A Swede who loved the 'Asia as few Sven Anders Hedin was born in Stockholm on February 19, 1865 by architect Ludvig Hedin and his wife Anna, daughter of the rich Abraham Westman.
lived a wealthy teenage years immersed in reading James Fenimore Cooper and Jules Verne, always attentive to the notes of firms Livingstone.
On return to the port of Stockholm, in 'April 1880 Vega Erik Nordenskiöld after the discovery of the North-East Passage, Sven decided it would be was a pioneer, proposing even to reach the North Pole.
In 1885 he had the chance to stay in Baku for a year at Swedish friends. Here he made his first direct experience with the world of exploration, realizing that his field 'action was not the North Pole, but the mysterious East.
With makeshift equipment and little money in his pocket, he moved it to Persia, taking the opportunity to learn the basis of the local languages. On his return wrote an account of this experience, he could sell to a publisher.
Between 1886 and il1892, convinced that we must have a thorough knowledge of geology and geography, studied at the universities of Stockholm and Berlin, becoming also a student of the famous explorer Ferdinand von Richtofen.
In 1890 he returned to Persia, going up in Central Asia, where he also saw Kashgar, the great center along the Silk Road, where he was the largest bazaar in Asia.
But the first trip that corresponded to his spirit and his ideals, took place in 1893 when Hedin across all Asian Russia coming up in Beijing. On the trip almost all his comrades perished in the crossing of the Taklamakan Desert , tried to climb Mustagh Ata without success and also tried to no avail to venture inside Tibet.
departed after three years in Germany, maps Tibet (but failed to come to Lhasa as the local authorities prevented him) and discovered the ancient Chinese garrison Loulan
From here on its success will always be more. Between 1905 and 1909, he returned to Central Asia for the third time. He spent much time in the region of Tibet and it was probably the first European to understand the trans-Himalayan mountain system.
His expedition was the fourth most important, designed as a great work of research, whose task was to probe the whole of northwest China, from Kashgaria to Mongolia. Among the many purposes that there was also commissioned by Lufthansa, to explore the possibility of points of support for a possible airline Berlin-Beijing. In this exploration Hedin also made friends with the Nationalist leader Chang Kai Shek , which I think is a nice person and remarkable.
In his lifetime he received numerous awards, honorary degrees, 42 gold medals, 15 decorations, el 'last hereditary peerage awarded by Sweden. His support for the Nazis, but also create serious problems for neutral government of his country, called at the Royal Geographical Society to withdraw from the post of honorary member, although at the time had given him two medals.
His relationship with the Nazis, however, was always strange and confrontational. Hedin hated communism, and he thought that 'the Soviet Union was the greatest danger of' Europe, and was also a friend of Hitler, who admired a lot. However, he hated the 'anti-Semitic aspect of National Socialism and bears no outward manifestations of the party.
He died November 26, 1952, in a world that his politics had denied.
In a society that had forgotten its incredible expeditions by camel, on foot, boat, caravan had moved large and small, and were allowed to rebuild, geographer and cartographer, land areas previously known only approximately.
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