He was the most famous adventurer of Germany and a “Sir Vival” with a sense: Rüdiger Nehberg has survived crossing the Atlantic on a tree trunk, a pedal boat and a raft, for months alone and without equipment through rain forest and desert fighting, attacks by animals and humans. Since the beginning of the 70s, traveled Nehberg, who died on Wednesday at the age of 84 years, spectacular and media-effective in the world. He was Incredible and believed in the impossible. “First it was curiosity and lust for adventure, the sense came about when I was to become an eye-witness”, he described his way from the marzipan bakery to human rights activists. For his biggest dream, to prepare to the custom of female genital mutilation to an end, he fought to the last.
Rüdiger Nehberg: From adventurer to activist
Only a mere adventurer, then activist and first of all, a life in two worlds: The trained Baker and pastry chef had made in the ‘ 60s in Hamburg, self-employed and several stores operated. “The world of pies and the tortures, the life between the Marzipan and the mosquito”, he described the time, which began with his first trip on the Blue Nile in 1970. Some twenty years later, he exchanged final dough against a flour worms – because he had many expeditions behind. “In the past, it was the desire to prove something to himself, and curiosity about the world,” said the native of Bielefeld about what is driving him. For example, without money and food to Germany, to wander and to feed on earthworms. The Image as a “worms-eater” would be him clinging to the end of his life, he said, with about 80 still.
Cycling half way around the world it had started. By Bicycle, the son of a Bank clerk, and had already gotten out, as the little Boy happily went, as a 17-Year-old to Morocco. In Marrakech, he wanted to learn the snake summoning, while his parents mentioned in Paris. “If you continue like this, you’re not old,” his father warned, not realizing that decades of waiting, full of adventure to his son.
Only with a knife through Brazil’s rain forest
Even in an age where others have long since to rest, took Nehberg in the year 2000, prefer to be on a tree trunk square and sailed from Africa to Brazil. Three years later, he rappelled from a helicopter 50 metres above the Brazilian rainforest and was once again alone and without equipment through the jungle. “Today, there are an extreme athlete or a base jumper, you will not experience any adventure, but to make advertising for Red Bull,” wrote the “mirror”. “Nehberg, by contrast, has spent his life trying to fulfil your dreams.”
The term “Survival” had heard, he set out on in the 60s for the first Time, and later he himself was to the Germans, “Sir Vival” par excellence. To survive thanks to his books with survival training tips as the end of the 70s, published in “The art of Survival”, his readings and lectures, as well as special Camps in the spacious garden of a-built mill in the peaceful out of the village, near Hamburg. It was an earlier encounter with the gold diggers endangered indigenous Yanomami people of the Brazilian rain forest, which changed his life in a sustainable way. Nehberg wanted to give his actions now make sense, and has been engaged in the göttingen society for threatened peoples. Even as a 61-Year-old, he turned a race with an even 75-year-old aboriginal Australian wasteland.
His great task in life: the fight against female genital mutilation
more to the plans than the rest life time Nehberg spoke to last again and again, because he had a big goal. He had a Target (in English the “target”) – the club with which he fought against the circumcision of female genitalia is called. Together with his wife Annette, he called Target to life. She, the second wife at his side, held the position in out of the village, when he set out alone to the big adventure. “He would not “Sir Vival”, when I wouldn’t let him,” she said again. For the Target to use against the genital mutilation of young girls and women in Africa and Asia, the Pair worked with important organizations. Both received in 2008 the Federal cross of merit 1. Class, Nehberg was already a carrier of the Federal cross of merit (2002).
The largest and longest civil war of mankind, he set called the custom of female circumcision. With Target, he organized conferences, and went with a “caravan of hope” through the desert. 2006-initiated Target about a conference of high-ranking Islamic scholar in Cairo, which declared the genital mutilation in the Form of a Fatwa as according to Islamic law is prohibited. Recently, the Association announced, among others, in the past year, a further campaign to end the genital mutilation of girls and women in the West African state of Guinea-Bissau.
Nehberg not want to put to rest – even if, he noted, “that the forces wane”. He called anyway, only the “residue-A”, because he collected pretty much everything he was in surgery in a “always full of expectant” alcohol glass. But his goals drove him. “I would not, even with 100 in a pension,” he said again. Also for his wife, “it may be impossible to a lot of ideas”. He knew that she would continue his fight even after his death. “We are an indestructible Duo.”
photographs show the dramatic situation in Italian intensive care FOCUS Online recordings indicate a dramatic situation in Italian intensive care
