Duke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
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Duke Adolf Friedrich Albrecht Heinrich of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (10 October 1873 – 5 August 1969) was a German explorer in Africa, colonial politician, and the first president of the National Olympic Committee of Germany (1949–1951).
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[edit] Biography
Born in Schwerin, Adolf Friedrich was the third child of Friedrich Franz II, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1842–1883), and his third wife Princess Marie Caroline of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt.
From 1907–1908 Adolf Friedrich led a scientific research expedition in the region of the Central African Graben and traversed across Africa from east to west. In 1908 he was awarded the Eduard Vogel Medal of the Association of Geography of Leipzig.
From 1910–1911 he led an expedition to Lake Chad and the northern rivers of the Congo until the Nile in current Sudan. Adolf Friedrich and his companions explored the then little-known primeval forest region of the Congo tributaries and the basin of Lake Chad. Individual groups extended their explorations to the Bahr el Ghazal near the upper Nile, while others travelled to south Cameroon and the islands of the Gulf of Guinea. Vom Kongo zum Niger und Nil ("From the Congo to the Niger and the Nile"), a two-volume work based on the 1910–1911 expeditions, has an excellent reputation today for its detail and images.
From 1912–1914, Adolf Friedrich was the last governor of Togoland in German West Africa; he was invited for the official celebration of the independence of Togo in 1960. After World War I, he served as the vice-president of the privately-chartered German Colonial Society for Southwest Africa; his brother Johann Albrecht was president from 1895–1920.
During World War I, Adolf Friedrich was in the army of Austria-Hungary (1915) and for a short time in the army of the Ottoman Empire (1916).[citation needed] In 1918, he was nominated to be the head of state of the United Baltic Duchy. He never ascended its throne, however, and the German defeat in the war led to the end of the puppet state.
Adolf Friedrich then served as a member of the International Olympic Committee from 1926–1956 and as the first president of the National Olympic Committee of Germany from 1949–1951.
Adolf Friedrich was married twice. In Gera on 24 April 1917, he married Viktoria Feodora von Reuß-Schleiz, who died giving birth to their only daughter, Woislawa-Feodora von Mecklenburg-Schwerin, on 18 December 1918. He later married the widow of his half brother Duke Johann Albrecht, Elisabeth von Stolberg-Roßla on the 15 October 1924; she survived him by only a few weeks after his death in Eutin in 1969.
[edit] Works
- Ins innerste Afrikas, Leipzig 1909
- Vom Kongo zum Niger und Nil, Leipzig 1912
- Wissenschaftliche Erlebnisse der Deutschen Zentral-Afrika-Expedition unter Führung Adolf Friedrichs, Herzog zu Mecklenburg, Leipzig 1922
[edit] Reference
This article incorporates text translated from the corresponding German Wikipedia article as of November 10, 2006.
