra. His main goal here was to record the language of this dying people for posterity.Vgl. Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen. 78. Band 1932, p. 85.
Only after his return from Sumatra, on January 14, 1932, was he presented with his doctorate certificate in Hamburg.Rutz, Sibeth, p. 16. A few months later, on May 14, he became engaged in his hometown of Hildesheim to Liselotte Siebrecht, daughter of Heinrich and Doris Siebrecht. It did not come to a marriage.
The results of his travels in Sumatra were considerable. Twenty papers were published in journals, daily newspapers, and other organs. Most scientifically valuable is the study Beiträge zur Landeskunde von Sumatra. Beobachtungen zwischen Asahan und Barumun, Tobasee und Malakastraße.Rutz, Sibeth, pp. 72 f. Also valuable are the eight articles, almost forgotten, that Helbig published in 1931 under the modest collective title Weniger bekannte Teilgebiete der Bataklande auf Sumatra in the journal Deutsche Wacht in Batavia: Habinsaran, Am Oberlauf des Koealoe, Die Bila-Ketten, Das Tal des Pahae, Das Hochtal von Sipirok, Das Bergland des Dolok, Die Gras-Steppen der Padang Lawas, Das Pane- und Bila-Gebiet. In addition to these geographic-geological descriptions, there are ethnological essays about the Toba-Batak, which deal with all aspects of their daily life, from the view of nature and religion to settlement and house construction and their moral conditions. A geographically and ethnologically substantial travelogue appeared in 1934 under the title Tuan Gila - ein verrückter Herr wandert am Äquator. This title was given to Helbig by the Batak people: This can only be a "crazy gentleman" who wanders across the steppes in the company of only one helper in a blazing sun!
In the highlands of northern Sumatra, Helbig came across a tea plantation run by the German family Heinrich Gundert. Inspired by a deep friendship with the five-year-old son of this family, which lasted until the end of his life, he wrote his book for young people Til kommt nach Sumatra. Das Leben eines deutschen Jungen in den Tropen.Im Verlag von David Gundert, dem Vater des Pflanzers, und dem jüngeren Bruder Friedrich Gundert 1939 in Stuttgart erschienen.
Crossing the island of Borneo After ship voyages to the Caribbean, the European North Cape, Leningrad and once more to Central America, Helbig embarked on his largest voyage in November 1936. As the world's only ship's stoker with a doctorate,Rutz, Sibeth, p. 113. he traveled to Jakarta on the cargo ship Hanau. After initial studies in West Java and on the tin islands of Bangka and Belitung, he arrived in Pontianak on the west coast of Borneo in April 1937. From here he embarked on one of the most strenuous expeditions of the pre-war period: while other explorers used waterways almost without exception, Helbig was the first to cross the island of Borneo on a 3,000-kilometer zigzag path through almost impassable jungle, mostly on foot. He accomplished this with only one white companion, German navigator Erich Schreiter, and with three, or at most four, native porters, mostly female, who were changed from village to village. Rarely has an exploration voyage of this magnitude been accomplished with so little material expenditure.