Konsten, Herman

The son of a wealthy distillery owner. In 1899-1900 he studied at a special agricultural school in Witzenhausen , where he trained personnel for use in the German colonies. In September 1900 he received a diploma and went to East Africa , where he worked as an assistant to the owner of the plantation. He then ran a coffee farm, founded by diplomat and archaeologist Max von Oppenheim . In 1905 he returned to Germany due to malaria . In the same year he went to Moscow , began to study the Russian language and entered the Lazarevsky Institute of Oriental Languages , where he probably received the first basic knowledge of the Mongolian language , as well as the geography and ethnography of the peoples inhabiting Mongolia. He was elected a member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society .

In 1907, G. Consten went on his first Mongol expedition, from which he returned in 1913. Most of his expeditions took place in the Chalcha region of Outer Mongolia , where he conducts detailed geodetic surveys and collects ethnographic collections for Russia. In addition, he established contacts with leading political and religious figures of Mongolia, who entrusted him with consular and emissary duties, while G. Consten also maintained good relations with Chinese merchants. In 1912, after the fall of the Qing Dynasty in China, G. Consten witnessed the Mongolian national revolution . In the same year he was appointed governor of Ovda and Uliastai .

Thanks to close contact with ordinary people and their way of life, G. Consten got an idea of ​​many aspects of everyday Mongolian life. He intensively studied the Mongolian form of Buddhist Lamaism . Shortly before the outbreak of World War I, G. Consten returned to Germany through Moscow. During the world war 1914-1918 with a secret mission was in Turkey and Hungary .

In 1919/20, G. Consten's book “Mongolian Pastures” was published in Berlin. In the early 1920s, he settled in Bad Blankenburg ( Thuringia ). He gave lectures and published several books about Mongolia.

In 1927, G. Consten went to East and Central Asia . In Ceylon, I met with Albert Grünwedel , from where he headed to China . Political unrest and supply difficulties delayed the expedition's departure to Mongolia; The early start of the winter of 1928/29 led to additional delays. At the Mongolian border, the traveler was arrested and detained for several months in the icy cold until he was allowed to continue working in Ulan Bator . From there, in April 1929, he was deported to China.

From 1929 to 1950, G. Consten lived on the outskirts of Beijing , earned a living working in the stable. He wrote scientific articles on the culture and religion of the Mongols, collected works of art and Mongolian maps. He planned to publish Mongolian grammar and the Mongolica encyclopedia. In 1936, G. Consten marries a specialist in Japanese studies and Sinology Eleanor von Erdberg. In 1950, the couple returned from Maoist China to Germany and settled in Aachen , where G. Consten died in 1957.

• Yusupova T. Traveling as a Way of Life: Central Asian Researcher P.K. Kozlov. Ed. Nestor Story, 2016

• Biography (German)