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Hedin, Sven AndersWe have 1 book for this author.
 Sven Anders Hedin (February 19, 1865 - November 26, 1952) was a Swedish explorer, geographer and geopolitician. Hedin was born in Stockholm. Between 1886 and 1892 he studied geology, mineralogy, zoology, and Latin in Stockholm, Uppsala, Berlin, and Halle. He was a student of Ferdinand von Richthofen. Between his graduation in 1892 and 1935 he led several expeditions to Central Asia. In 1902 he was the last Swede ever to be ennobled with a hereditary title. He became a member of the Swedish Academy in 1913. His achievements include the production of the first detailed maps of vast parts of Pamir, the Taklamakan Desert, Tibet, the ancient Silk Road, and the Himalayas. He seems to be the first to realise that the Himalayas are a single mountain range. Although primarily an explorer, Hedin was also the first to unearth the ruins of ancient Buddhist cities in Chinese Central Asia. In 1899 he discovered the ancient Chinese garrison town of Loulan (Lou-lan) in the Taklamakan desert. The many manuscripts he unearthed there proved to be of great historical importance. In his later expeditions he was to map large parts of the Tibetan highlands but never reached his ultimate goal: the then forbidden city of Lhasa. He was a personal friend of Gustav V of Sweden (and his queen Victoria of Baden) and paid them regular visits. He was the co-author (together with Carl Bennedich) of the so-called borggårdstalet (the speech at the royal castle) which was read during the peasant armament support march (bondetåget) arrival at the royal castle. In this speech the king denounced the government (headed by Karl Staaff) defence policy, which led to its resignation. 
Being a Germanophile since his days of study in Berlin, Hedin was together with Queen Victoria of Sweden a strong advocate for a Swedish alliance with Germany during World War I, and he wrote several books about his experiences from journeys along the front lines, in west, east and south-east. This caused him to lose several influential friends in England and the USA, among them Lord Kitchener. Sven Hedin felt that Russia was a dangerous threat to the West, and this may be part of the reason why he supported and admired Adolf Hitler (who in turn admired him) before and during the Third Reich. Still, Hedin was not a Nazi and he was rather deceived by the Nazis. Hedin wrote in his book Tyskland och världsfreden (Germany and world peace), a magnificent effort originally funded by the German government:
The book was banned in Germany. It has however been proved that Hedin was an ardent racist and supporter of Nazi Germany and National Socialism, he was in concact with Hitler and other prominent Nazi-politicians, he was well aware of the function of concentration camps. (Danielsson 2005) Expeditions
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This biographical information was gathered from the Sven_Anders_Hedin page, courtesy of the Wikipedia project. BooksFrom Pole to Pole A Book for Young People |
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