Tuesday, May 17, 2011

May 17th 2011 - Heinrich Kaufmann's Fall from Grace

I know it's been weeks since I've updated this blog. No followers yet either. Can't say I'm entirely surprised. This may not be the most interesting thing to some people.

Anyway, now with finals over I can finally focus my attention on this project of mine.

After doing a google search for Heinrich Kaufmann and finding no results relevant to what I'm looking for, I decided to do a google image search instead. Nothing remarkable came up for dozens of pages. I was growing bored when around page 100 or so I found a newspaper article. There was no date on it and I couldn't see what newspaper it was from, but it was written in English. It mentions both "Heinrich Kaufmann Jr." and "Egypt". I'm sure this must be him.  This also seems to back up my theory that he was the son of the Heinrich Kaufmann I found the German wikipedia page on.



Apparently he was disgraced for supposedly forging his discovery of the ancient tablet. He fled to New York after he was ousted from his job. The words are very faded and hard to read, but certain letters, like those of the caption, are very clear. It also shows a picture of Professor Kaufmann, who I hadn't seen before so I'm quite unsure whether this is the man or not. This still doesn't tell me what actually happened on the expedition.

Seems to be pointing in the right direction though. I'm going to keep up my research and post anything interesting.

- Daniel

Sunday, May 1, 2011

May 1st - 2011 : The Mystery of Heinrich Kaufmann II

Hello to anyone and everyone reading this blog, even though I doubt many people will follow this. I'm using this blog as more of a personal journal than anything. But anyway, here we go:

My name is Daniel and I am studying Ancient Cultures at my local community college. I'm hoping by next year I'll have enough money saved to go to University to study to become an archaeologist. Ancient civilizations, and the mystery that enshrouds them, have always been a point of interest for me. In recent years it's become my passion. How is this relevant you may ask? Let me elaborate.

One day I was at my school's library going through some textbooks (my laptop had broke and I hadn't the money for another one just yet - the one I'm using to post this now is my new one. Back on topic..) I had been going through some textbooks when I noticed something rather intriguing. An archaeologist by the name of Heinrich Kaufmann II. I had never heard of him before. I read the article in the textbook, which was quite dated (perhaps from the 1970s or 60s, I didn't check the publication date at the time). The article was a brief biography of his life - no more than a page in a section on archaeology during the early 1900s. From what I remember, he was a German born archaeologist who moved to England in his teens. He worked for a British university, I'm not entirely sure which one. He was a controversial professor at that university because of his unorthodox views of human history. He reminded me of one of those guys on that Ancient Aliens show on the history channel. He believed that most of history was being interpreted wrong and that the ancients were vastly more advanced than we gave them credit for - he even believed they could time travel and teleport. His ideas sound whacky today, and were even moreso back in his day. However, due to his impressive education and friends in high places, he was able to retain his job.

Not only that, he managed to get funding for an expedition to Egypt. He was searching for an ancient tablet that was rumored to have the secrets to the ancient's wisdom in the tomb of an unnamed Pharaoh. This was just a legend however. But, like the many archaeologists who set out in search of Atlantis, the man was undaunted and went to find this artifact.

However, that's all the information the book gave. Nothing about the outcome of this journey at all. Me, being rather curious in nature, would like to find out what happened to this man. That is why I have set up this blog.

The first thing I did was go to the library to find out more about him. However the book I read the information from before was gone, and I couldn't find a single other book with information about him in it.

I then did a search online to find out any information about him. The only information I could bring up about a "Heinrich Kaufmann" was a German wikipedia page, which I translated. My translator isn't exactly the best and so it's hard to make out what it's about. What I got from it was that a man named Heinrich Kaufmann was born in Germany in 1864 and died in 1928. He was well-educated and a teacher as well as an industrialist and ideologist. Since the Heinrich Kaufmann II (or Jr.) I am looking for made his expedition when he was in his 20s in 1906, this lead me to believe this man was his father. Any information about Heinrich Kaufmann Jr. I am looking for still eludes me. But this is a challenge and a mystery I am willing to face head-on. I think it should be pretty fun. It's like a missing person case! Or maybe I've just been watching too much Law and Order.



The image above is the image that came with the article for Heinrich Kaufmann. The caption read: "Total Board of ZdK 1903 vl, Karl Schmidtchen , Konrad Barth , Max Radestock (Chairman), Heinrich Kaufmann (Secretary)

Anyway, that's all for now. I'll update this blog when I find any new information. 

- Daniel