biography
pronunciation:
[filkhner]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1877–1957)
|
| biography:
| Geographer and explorer, born in Munich, SE Germany. He studied at Munich University, joined the Trigonometrical Division in Prussia, and later worked with the Berlin Earth-Magnetic Institute and the Potsdam Astrophysics Institute. He led expeditions across the Pamirs in C Asia (1900) and to Tibet (1903, 1926, 1934) with his wife and Albert Tafel, and led the Second German Antarctic Expedition (1911–12), during which his ship, the Deutschland became frozen in the ice for nine months. With Erich Przybyllok, his companion on earlier trips, he undertook a magnetic survey of Nepal (1939–40) and established magnetic stations in China and Tibet. He lived in India during World War 2, as his anti-Nazi feelings were well known, then returned to Zürich to write. |
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