Paul Sarasin, full name Paul Benedict Sarasin (11 December 1856-7 April 1929) [1] was a Swiss Naturalist and Ethnologist. [2] He is known as the founder of National parks in Switzerland. [1]
Paul Sarasin, full name Paul Benedict Sarasin (11 December 1856-7 April 1929) [1] was a Swiss Naturalist and Ethnologist. [2] He is known as the founder of National parks in Switzerland. [1]
Paul Sarasin studied medicine and natural science at the University of Basel, with Leopold Ruetimeyer, where he also met Fritz Sarasin, and at the University of Würzburg. His dissertation titled "Die Entwicklungsgeschichte der Bithynia tentaculata" was about the developmental history of a small aquatic snail. [3]
Paul Sarasin was second cousin to Fritz Sarasin. [4] Paul and Fritz did not only work and travel together for scientific purposes, but also had a close life-long friendship. [5] Both had their origins in the rich and powerful patrician families (Patriziat), which ruled their native city of Basel at the time. [6]
The Sarasins conducted research in various fields within the natural sciences, and they amassed a collection of zoological and geological objects (namely Molluscs). They later developed interests both in anthropology and ethnology; they photographed and interviewed people, noted measurements of the human body, recorded their language, and collected works of art.
Paul and Fritz Sarasin made several scientific expeditions to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Celebes (now Sulawesi). After their first journey to Ceylon in 1883-86, they stayed in Berlin from 1886-93 for evaluation and publication of results. In the years 1890,1902 and 1907, they travelled again to Ceylon, and in 1893-96 to Celebes. After staying from 1896-1902 in Basel, they went from 1902-1903 a second time to Celebes. [7]
In Celebes they tried to solve an open scientific question related to the theory of evolution of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, about a detail concerned with the geographical distribution of plants and animals called the Wallace Line, that is whether Celebes belonged in this regard more to Asia or to Australia. [8] A network of scientists publishing in English, German, French and Dutch competed for an answer to this dubiety. [9] Instead of a sharp line, the Sarasins proposed a zone of gradual change and asked to research about the kind of connections of the land which would explain the existing populations. [10]
In the context of the question of the origin and the evolution of man, Wallace had proposed a second line, Wallace's other line east of the first line, hence called, separating two distinct groups of men: the Malay people in the West and the Papuan people in the East. To clarify this problem, the Sarasins explored different groups and tribes in Ceylon and Celebes, which they saw as varieties of men created differently by evolution and at different stages of biological and cultural development. [11] In Ceylon, they visited and studied intensively a tribe called the Weddas, which they considered to be the oldest and the most original population of Ceylon, living mostly as hunters in the mountains and inner parts of Ceylon. They compared them to other groups in Ceylon, such as the Tamils and the Sinhalese. Later, the Sarasins found a group of people in Celebes, in their opinion similar to the Weddas, called the Toala and Toraja. [12]
For their research, the Sarasins crossed Celebes seven times on different routes. Since the island was at this time only loosely controlled by the colonial administration of the Netherlands, they had to travel through mostly unknown areas of the nearly independent kingdoms of Luwu, Sidenreng and Bone. These kingdoms belonged to the cultural groups named Bugis or Makassars. Hierarchically structured, each with a king on top, elected by noble families, and the associated parliament of lower nobles, they competed for power and resources, like slaves, to produce coffee and spices, which they sold to the world-market. Lower groups of the Bugis, and tribes from the inner mountainous parts of Celebes, like the Toraja, lived also, more or less, in a kind of a slavery. According to the scientist, B.C.Schär, the research of the Sarasin later led to the inclusion of these areas into the Dutch colonial imperium. [13]
When Fritz Sarasin travelled, 1910-1911, to the islands of the New Caledonia in the South Pacific, he met there with another ethnologist from Basel, Felix Speiser, who at this time did his research on the New Hebrides.
Paul and Fritz could finance their research from their own, mostly inherited, wealth. [14]
From 1906-1912, Paul Sarasin was President of the Commission for the Ethnological Museum of Basel. Paul and Fritz donated their rich collections to the Ethnological Museum. [7] Alone from Celebes, they brought back to Basel a count of 1000 animals and plants, as well as 680 ethnographic objects and 600 photos. [15] Along with Hermann Fischer-Sigwart, Jakob Heierli, Albert Heim, Hans Schardt, Carl Schroter, Ernest Wiczek, and Friedrich Zschokke, they were the founders of the Schweizerische Naturschutzkommission (the Swiss Nature Conservation Commission). [16]
At the age of 62, Paul married, in 1918, Anna Maria Hohenester, and had two children with her. [7]
Paul and Fritz Sarasin are commemorated in the scientific names of five species of reptiles:
And fish:
Correlophus sarasinorum, also called commonly Roux's giant gecko, Sarasins' giant gecko, Sarasin's [sic] giant gecko (incorrectly), and the suras gecko, is a species of lizard in the family Diplodactylidae. The species is native to the southern portions of the outlying New Caledonian island of Grande Terre.
Robert Walser was a German language Swiss writer. He additionally worked as a copyist, an inventor's assistant, a butler, and in various other low-paying trades. Despite marginal early success in his literary career, the popularity of his work gradually diminished over the second and third decades of the 20th century, making it increasingly difficult for him to support himself through writing. He eventually had a nervous breakdown and spent the remainder of his life in sanatoriums.
Richard Plant was a gay Jewish emigre from Nazi Germany, first to Switzerland and then to the U.S., who became a professor at the City College of New York, where he taught German language and literature from 1947 to 1973. He authored an opera scenario as well a number of fictional and non-fictional works, notably The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals (1986).
Swiss Standard German, or Swiss High German, referred to by the Swiss as Schriftdeutsch, or German: Hochdeutsch, is the written form of one (German) of four national languages in Switzerland, besides French, Italian, and Romansh. It is a variety of Standard German, used in the German-speaking part of Switzerland and in Liechtenstein. It is mainly written, and rather less often spoken.
The Sulawesi free-tailed bat is a species of bat in the family Molossidae. It is found in Indonesia and the Philippines.
Paul Wernle was a Swiss theologian, born in Hottingen, today part of the city of Zürich.
Gerhard Stapelfeldt is a German sociologist. He was a university teacher at University of Hamburg until December 2010.
Fritz Sarasin, full name Karl Friedrich Sarasin was a Swiss naturalist.
Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani is an architect, architectural theorist and architectural historian as well as a professor emeritus for the History of Urban Design at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. He practices and promotes a formally disciplined, timelessly classic, and aesthetically sustainable form of architecture, one without modernist or postmodernist extravagances. As an author and editor of several acclaimed works of architectural history and theory, his ideas are widely cited.
Friedrich "Fritz" Sternberg was a German economist, sociologist, Marxist theorist, and socialist politician. Bertolt Brecht declared Sternberg to be his "first teacher."
Nessia sarasinorum, commonly known as Sarasins's snake skink or Müller's nessia, is a species of lizard in the family Scincidae. The species is endemic to the island of Sri Lanka.
Bernhard Paul "Buddy" Elias was a Swiss actor and president of the Anne Frank Fonds, the foundation dedicated to preserving the memory of his cousin Anne Frank.
Monika Dettwiler is a Swiss-Italian journalist and author.
The Kabaena bow-fingered gecko is a species of gecko, a lizard in the family Gekkonidae. The species is endemic to Indonesia.
Rosa Lachenmeier is a Swiss painter and photographer whose work has been widely exhibited. She lives and works in Birsfelden near Basel.
Peter Hamm was a German poet, author, journalist, editor, and literary critic. He wrote several documentaries, including ones about Ingeborg Bachmann and Peter Handke. He wrote for the German weekly newspapers Der Spiegel and Die Zeit, among others. From 1964 to 2002, Hamm worked as contributing editor for culture for the broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk. He was also a jury member of literary prizes, and critic for a regular literary club of the Swiss television company Schweizer Fernsehen.
Peter Kurzeck was a German writer.
Ilma Rakusa is a Swiss writer and translator. She translates French, Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Hungarian into German.
Fritz Schweizer was a footballer who played mainly as midfielder in the early 1900s.
Fritz Senn is a Swiss publicist and James Joyce expert.
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