Introduction: Erich von Drygalski
Erich von Drygalski (1865–1949), the leader of a major German Antarctic expedition in the Heroic Era, was a professional scientist-geographer. For him, his expedition was entirely motivated by the urge to scientific discovery, and he personally selected the team of other scholar-scientists to accompany him. This article uses the method of discourse analysis (Gee, Reference Gee1990, Reference Gee2011) to examine some of Drygalski’s writings and his selected photographs which show, however, that his response in his confrontations with the ice was not simply scientific but was enriched by aesthetic and emotional factors.
Drygalski’s 1887 doctoral dissertation on the geoidal deformation of the continents during the Ice Age left him with a passion to study the properties of global ice at first hand (Joerg, Reference Joerg1950). His focus was on structure and movement of the ice and its effect on the earth’s substratum (Tiggesbäumker, Reference Tiggesbäumker and Freeman1983). He led the Berlin Geographical Society expeditions to Greenland in 1891–1893 to study the ice in situ. In 1895, he supported Georg Neumayer’s proposal at the 11th German Geographical Congress in Bremen that the Antarctic continent be explored. His appointment as leader of the German expedition followed, recommended by Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen (1833–1905), professor of geography at the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin and president of the German Geographical Society, who had been supervisor for Drygalski’s PhD and who described Drygalski’s Greenland expedition as a brilliant validation of his abilities (Lüdecke, Reference Lüdecke1995a, p.A26). Drygalski subsequently explained plans for the German expedition at the 7th International Geographical Congress in Berlin in 1899. By that time, he was associate professor of geography and geophysics at the University of Berlin.
On board, the purpose-built ship Gauss were other carefully selected scientists, including biologist Professor Ernst Vanhöffen (1858–1918), who had been to Greenland with Drygalski, and Dr Emil Philippi (1871–1910), geologist and chemist. Drygalski’s comments (Reference Drygalski1912) on the latter’s eventual death some years after the expedition show that he developed a strong work relationship with Philippi through their common passion for glaciology. Drygalski wrote that Philippi “evinced a particular interest and skill in photography, so that he … took over every aspect of this on the expedition, and it is thanks to him that we have a great number of excellent pictures” (Reference Drygalski and Raraty1989, p.20). A number of other expeditioners also took photographs.
Photography in polar exploration
Photographic images began to circulate in popular scientific volumes on the history of polar research in the late 1890s, with images of Fridtjof Nansen’s exploration of the North Pole (Enzberg, Reference Enzberg1898). Photography now supplemented earlier forms of representation in polar research and took over important authentication and objectification functions (Müller, Reference Müller, Hüppauf and Weingart2009). In Drygalski’s Antarctic expedition, and the concurrent Scott and Nordenskjöld ones from Britain and Sweden,
photography documented for the first time almost every step in the untouched Antarctic expanses. The recordings were not only of scientific interest, but also became popular and shaped the public’s image of the research that was conducted in the southernmost part of the world. (Müller, Reference Müller, Hüppauf and Weingart2009, p.237, my translation)
The ice, leitmotif of a life
The German South Polar Expedition spent 14 months in the Davis Sea, ice-bound, as had been planned, though at just past 66°S latitude not as far south as the plan. Drygalski’s narrative of the expedition (Reference Drygalski1904a) has a focus on photographs of humans using research instruments in the landscape. This focus had important functions in the popular publication framework. It promoted the integration of research in a narrative context and introduced an emotional factor, thus making the book more accessible to the general public (Müller, Reference Müller, Hüppauf and Weingart2009, p.243).
The expedition also produced volumes of scientific results, including much concerning the nature of the ice. “The scientist,” writes Elzinga (Reference Elzinga, Rabassa and Borla2007, p.149), “has to peel away subjective impression.” But, Drygalski’s comments and choice of visual documentation reveal a complex emotional response as well.
Drygalski’s daughter has described ice as the fascination and leitmotif of his life (Moerder-von Drygalski, Reference Moerder-von Drygalski1964, p.263). “Wherever he went with students or family in other continents, he was always pursuing clues about the ice and its effects, seeking to explain its mysteries to himself and to others” (p.264, my translation). He described the breaking up of the sea ice on 9 February 1903, finally releasing his ship after the long Antarctic winter, as his greatest experience of the ice. He called it “our deliverance” (Drygalski, Reference Drygalski1904b, p.144), a word of biblical connotations connecting the event to universal metaphysical themes. He said: “After the liberation from the ice, I never again believed anything could ever go wrong” (Moerder-von Drygalski, Reference Moerder-von Drygalski1964, p.264, my translation). His daughter believed this statement showed how much the ice shaped his life and that it also threw “a strong light on the main feature of his character, a capacity for unshakeable confidence which was contagious” (Moerder-von Drygalski, Reference Moerder-von Drygalski1964, p.264, my translation). Ice and character had become inextricably intermingled.
Examining written and visual texts
This article examines relevant literature and photographs to explore some of Drygalski’s writings and photographs he selected which illustrate ice as the leitmotif of his life. The method of discourse analysis (Gee, Reference Gee1990, Reference Gee2011), a technique for analysing the components of texts for their operant values, is appropriate. Texts, verbal and visual, contain situated meanings and cultural models that give language-specific meanings within specific situations. Multiple and flexible situated meanings in a text or in speech are based on users’ construal of context and on their socio-culturally defined past experiences (Gee, Reference Gee2011, p.211). They are associated with cultural models distributed across the different sorts of viewpoints found in a group—explanatory theories or storylines connected by societies to concepts important to them (Gee, Reference Gee2011, p.205). The situated meanings and cultural models in Drygalski’s texts have a context of polar exploration and polar science, and the groups concerned are other expeditioners and scientists, and followers of these. What is expressed in language through the choice between different kinds of vocabulary and syntax may be expressed in images through the choice between different compositional structures (Kress & van Leeuwen, Reference Kress and van Leeuwen2006). A discursive examination of the texts provides a means of exploring layers of meaning which deepen our understanding of Drygalski’s approach, and which situate readers in various responsive attitudes (Sekula, Reference Sekula2010).
The selection of photographs to illustrate the present article was informed by Barthes’ punctum, the object or image within a photograph that immediately strikes the viewer, and studium, the element in a photographic image that creates interest and is consciously considered (Barthes, Reference Barthes1981). Photographic meaning is “a hybrid construction” (Sekula, Reference Sekula2010, p.16), with textual arrangements and discursive practices producing multi-layered messages that rely on cultural and historical contexts and on experiential knowledge (Barthes, Reference Barthes1977). A full interpretation of images may require attention to associated passages in relevant texts, which inform the reader/viewer as to how the image fits into the verbal narrative (Myers, Reference Myers, Lynch and Woolgar1990). This article therefore draws strongly on cross-referencing of intertextual material consisting of primary sources—books and articles written by Drygalski himself.
Drygalski’s publications are “clear, distinct and objective in tone, and strongly scientific” (Tiggesbäumker, Reference Tiggesbäumker and Freeman1983). His daughter agrees that his descriptions were “always penetrating, precise, mostly dispassionate,” but adds that they were “also often poetic and thoughtful … full of little characteristic insertions” (Moerder-von Drygalski, Reference Moerder-von Drygalski1964, p.266, my translation). In his written and selected visual texts, an inevitable tension occurs between analytic/scientific and emotive/aesthetic motifs (Millar, Reference Millar2017).
Exploration in polar regions was represented through the interplay of often intersecting discourses. Recurring motifs and metaphors enabled a sense of familiarity within which expectations of the region were formed, “a consolidated, self-perpetuating vision promoted by inherited images … reproduced and naturalised, taken for granted” (Ryall, Schimanski & Wærp, Reference Ryall, Schimanski and Wærp2010, p.x). Common in accounts of polar exploration were motifs of icebergs, ships in the ice and the notion of the sublime, an aesthetics concept from early 19th century romanticism involving awe, beauty and dread. Wråkberg describes this, in terms of the Arctic, as “the fear, vertigo, and feelings of insignificance and frailty experienced when exposed to open, seemingly immense, northern landscapes” (Reference Wråkberg2007, p.198). The effect of these recurring motifs was to connect with concepts already formed in the minds of readers and viewers of images, drawing on a mystique of adventure and heroism blended with nationalist and scientific elements (Simpson-Housley, Reference Simpson-Housley1992), which would enhance engagement with the narratives explorers produced.
The primary sources examined for this article are Drygalski’s Reference Drygalski, von Drygalski, Vanhöffen, Stade and Schumann1897 study of the Greenland ice, his description of the mission of the German South Polar Expedition (Reference Drygalski1898), his narrative of the South Polar Expedition (Reference Drygalski1904a, Reference Drygalski and Raraty1989), the expedition’s scientific results (Reference Drygalski1912, Reference Drygalski1923), Drygalski’s presentation to the Royal Geographical Society on 25 April 1904 (Reference Drygalski1904b), and his 1911 chapter on Spitzbergen’s ice. Only one of the photographs examined here was taken by Drygalski himself, while in Greenland (Reference Drygalski, von Drygalski, Vanhöffen, Stade and Schumann1897). He was a very adequate photographer but left it to others to document his narrative of the South Polar Expedition (Reference Drygalski1904a). Two of these are examined here, one by Philippi, the other by Dr Hans Gazert, medical officer and bacteriologist. The one by Philippi was used in Drygalski’s address to the Royal Geographical Society (Reference Drygalski1904b), which occurred in the same year as the publication of the narrative, but several months before. Two other photographs by Philippi are from one of the volumes of scientific results (Drygalski, Reference Drygalski1923). Drygalski wrote in the foreword to his narrative (Reference Drygalski1904a, p.viii) that for publication he drew on the complete collections of expedition members Vanhöffen, Gazert, Philippi and First Officer Lerche, as well as on pictures gifted or purchased from other collections, indicating that he was heavily involved in the selection.
Every image represents a “way of seeing” which “is affected by what we know or what we believe” (Berger, Reference Berger1972, p.107). Photographs are dynamic sites at which many gazes and “ways of seeing” intersect (Lutz & Collins, Reference Lutz, Collins and Wells2003). The images contain textual arrangements and discursive practices, producing multi-layered cultural messages in which creator, subject and viewer all play their roles. Just as photographers’ gazes are mediated by cultural, social and historical contexts, so are the gazes of viewers of the photographs. Drygalski’s choice of photographs for his publications therefore reveals something about his own “way of seeing”.
Drygalski’s “ways of seeing” the ice
The scientist’s way
The publications examined here focus on the scientific, except for Drygalski’s narrative of the South Polar Expedition, which also includes much that is scientific, with detailed sections on the ice and its forms. In Antarctica, he was able to describe the ice from the air. Unfortunately, for expectations in Germany, he was beaten by some weeks in this achievement by Robert F. Scott’s concurrent British National Antarctic Expedition, which had also managed to get further south. The German South Polar Expedition’s hydrogen balloon had been provided by the Royal Prussian Airship Department. On a sunny, still day in March 1902, Drygalski ascended to 480 m. The sweep of vision afforded by a balloon flying over ice is a most privileged vantage point, but his emotions are only briefly implicit: “The surrounding view … was grandiose … Immediately in front … was the main assemblage of icebergs, and the great colossi which surrounded us shone in the reflected light” (Drygalski, Reference Drygalski and Raraty1989, p.158). In the afternoon, there were two more ascents, during which Philippi took photographs. Drygalski, recognising the reader’s appeal of the balloon’s link to the technology euphoria widespread at the time (Müller, Reference Müller, Hüppauf and Weingart2009), later selected photographs for his narrative (Drygalski, Reference Drygalski1904a, p.256 and p.273). The ice is also prominent in Figure 1 here, a photograph published in the scientific results, in the volume on meteorology (Drygalski, Reference Drygalski1923). It seems a pity that the more general readers did not get to see Figure 1, which is a striking image.
Aerial view of the Gauss in the ice during the German South Polar Expedition. Source: Drygalski (Ed.) Reference Drygalski1923 Plate 1, after p.337. Photographer: Philippi.
The viewer looks precipitously downwards at the ship. The photograph conveys a paradox: the explorers are at once dominant and insignificant. It is the “paradox of encounter — between an indifferent ice and humans’ intent on colonising the uninhabitable” identified in the Heroic Age aesthetic by Glasberg (Reference Glasberg2012, p.92). But if Drygalski was aware of the paradox, he did not say. Years later, in 1910, he took part in the Spitsbergen trip made by the Zeppelin Study Commission, which used free and captive balloons (Miethe & Hergesell, Reference Miethe and Hergesell1911)). Aerial vision gives a further dimension: it provides a way of conceptualising the world, here indicating a continuation of the Western tradition of dominance through technology-based power. An aerial view has connotations of superiority and serene transcendence (Dorrian & Pousin, Reference Dorrian and Pousin2012; Wohl, Reference Wohl1994): the sort of objective, scholarly tranquillity which enabled Drygalski to view things with a dispassionate, scientific mindset, obvious in his description of the Spitsbergen trip, except for a brief comment about a “magnificent panoramic view” (Reference Drygalski, Miethe and Hergesell1911, p.39, my translation), not from the air but from the surface of the Lilliehook Glacier. It is presumed that Drygalski made at least one ascent. As many of the expedition members as possible were given the opportunity of doing so (Miethe & Hergesell, Reference Miethe and Hergesell1911, p.149). His apparent lack of enthusiasm is in contrast to the account of Professor Dr H. Hergesell, meteorologist and geophysicist, who ascended in the balloon at 3 a.m. one morning:
nothing but ice and ice … It was a beautiful but simultaneously eerie and bleak sight. The relentlessness and harshness of nature asserted itself in full force in the midst of this icy death. Above it, white and pale, just as relentless, the midnight sun seemed to sneer at the frail instrument of man which carried us up to this strange sight. (Hergesell, Reference Hergesell, Miethe and Hergesell1911, p.256, my translation)
Another photograph of the Gauss in Antarctica (Fig. 2) is also taken from a distance but from the ground. It sits in a vast ice desert, with a few indications of human activity around it, icebergs in the background. It is an image that documents the expedition objectively, dispassionately. Antarctica has been seen as a distorted mirror, reflecting back what each individual and culture brings to it—“self-reflexive” (Pyne, Reference Pyne2004, p.91). For Drygalski, the Antarctica effect was somewhat enigmatic, but he sought to explain it with a glaciologist’s perspective, to which vast time scales brought an element of serenity.
It is hard to explain the reason for the unforgettable impression we gained as we gazed across the uniformity of nature around us. It was perhaps that very uniformity and majestic tranquillity which infused everything. What we beheld was the product of decades, of centuries even, and the evidence of natural forces so clear and obvious that they seemed to be working before our very eyes. (Reference Drygalski and Raraty1989, p.235)
A view of the Gauss in winter quarters. Source: Drygalski (Ed.) Reference Drygalski1923: Plate 3, after p.337.
For the viewer, however, Figure 2 may arouse emotion as an image evoking the romantic aspect of powerful nature, relentless ice masses pressing in on a small ship (Barr, Reference Barr1997). The motif of the ship in the ice was an often reproduced image of polar exploration. Sir John Franklin’s Terror and Erebus (1845) (Hutchinson, Reference Hutchinson2017), Nils Adolf Nordenskiöld’s Vega (1878–79) (Leslie, Reference Leslie2012) and Nansen’s Fram (1893–96) (Nansen, Reference Nansen1897) are among many striking images which survive of ships in the Arctic ice.
Appreciating the beauty
Before the Antarctic expedition, Drygalski had drawn on his experience in the Arctic to express his feelings about the frozen world:
The nature of the polar regions possesses powerful beauties that have never yet failed to impress their viewer. The stark contrast between the soaring cliffs, water, and ice, the intermittent, unexpectedly rich display of life forms, the colourful splendour of the ice clouds … all this leaves impressions that one never forgets. (Quoted by Murphy, Reference Murphy2002, p.159, from Drygalski (Reference Drygalski1898), p.17)
“Powerful” in the above quote is the key to Drygalski’s “way of seeing” ice. It was powerful in the objective sense and in the personal.
German polar literature throughout the 19th century tended to dwell upon the spiritual, lyrical impact of the landscape’s aesthetic qualities (Murphy, Reference Murphy2002). Drygalski’s description above is reminiscent of that. As a scholar of glaciology, used to think in terms of aeons, he experienced the ice with an objective tranquillity, scientific on the one hand but also appreciative of its aesthetic appeal. In Greenland, he wrote about “incomparable scenic beauty” (Reference Drygalski, von Drygalski, Vanhöffen, Stade and Schumann1897, p.145), “picturesque beauty” (p.155) and “supreme beauty” (p.481). He also told how, as big blocks of ice tumbled down a glacier, “fine ice-dust was raised, which hung like a transparent veil around the ice pillars … sometimes catching the sun-rays and glancing with colour effects” (Greenland Expedition of the Berlin Geographical Society, 1894, p.399), “gleaming in glorious colours like sunsets, giving the ever-changing sight a special beauty” (Drygalski, Reference Drygalski, von Drygalski, Vanhöffen, Stade and Schumann1897, p.388, my translation)—an appreciation of the aesthetic quality of the scene.
He has captured this intrinsic beauty in his photograph in Figure 3. The viewer has a sense of the timelessness of the natural forces that have created this sparkling icy grotto, of the endless dynamic of ice and water, the debris of moraine suggesting also the implicit destruction in the process. Overall, it is a beautiful scene, but there is a sense of the photographer’s objectivity. There is none of the mystical atmosphere, for instance, evoked by later, professional photographers Herbert Ponting and Frank Hurley, who also photographed ice-caves, but using light and human figures in the composition to create carefully orchestrated images with a sense of the sublime (Andrews, Reference Andrews2007).
Outflow of a surface stream from the inland ice edge. Moraine. Photographer: Drygalski. Source: Drygalski, Reference Drygalski, von Drygalski, Vanhöffen, Stade and Schumann1897, after p.92.
In Antarctica, Drygalski was once again appreciative of the beauty of icescapes, describing
the imposing view of land. There it lay in its quiet solitary grandeur, never before beheld, never before set foot on. All was ice-clad; still, that it was land was shown beyond all doubt by the very forms affected by the ice. (Reference Drygalski1904b, p.137)
He emphasises the pristine nature of the sight and the loneliness of it, but the geographer always in him is objective enough to recognise it as land.
While doing an experiment laying out thermometers on a tabular iceberg, he could admire the “beautiful caves worn by the working of the sea in fissures in its sides. They were extraordinarily beautiful, with wonderful crystals covering the walls and roof” (Drygalski, Reference Drygalski and Raraty1989, p.163). And on other occasions,
From the top of this berg … a magnificent view unfolded before us. The sun came out, and suddenly everything became clear in the contrast of light and shade. The uniform landscape dissolved and we could see the differences within it. (Reference Drygalski and Raraty1989, p.166)
He looked down a crevasse and saw “the most magnificent formations of huge icicles, covered with pyramidal crystals, hanging down into fathomless depths, veritable marvels of beauty” (Reference Drygalski and Raraty1989, p.179); he was drawn by the beauty of these “fathomless” depths that are beyond the power of the scientist to calculate.
Nuances of Drygalski’s “ways of seeing”
Drygalski’s emotional and aesthetic response to the ice was nuanced. The scholar of glaciology experienced the ice with dispassionate tranquillity mixed with aesthetic appreciation. On the other hand, the ice could trigger in him an emotional sense of human vulnerability. Its aesthetic appeal was then infused with fear and uncertainty. In Greenland, he had described the “terrible noise” as icebergs collided (Drygalski, Reference Drygalski, von Drygalski, Vanhöffen, Stade and Schumann1897, p.393). The original meaning of “terrible” was something that causes terror. As Gauss approached its Antarctic destination, he wrote: “About 2.00 am an iceberg suddenly appeared close by, looming out of the fog … As if drawn by magic we were driving straight towards it … It was perhaps altogether the most difficult situation we encountered at sea” (Drygalski, Reference Drygalski and Raraty1989, p.127). In Drygalski’s original version, this is expressed as “wie von einer magischen Kraft angezogen” (“as if drawn by a magical power”) (Reference Drygalski1904a, p.219). He and his crew would frequently describe Antarctica as a vast, haunting land of both real dangers and unsettling visual illusions (Luedtke, Reference Luedtke2010, p.90). The iceberg “looms”, a word implying menace. Its appearance is sudden. It emerges from fog. There is a power in it which draws the mariners towards doom. Other polar explorers also alluded to “magic” in their narratives, evoking the supernatural to describe the powerful sense of enthralment experienced. Fridjof Nansen’s seminal narrative of his 1893–1896 Arctic expedition had included expressions such as “a fairy tale from another world” (Reference Drygalski, von Drygalski, Vanhöffen, Stade and Schumann1897, p.577). Otto Nordenskjöld, in Antarctica in 1901–1903 at the same time as Drygalski, wrote of “a fairy veil of mist” (Nordenskjöld & Andersson, Reference Nordenskjöld and Andersson1905, p.170). Philippi referred to one iceberg as being “like the glass mountain of the fairy tale” (Lüdecke, Reference Lüdecke1995b, p.271). The idea of polar voyagers crossing a boundary into a mythical and mystical land had been a recurring idea in Arctic narratives, with the language of the supernatural used along with that of the sublime (McCorristine, Reference McCorristine2010).
Figure 4 was inserted in the published text of Drygalski’s address to the Royal Geographical Society in 1904, without direct reference to it. The caption there was “Stratification of the inland ice” (Reference Drygalski1904b, after p.142). It was also published later that year in Zum Kontinent des eisigen Südens, with the changed caption, “Stratification of a tabular iceberg” (Reference Drygalski1904a, p.455). Verbal and visual languages of captions and photograph interchange different modes of representation with both analytical and aesthetic qualities: Figure 4, together with either caption, speaks to viewers in the language of the “scientific sublime”, alternating “between the impersonal, mimetic mode of ‘Mathematical Plainness’ and the subjective, psychological, and sometimes imaginative mode” (Oishi, Reference Oishi, Clark and Connolly2015, p.37). Drygalski’s address to the Society was described as “beautifully and interestingly illustrated” by member Sir John Murray (Drygalski, Reference Drygalski1904b, p.148) and by Sir Lewis Beaumont as “delivered with a great deal of spirit and originality, and the remarks which accompanied the illustrations certainly were extremely amusing” (Drygalski, Reference Drygalski1904b, p.150). Those accompanying remarks were not recorded, but the scientific sublime clearly emerges out of the juxtaposition of matter-of-fact caption and the awesome natural wonder of the image.
Stratification of a tabular iceberg. Photographer: Philippi. Source: Drygalski, Reference Drygalski1904a, p.455.
Drygalski had alluded to a magical force in the context of an approaching iceberg but was not generally fanciful in his emotional response to the ice. In Zum Kontinent des eisigen Südens, he did use the adjective “geheimnisvoll” (mysterious) to describe Antarctica (Reference Drygalski1904a, p.667), but about Figure 4 he commented only on the horizontal stratification of the ice and the reasons for its shape. Viewers might see the looming forms of the ice as sinister. They are like conjoined beings, one with a staring single eye. Germans experienced the sublime in polar landscapes, as evidenced in the work of painters such as Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), and it is possible that Philippi also had a sensation of it when photographing scenes like the one in Figure 4. In reply to his illustrated presentation to the Royal Geographical Society (Drygalski, Reference Drygalski1904b, p.151), Thomas Holdich, British geographer and then Vice-President of the Royal Geographical Society, referred to photographs such as this when he mentioned “the ship isolated amidst the ice with nothing but the weird ice-shapes all around it”. “Weird” suggests the supernatural. Drygalski made an effort to make his lectures entertaining and would have selected illustrations to this end, as well as for their geographical interest to the Society.
On a sledge journey to the Gaussberg mountain, Drygalski encountered an utterly desolate and hazardous landscape:
It was a scene of infinite desolation that we were now crossing. To the west were round blue bergs, with a few also in evidence to the east … This blue ice is a typical and characteristic Antarctic phenomenon … Future seafarers in these regions should be warned against entering leads and cracks in blue ice, for if such a field with blue icebergs closes up again, any ship trapped inside is likely to stay there for a lifetime. (Drygalski, Reference Drygalski and Raraty1989, p.173)
“Desolation” is the English translator’s word for the German “Öde” (Drygalski, Reference Drygalski1904a, p.300), which could also be translated as “barrenness”, “wasteland”, “bleakness”, “lifelessness”, situated meanings with implications of hopelessness. The excerpt also contains the mental image of a ship locked eternally in blue ice. The discourses are literally doom-laden.
Apart from situations of personal danger, Drygalski had a lifetime interest in anthropo-geographical issues (Tiggesbäumker, Reference Tiggesbäumker and Freeman1983), which could also cause him to view the ice through this other, more emotional lens. This could be a conflicted view, with its elements at odds. In Greenland, he had seen that for the human inhabitants “ice is the constant embodiment of fear and hope” (Drygalski, Reference Drygalski, von Drygalski, Vanhöffen, Stade and Schumann1897, p.11, my translation). The living obtained from the sea was at once made more difficult by the effects of the ice, but could also be assisted, as when the calving of glaciers smashed through the solid ice-covered fjords. “The whole nature of Greenland is in terrible harmony, with the ice the supreme principle” (Drygalski, Reference Drygalski, von Drygalski, Vanhöffen, Stade and Schumann1897, p.11, my translation). The language he used then—“fear”, “terrible”, “destroy”, “smash”—draws on a discourse of apprehension and annihilation.
On a personal level, Drygalski was aware of other human needs evoked by the immensity of the ice. Figure 5 shows a photograph taken by Hans Gazert (1870–1961), who took most of the photographs on the sledging trip to the ice-free Gaussberg mountain at the edge of the inland ice some 80 km from the ship.
On the inland ice northwest of the Gaussberg. Vanhöffen, Drygalski, Friedrich Bidlingmaier with Gaussberg in distance. 1300 feet. Photographer: Gazert. Source: Drygalski, Reference Drygalski1904a, p.418.
Figure 5 reflects to an extent the “cultural imaginary” of the time. The cultural models here consist of “networks interlinking discursive themes, images, motifs and narrative forms that are publicly available at a given culture at any one time and articulate its psychic and social dimensions” (Dawson, Reference Dawson1994, p.48). In 19th and early 20th century polar exploration, the cultural imaginary included conquest scenarios and masculinity. The polar regions were seen as a crucible, putting men to the ultimate test and bringing out the best in them. With the turn of the century, national prestige and patriotism moved progressively to the core of the metaphor (Murphy, Reference Murphy2002).
Müller (Reference Müller, Hüppauf and Weingart2009, p.246, my translation) sees the three researchers in Figure 5 as presenting themselves confidently in front of a mountain unknown to the world: “The conquest of nature by humans seems to be completely successful here.”
But if there is an evocation of the hero/masculinity myth, it is somewhat askew here. The men are slumped and bulky, not heroically posed. The German government saw the expedition very much as an undertaking of national obligation (Lüdecke, Reference Lüdecke1995a). A series of postcards issued before departure from Germany promoted the expedition with formal images of Drygalski, the imperial flag, an icy expanse, and explorers in heroic pose beneath a spectacular aurora—prevalent discourses of nationalism and heroic adventure. But Drygalski and his team repeatedly emphasised that the expedition took place not from motives of physical performance or to excite emotions, but for the benefit of science (Lüdecke, Brogiato, & Hönsch, Reference Lüdecke, Brogiato and Hönsch2001). Figure 5 depicts the expeditioners in relaxed collaboration, not as heroes. But, it does imply a political result for Imperial Germany.
The image also brings to mind a place in the narrative where Drygalski mentions the emotional need of fixed reference points and visibly solid landmarks, like the Gaussberg, and the scientific need of abstraction and metrics in defining boundaries and reference points. He wrote that the Gaussberg was
but a tiny spot in this desert, and yet how important for us, how fundamental to all the expedition’s experience! Here we really had rock beneath our feet, and could see the land that we could otherwise only guess at from the shape of the ice above it. The Gaussberg might be never so bare and inhospitable, its life and vegetation strictly limited: it was at least a point of association between the South Polar continent and other regions of the earth, our life and its familiar images. (Reference Drygalski and Raraty1989, p.178)
It was a moment amid the alien landscape when one could be reminded of and long for the everyday familiar world left so far behind when Gauss entered this icy place.
The language oscillates between expressions of the small and limited, the guesswork associated with an alien and unknown place, and expressions of association with the known and the rational: the leitmotif of Drygalski’s life revealing itself as riven with emotional fault lines.
Professor Aant Elzinga (personal communication, 14 October 2013) has said:
The discovery of Gaussberg gave for the first time a fixed point of reference where before uncertainty and undefined boundaries had reigned. The naming of a stable piece of rock after Carl Friedrich Gauβ, the famous German mathematician and exponent of terrestrial magnetism (1777–1855), also has other functions, symbolically inscribing a mathematical giant and simultaneously performing a geopolitical act. In the photographic image of the Gaussberg the emotional, epistemic and political merge.
Landmarks form anchors in mental spatial representations and are essential for spatial reasoning (Richter & Winter, Reference Richter and Winter2014, p.22), which for a geographer involves identifying, analysing and understanding place relationships. The Gaussberg was important to Drygalski, to whom the ice meant so much, precisely and ironically because it was ice-free.
Effects on public perception of the South Polar Expedition
Ironically again, if Drygalski had focused more on the dangers of the ice, his expedition might have been better received in Germany. His narrative was criticised for not sufficiently emphasising adventure and privation (Elzinga, Reference Elzinga, Elzinga, Nordin, Turner and Wråkberg2001). Drygalski acknowledged this absence:
The lack of descriptions of perils and adventures has been frequently regretted, although we said nothing about them in order to concentrate on positive experiences, such as how to overcome events rather than fall victim to them. (Reference Drygalski and Raraty1989, p.372)
He saw that
there were people … with rather different views about the purpose and substance of our expedition from those that we held, demanding reports of dazzling feats, where we had merely sought knowledge. (Reference Drygalski and Raraty1989, p.372)
One senses a sad irony in “merely”.
His response to the ice, with its overriding scientific and more tranquil perspective, may have cost him in terms of his expedition’s reception back home. He refuted in vain the perception of failure that met them. The Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, 6 December 1903, ran merely a picture of the expedition, with no story other than a caption (Murphy, Reference Murphy2002, p.225). The press preferred stories of inspiring adventure in which peril, courage, tenacity and triumph over obstacles were key features. The expedition offered only “a middle realm of surmountable tensions” (Elzinga, Reference Elzinga2016, p.120), which were not of interest to contemporary publications. There were unfavourable comparisons with the British National Antarctic Expedition. The Kaiser’s response was frosty. In Imperial times, Antarctic exploration was seen as a national mission and was funded accordingly, but a higher latitude reached by the expedition would have been much more useful in the geopolitical context (Lüdecke, 1995a, Reference Lüdecke, Lozán, Grassl, Notz and Piepenburg2014). The narrative of the expedition, which appeared quickly (Drygalski, Reference Drygalski1904a), sold very well, due partly to its comprehensive illustrations (Müller, Reference Müller, Hüppauf and Weingart2009). Nevertheless, it did not quite live up to the public’s expectation. Many years later, the English translator found the literary style rather bland and “almost formulaic” (Raraty, Reference Raraty and von Drygalski1989, p.xv).
In later years, the expedition became known as “Universitas Antarctica”, in apt reference to Drygalski’s comprehensive research approach in the Humboldt tradition common in professional circles till the end of the 1950s (Lüdecke, Reference Lüdecke2015, p.61). But, earlier critics condemned the choice of academics to lead the expedition (Murphy, Reference Murphy2002). Anonymous marginalia written on a copy of the Kölnische Zeitung of 2 September 1902 by someone at the Ministry of the Interior, which had sponsored the expedition, includes the following wistful comment:
Had one … not permitted a scholar (Drygalski) to be leader and commander … but instead … a naval officer possessing long years of experience in polar journeys … or a whaler or captain …. (quoted by Murphy, Reference Murphy2002, p.85)
Other stories of exploration had thrilled, inspired and created a polar world of the imagination, the “stern romance of polar exploration”, as the writer Joseph Conrad put it (Reference Conrad1926, p.11). The symbolic value of the explorer-hero was largely an expression of the values held by a culture (Barczewski, Reference Barczewski2007), with hero myths developed to justify ideological goals, and those accorded heroic status being relevant to their culture’s military, economic and national needs (Riffenburgh, Reference Riffenburgh1993). Antarctic exploration was constructed in accordance with these factors. Erich von Drygalski, whose lifelong passion for the ice was tempered by a tranquil scholarliness, was an anomaly in all this.
He was bitter (Lüdecke, Reference Lüdecke2015). The expedition had involved years of his life and his best abilities, but he had returned sure of having done his utmost, only to find the fatherland did not assess it as its sacrifices and achievements deserved (Wagner, Reference Wagner1905, p.346, as quoted by Lüdecke, Reference Lüdecke2015, p.60). Nevertheless, the expedition ultimately generated a greater weight of results in terms of published scientific reports than any other (Mills, Reference Mills2003, p.196). A reviewer in The Geographical Journal wrote: “Professor Drygalski has been himself the chief contributor to this result, and he deserves, and will receive, the heartiest congratulations of geographers in every country on the happy outcome of his labour” (Geographical Journal, Reference von Drygalski1932, p.508). At both the national and international levels, his work has remained a standard work on glaciology and the exploration of the polar regions in general (Tiggesbäumker, Reference Tiggesbäumker and Freeman1983). Drygalski would have felt vindicated by this achievement.
From 1906 to 1934, he was professor of geography at the University of Munich. During the World War Two years, he worked with Fritz Machatschek, who had succeeded him on his retirement as professor of geography in 1935, to develop Machatschek’s small 1902 textbook Gletscherkunde (Glaciology) into a more comprehensive work (Drygalski & Machatschek, Reference Drygalski and Machatschek1942) (Journal of Glaciology, 1958, pp.322–323), which was well received in the scholarly literature such as the journal Nature (1946, pp.218–219) and the Journal of Glaciology:
No one has greater practical experience of glaciers in many parts of the world than von Drygalski and he has conceived his task on a broad geographical basis, neglecting no glacierised area, and has lent his ripe knowledge and great scholarship to produce a work of real importance. (Journal of Glaciology, 1948, p.150)
Gletscherkunde, a textbook, can also be seen as a Drygalski epitaph. With it, the scholar of glaciology, foremost a scientist, drew on the dispassionate and tranquil aspect of his life’s leitmotif: the science of the ice.
Conclusion
Erich von Drygalski led a remarkable life dominated by his passion for the icy regions of the planet. As a record of early polar research, his writings and their illustrations are invaluable. The leitmotif of his life, the ice, took ambivalent forms there: scholarliness and objectivity could be infused with feelings of apprehension. Appreciation of aesthetic qualities of the ice was the link between the two. A line from the little poem with which he concluded his narrative of the South Polar Expedition (Reference Drygalski1904a, p.668) may sum up his emotions: “wie furchtbar herrlich war die Einsamkeit im eis’gen Land” (“how terrible but glorious was solitude in the ice-land”). The poetry in Zum Kontinent des eisigen Südens is generally light, cheerful, satirical, but in this line one might sense the sublime (Finley, Reference Finley1979), which exists in the fusion of beauty and terror of the ice.
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Conflict of interest
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