Steffen, Friedrich Emil Hans (1865-1936)
The German geographer Hans Steffen is known mainly for his research on the region of western Patagonia in southern Chile.
He served as an expert on the Chilean border commission and, on behalf of the Chilean government, contributed to resolving the border disputes between Chile and Argentina in the West Patagonian Cordillera. His expeditions to the unexplored river basins of this region (1893-1899) were of great importance in this matter, and his findings influenced the ruling of the English court of arbitration on November 20, 1902.
In addition to his expeditions, Steffen served as a geography and history teacher at the Instituto Pedagógico of the Chilean state university in Santiago de Chile between 1889 and 1913. He not only published articles on geography and the border issue during this period, but also pursued work that offered a wealth of information on flora, fauna, meteorology, glacier studies, and, in some cases, history and ethnology.
Suffering from lung disease, Steffen spent the last twenty-three years of his life in Switzerland, where he continued to concentrate on the topics that had dominated his life as a researcher. This is reflected in the numerous pieces he published in "Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv," geographic journals and other periodicals.
After his death in 1936, his maps, travel diaries, sketches, notes, lectures and photographs were given to the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin, as stipulated in his will. The Steffen Papers also comprise a large number of geographic journals and works from his library on general geography, history, Chile and the Andean countries.
Please click the following link for a special presentation of the collection:
http://www.iai.spk-berlin.de/nachlass/steffen/index.html