Herbert Schröder-Stranz (9 June 1884 – 15 August 1912) was a German officer and explorer of

polar region The polar regions, also called the frigid geographical zone, zones or polar zones, of Earth are the regions of the planet that surround its geographical poles (the North Pole, North and South Poles), lying within the polar circles. These high l ...

s. He led the German Arctic Expedition of 1912.

Biography

Schröder-Stranz was born at his family estate at Stranz, West Prussia (modern Strączno, Poland), and later added the name of his birthplace to his family's name (Schröder is a common name in Germany). His original name was Herbert Schröder, but later he added Stranz to it to reflect his village's name. Schröder-Stranz joined the

German Army The German Army (, "army") is the land component of the armed forces of Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German ''Bundeswehr'' together with the ''Marine'' (German Navy) and the ''Luftwaf ...

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 The Northeast Passage (abbreviated as NEP) is the shipping route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, along the Arctic coasts of Norway and Russia. The western route through the islands of Canada is accordingly called the Northwest Passage (N ...

. In 1912 a preliminary expedition started aboard of the

schooner A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schoon ...

''Herzog Ernst'', a ship under the command of

Alfred Ritscher Alfred Ritscher (23 May 1879 in Bad Lauterberg – 30 March 1963 in Hamburg) was a German polar explorer. A ''Kapitän zur See'' in the ''Kriegsmarine'', he led the third German Antarctic Expedition in 1938–39, which mapped the New Swabia (ger ...

and named after Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg, the main sponsor of the project. The crew, among them the illustrator

Christopher Rave Christopher Rave (20 February 1881 – 13 January 1933) was a German painting artist, explorer of polar regions and professor. Life Rave was a popular painter of naval art living in Hamburg. Between 1900 and 1909 he created about 300 paintings ...

, assembled on 1 August 1912 in Tromsø. As the public fund-raising had been less successful than expected, Schröder-Stranz searched for a way to improve the publicity. He changed the initial plans and proposed to cross

Spitsbergen Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norw ...

's Nordaustlandet from the South to the North, the first expedition to do so. The expedition left Tromsø 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 Schröder-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 Schröder-Stranz was seen alive, only seven out of 15 members of his crew survived the following winter.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Schroeder-Stranz, Herbert 1884 births 1912 deaths People from Wałcz County People from West Prussia Explorers of the Arctic German explorers Schutztruppe personnel Nordaustlandet