I have not been able to decide exactly what my feelings are about this quite distinguished gentleman. In fact it would appear that his life was divided between his exploration of Central and East Asia and his political thought wherein he supported Germany's leaders during both the First and Second World War. He does remind me of a German Prince who I met about 30 years ago while I was having multitudinous tests done while the specialists tried to figure out how to bring down my blood pressure. The prince (who was a professor emeritus at one of the local universities) had come into the hospital because he had decided that since he was 85 it was time for him to die, and he had set out to do just that by starving himself. We did get talking and his wife showed up with a chess board. I am at best a poor chess player, and he did enjoy placing me in check mate. We also talked a lot about his field, European History, and I can remember him mentioning to me about the explorations of Sven Hedin, although I do not believe that I have heard that name mentioned from that day to this. The following URLs give some idea of how Hedin was seen by his compatriots http://www.silk-road.com/artl/hedinchrono.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Hedin http://www.iras.ucalgary.ca/~volk/sylvia/SvenHedin.htm http://www.iras.ucalgary.ca/~volk/sylvia/Hedin2.htm http://www.iranica.com/articles/v12f2/v12f2006.html Capt'n John Sven Anders Hedin Swedish explorer of Asia, writer, and geographer, the last person to receive a Swedish knighthood (1902). Hedin was a member of the Swedish Academy from 1913. Of his journeys Hedin wrote several accounts, which became extremely popular. His classical work, Through Asia, appeared in 1898. Hedin had a phenomenal memory and his books, with their vivid details, are still fascinating reading for anyone who is interested in Asian cultures. "Din drömska färd över haven har nått sin säkra hamn den tysta ensliga graven och ingen känner ditt namn." (from a poem written to Mille Lindström) Sven Hedin was born in Stockholm, the son of Ludwig Hedin, Chief Architect of Stockholm, and Anna Berlin Hedin. Already at an early age Hedin was inspired by the books of James Fenimore Cooper and Jules Verne, and the exploits of Livingstone and Erik Nordenskjöld, whose voyage on the "Vega" through the Bering Strait into the Pacific aroused great enthusiasm in Sweden. Already at the age of twelve he decided to pursue the life of an adventurer. "Happy is the boy who discovers the bent of his life-work during childhood. That, indeed, was my good fortune", Hedin wrote in My Life as an Explorer (1930). However, the first opportunity to follow his calling opened up when he studied at the University of Stockholm. "During the spring and summer of 1885, I was consumed with impatience for the moment of departure. Already, in imagination, I heard the roar of the waves of the Caspian sea and the clangour of the caravan-bells. Soon the glamour of the whole Orient was to unfold before me." (from My Life as an Explorer) He accepted work as a tutor in Baku, on the Caspian Sea, and his rides on horseback led to the travel book A Journey Through Persia and Mesopotamia, which appeared in 1887. During these years he learned to speak Tatar and Persian. After returning to Sweden in 1889, Hedin studied geography and geology at the Universities of Uppsala and Berlin. In 1890 he served briefly as an interpreter with the Swedish/Norwegian embassy to the Shah of Persia and started a 3 600 mile long journey through Asia. Hedin was blinded in the early 1890s in one eye, and suffered from it until he was 82 - after an operation the sight was restored. Hedin returned home in 1891. He published in the same year Konung Oscars beskicking till schahed ac Persien år 1890. In 1892 he received his PhD - at the age of 27. Hedin's doctoral thesis was entitled DER DEMAVEND NACH EIGENER BEOBACHTUNG. During this period in Sweden he met Mille Broman, his great love, who married Albert Lindström. She died in 1928. "Asia became my cold bride", Hedin once wrote - he never stopped loving her, although in 1922 he forgot Mille for a period, when he fell in love, at the age of 57, with "Schwester" Elizabeth. She was 31-years-old and married to Count Fugger. Hedin began in October 1893 a journey that lasted three years. "The whole of Asia was open before me. I felt that I had been called to make discoveries without limits - they just waited for me in the middle of the deserts and mountain peaks. During those three years, that my journey took, my first guiding principle was to explore only such regions, where nobody else had been earlier." In A journey through Asia (1898) he described how he saved one of his servants by bringing him water in his boots. Later he returned to this episode several times in his drawings and writings. Between the years 1893 and 1935 Hedin made four expeditions to Central Asia. He charted maps of significant areas in Pamir, Taklamakan, Tibet, Transhimalaya (also called Hedin Mountains). In 1900-01 he made two attempts to reach Lhasa, but the race was won by a Japanese scholar Ekai Kawaquchi, who was a genuine Buddhist monk. However, Hedin met in 1906 Taši Lama, to whom he gave a medicine box made of aluminum. The Dalai Lama had fled in 1904 when the British troops entered Llhasa, and Taši Lama became the most powerful man in Tibet. In 1909 Hedin returned to Stockholm to his family as a celebrated figure. August Strindberg's sudden attack in 1910 was a deep blow to Hedin. The writer called him - unjustly - "an ordinary land surveyor", and considered Hedin's scientific achievements "humbug". As a writer Hedin was more lively and able than most of the novelists of the time. In 1913 Hedin became a member of the Swedish Academy. During World War I Hedin was on Germany's side, expressing his views in Från fronten i väster (1914). In Kriget mot Ryssland (1915) he depicted enthusiastically the war on the Eastern front. The war prevented further journeys but in 1923 he travelled round the world. American women Hedin called spoilt and uneducated. In Moscow and St. Petersburg he was celebrated by Communist commissars as a guest of honor, although they knew his opinions about Bolshevism. With German, Danish, Chinese, and Swedish scientists he travelled in the Gobi Desert and Turkestan between the years 1927 and 1935. During this period Hedin met Chiang-Kai-shek, head of the Nationalist government and generalissimo of all Chinese Nationalist forces, of whom he also published in 1939 an admiring book. In 1933 Hedin helped the Chinese government retain control of the Sinkiang province, by mapping out the old Silk Road of Marco Polo so that it could be motorized. Hedin's China expeditions provided material for three books, The Flight of Big Horse (1936), The Silk Road (1936) and The Wandering Lake (1940). In 1930 Hedin received the first Hedin medal, which was founded the same year for significant geographic, especially cartographic research of less known areas. From 1937 to 1949 he worked on the thirty-five volumes which detailed his expedition to Northern China. Hedin was also politically active. In one of his books he warned of Russian expansion and spoke for strong military defence and a political orientation towards Germany. He kept warm relations with Germany all his life, and was a supporter of the Nazis. In 1929 the German optical company Ernst Leitz in Wetzlar presented a Leica camera to him with the serial number 25000. Hedin also met Hitler and Göring a few times and in 1940 he had long discussions with Hitler about politics. At that time the explorer was 75 but still appeared youthful and vigorous. When Hitler asked him his secret Hedin recommended yoghurt. Behind Hedin's visits to Berlin was his fear that the Soviet Union would again start a war against Finland. It could lead to the situation, where the Red Army would stand on the border of Sweden. To his disappointment, Hitler had his own plans. In 1940 he confessed in a letter: "Även med risk av Hitlers vrede står jag med liv och själ på Finlands sida, ty Finlands undergång betyder ett dödlingt hot mot Sverige och för mig är Sveriges välfärd dyrbarare än vänskapen med Tyskland." Computer translation " also with danger of Hitlers ire I am standing with life and soul on Finland side. Finland perdition importance one fatal threat anti Sweden and for me is Sweden welfare [more] precious than friendship with Germany " In 1945 Hedin wrote to one of his German friends: "Im dritten Reich ist alles schief gegangen. Hitler ist allmählich verrückt geworden." (Everything has gone wrong in the Third Reich. Hitler has gradually become mad.) After the war Hedin denied that he knew the truth about concentration camps. He was not the only prominent figure who supported Germany - the Nobel writer Knut Hamsun was arrested for some time and placed on trial for his opinions. Hedin continued to follow world politics and in 1949 prophesied: "Mao is the best thing that has happened to China in a thousand years." For the younger Swedish writers he was an easy target - the Nobel writer Harry Martinson said that Hedin was an imperialist who happened to be born in a small country. However, he managed to overcome with his natural charm Per .Lagerkvist's negative attitude towards him. Sven Hedin died on November 26, 1952. On his table he still had a photograph of Mille Lindström, stuck inside a small religious calendar. Hedin's excellent panoramic drawings have been of significant help, even up to the latest decades, in interpreting satellite photographs.