Satan Came to Floreana E-Book

Nicolas Montemolinos

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 141

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

When in 1929 Dr. Frederick Ritter, the well known brilliant German doctor and philosopher, abandoned civilization and with a woman companion determined to live like Adam and Eve in a South Sea tropical paradise, the world learned that a new kind of Robinson Crusoe was born. Everybody has read the book "Robinson Crusoe", and most boys and many men would like to go back to nature and live on a tropical island, where there are no mobile phones, auto mobiles, nuisance laws or taxes. And now and then somebody actually does the thing so many have wanted to do. Dr. Ritter, one of the worlds most important scientists and nearly considered being "a saint" by his fans, decided to begin his new life on the remote island of Floreana in order to increase the knowledge of the world by creating a new philosophy. He searched for a paradise of solitude to concentrate on his important studies but the evil world disturbed and killed him. He was murdered! Some say by Dore Strauch, his devotee. No one knows, and no one will ever know. Only one thing is clear in this case: The world never had recovered from this tragic loss. This most carefully planned back-to-nature experiments made by Dr. Frederick Ritter and Dore Strauch became one of the most admired events in human history. They selected one of the Galapagos Islands, the most perfect climate in the world, right on the equator, but always cooled by the ceaseless trade winds. It was the famous Galapagos Islands where Darwin, the world's greatest naturalist, made his first discoveries, which laid the foundation of the theory of evolution. Unfortunately, the escapism of Dr. Ritter caught the attention of the press. First, he was considered being a quirky fellow. But the world did not forget Dr. Ritter. More and more people were fascinated by the story of this remarkable man and his mistress. Adam and Eve on Floreana Island mutated into a real sensation of Galapagos. Numerous unwanted visitors and even entire expeditions appeared on the secluded island. The events pointed to a deadly drama. For the sake of clarification of facts it is necessary to translate and to publish the written records of Dr. Ritter. Despite his death he should tell his story in his own words. Although everything Ritter had noticed was written in German, everyone in the US can understand him now, because of this first translation in history by famous author Nicolas Montemolinos.

Leseprobe

Table Of Contents

Title PageIntroductionA short Curriculum Vitae of Dr. Ritter (1886-1934)The Cruise from Amsterdam to CuracaoCuracao - Floreana's Twin?From Curacao through the Panama Canal to Guayaquil in EcuadorJourney to QuitoIsland HoppingThe First Days in the Garden of EdenDangerous BullsCreating ParadiseDr. Ritter's lost PhilosophySatan came to FloreanaPostscriptCopyright

NICOLAS MONTEMOLINOS

Satan Came to Floreana - Frederick Ritter's extraordinary Life as Robinson on Galapagos

© 2014 by Nicolas Montemolinos. All Rights Reserved. This is Edition 03.

Introduction

Introduction:When in 1929 Dr. Frederick Ritter, the well known brilliant German doctor and philosopher, abandoned civilization and with a woman companion determined to live like Adam and Eve in a South Sea tropical paradise, the world learned that a new kind of Robinson Crusoe was born. Everybody has read the book "Robinson Crusoe", and most boys and many men would like to go back to nature and live on a tropical island, where there are no mobile phones, auto mobiles, nuisance laws or taxes. And now and then somebody actually does the thing so many have wanted to do. Dr. Ritter, one of the worlds most important scientists and nearly considered being "a saint" by his fans, decided to begin his new life on the remote island of Floreana in order to increase the knowledge of the world by creating a new philosophy. He searched for a paradise of solitude to concentrate on his important studies but the evil world disturbed and killed him. He was murdered! Some say by Dore Strauch, his devotee. No one knows, and no one will ever know. Only one thing is clear in this case: The world never had recovered from this tragic loss. This most carefully planned back-to-nature experiments made by Dr. Frederick Ritter and Dore Strauch became one of the most admired events in human history. They selected one of the Galapagos Islands, the most perfect climate in the world, right on the equator, but always cooled by the ceaseless trade winds. It was the famous Galapagos Islands where Darwin, the world's greatest naturalist, made his first discoveries, which laid the foundation of the theory of evolution. This group of islands is out in the Pacific Ocean, about five hundred miles off the South American coast, and belongs to Ecuador. They have an ancient history going back before the days of Darwin to the days of the pirates. When the old buccaneers, hovering about for the rich Spanish galleons, were occasionally pursued by men-of-war, they often found hiding places among these islands. And here they repaired ships, drank rum they had captured and idled about on the coral beaches, resting up or recuperating from wounds of battle. Indeed, it happens that old Robinson Crusoe himself visited the Galapagos Islands, because the ship that rescued him stopped there for water and turtle meat. Of course the ideal haven for complete escape from all bother and nuisance of the beginning 20th century was one of the tropical islands of the South Seas, where the climate is so even and balmy that there is no need for clothes or shelter except to keep off the rain. One would suppose that all such paradises had been appropriated long before human beings settled the cold parts of the world, where living is hard, but in the 1930s there were still quite a few without tenants. Dr. Ritter had picked the Island of Floreana, of the Galapagos group, off the Ecuador coast, and no doubt he knew what he was doing when he selected this spot for his Garden of Eden. This holy man was a German physician, a vegetarian and a person who had been a hermit by nature since childhood. But he was only German by nationality. In reality he was - like Darwin and Humboldt - a citizen of the whole world, because science and knowledge are universal and not national.

Galapagos means tortoises, and Floreana Island, like the bigger ones of the group, once swarmed with gigantic specimens, so powerful that paths they forced through the thorn bushes are the only roads that exist on Floreana today. But the clumsy creatures were such good eating, so easily caught, and so easy to keep alive on shipboard without feed or even water, that visiting ships soon exterminated them. Dr. Ritter had landed on Post Office Bay Beach spending his first nights in one of the “Pirate Caves,” which the buccaneers had inhabited in the good old days. In these volcanic openings, according to tradition, the pirates used to broach the casks of rum and hold high carnival with the women taken from some of the treasure ships after their men folk had walked the plank. Some of the caves were spacious and dry enough to have served the purpose. Unlike the pirates Dr. Ritter wasn't interested into sexuality. His only desire was to increase his knowledge and to improve the living conditions of mankind. His quest for wisdom was admirable. His landing place is called Post Office Bay because on the beach stands a pole holding a key, with a leather-hinged door. Ships passing close are supposed to send a boat ashore and look in that keg. Sometimes they find a note in it, informing them that castaways are on the island. In 1929-1934 there has usually been a letter from Dr. Ritter or his mate to someone in civilization. He often wrote to his family in Germany and after his sudden death his important and valuable letters were published 1936 in the book "Als Robinson auf Galapagos" in German language. Moreover, his philosophy today exists only in fragments. One inevitably has to study his letters to understand his findings because after his death stupid Margret Wittmer threw his handwritings with his philosophy into a stove to cook some coffee. Unfortunately today most of Dr. Ritter's fans and supporters live in the US and they can't understand German. So they all lack access to this first hand source of reports from this (alongside Darwin) greatest scientist ever entered the Galapagos archipelago. Since 80 years the public in the US, the UK and around the whole world is waiting for a first translation of the "Ritter Letters". Finally it happened in 2014, when Nicolas Montemolinos, an Ecuadorian author and neither an English nor a German native speaker, struggled heroically to save Dr. Ritter’s letters and its contents by translating them into different languages and publishing an ebook on the amazon kindle store (edition 01 and 02 of this book). Because of an dispute amazon suspended the account of Montemolinos and deleted this book in 2015. So the censored author searched for alternatives and published edition 03 with the help of BoD, a reputable German publisher. Although this book is defective in language: Beware it is the first effort ever of a translation of Frederick Ritter’s handwritings into English!!!! So please turn a blind eye on this book!

Nicolas Montemolinos translated Dore Strauch's "Satan Came to Eden" into German in 2013, because this cult-status-book never had been published in Germany. For the Nazis the sick and childless woman was a worthless person and a candidate for a mercy killing. So they prohibited the publication. Seventy years after Dore Strauch's horrible death during an US-air raid on May 11, 1943 in Berlin (indeed, not the Nazis killed Dore but the Americans!) Montemolinos tried to reanimate the memories of this brave young lady and her "godfather" Ritter. The title of his critically acclaimed translation is "Drama auf Floreana" and Montemolinos won the Esmeralda Book Award of the City of Guayaquil for his courageous draft. Unlike all the other mainstream writers and office sitters he visited Floreana (2011) as well as Curacao (2014) by himself, spoke to the locals and afterwards he came to the conclusion, that the murderer of the Baroness and Robert Philippson was without any doubt Margret Wittmer, accompanied by Rudolf Lorenz.

Ritter had build his paradise on the inside of a volcanic cone, open on the sea side to the gentle trade winds. The side rose high enough to absorb moisture from the low lying sea clouds and running down in little rills that supported a gorgeous green vegetation, suggestive of the Garden of Eden. Surrounded by these great walls of the extinct volcano, it seemed as exclusive and private as an old feudal castle. In the midst of a thicket of wild lemon trees was his clearing, enclosed by a curious looking wooden fence, and, in its centre a still more curious looking house, built like a locomotive roundhouse, and roofed with corrugated iron. That iron gave a faint misgiving. It was mechanical and materialistic, and did not look right in the Garden of Eden.

A German adventurer, Mr. J. F. Schimpff, who visited Ritter in 1930, told the following: "Naturally, I felt somewhat embarrassed at intruding on these people, and thought it best to announce myself. I did this by singing the German national anthem in honour of the fact that Dr. Ritter is from Berlin, and his Eve, Dore Strauch, I had heard, was the wife of a Dresden school teacher. Before I had finished the second line two absolutely naked figures, beautifully tanned, ran out of the roundhouse, stared at me a moment with open mouths, and then darted back again. I lingered right were I was, ready to dodge into the thicket in case they had gone back to get a rifle. However, the doctor soon reappeared, dressed in canvas pants and a white shirt. Eve soon followed in a light blue cotton dress, under which there was nothing but Eve. Afterwards I learned that this Adam had also paused to insert his false teeth. Right here let me say a word about those teeth. They were the first thing I noticed about this remarkable man and the last I am likely to forget. They were his own invention, and, I believe, the only ones of their kind in Eden, earth or Heaven above. This medium-sized and heavily-bearded Adam opened his lips in a disarming smile. It was not only disarming, but overwhelming. I have read of savages losing their wits at sight of a white man taking out his glass eye—well, these teeth had almost that effect on me. They were not made of porcelain, to resemble human teeth, but of glittering stainless steel. Dr. Ritter had tried to devise a remedy for every likely trouble, and thought he could do something for most every ill but a toothache. He could pull, or even fill, one of Eve's teeth, but he doubted if she was competent to perform that service for him. So, before leaving Berlin, the doctor had every tooth in his head extracted and a double set of false ones made. As nobody would be likely to criticize his unusual appearance in the wilderness, he had them made of unbreakable steel. Instead of toothpaste and a brush he shined them up once in a while with steel wool. With these he could crack open the shell of a clam, or even an oyster, but never did, because he and Dore are vegetarians, but he could and did sometimes tear into a piece of tough sugar cane in a way that I am sure would have impressed a gorilla. Later, when I enjoyed Eve's hospitality at dinner, Adam astonished me by removing these powerful mastications during the meal and eating without them. It seems that, after all, they were useful mostly for decoration and speech. Being vegetarians and putting everything they eat through a meat-grinder, chewing is unnecessary. That meat-grinder, though used for strictly vegetarian purposes, like the iron roof gave me an uncanny doubt, and there was no end of other mechanical, artificial devices, such as mosquito netting about. In case any reader is contemplating a back-to-nature experiment, let me say that I was all wrong in imagining that vegetarianism is an advantage. It is quite the opposite. In the cities anyone can be a vegetarian and get away with it, because, in season and out, a variety of fresh and canned vegetables is available. It is true that in one of these tropical paradises one may lie under a tree and wait for a ripe fruit to fall down for him, but usually there is some sort of bug or worm in it. Though it is always balmy Summer, these fruit trees do not bear all the year, and when they do bear, usually some early bird, bug or beast gets there ahead of man. But fish, bird or beast is to be caught or shot all the year around, and, as they are not addled by insects, they fall into your hands in perfectly edible condition. I have never seen any savages who were vegetarians, except from necessity, and many eat insects when they can't get meat. Even Dr. Ritter keeps chickens and eats all the eggs he can get."

The German adventurer Schimpff asked Dr. Ritter: “Doctor, which, of all the things here that you brought from civilization, has proved most precious?” Frederick Ritter swallowed, took a drink of water, inserted his teeth, and replied, pointing to a wheelbarrow: “Something we did not bring, but begged from Mr. Eugene McDonald, of Chicago, when we dropped in on his yacht, the Mizpah. We never leave it outdoors, and there it stands inside with us. It is our dearest possession—we almost worship the thing.”

Mr. Schimpff continues with his report: "Then he told of the heartbreaking and backbreaking toil, carrying soil by hand from the little swamp at the end of the rivulet which runs from their spring. This had to be transferred to their garden location. When Dr. Ritter first came to the island he realized, he told me, that it was going to take a lot of hard labour to get his place fixed the way he wanted it. So he got hold of a young “peon,” or peasant, from, I think, the Island of Isabella. The “peon” worked for Dr. Ritter for the first two months. But he was crazy about hunting and went shooting every Sunday. He was not a vegetarian and he somehow made the meat he acquired on these hunting trips last from Sunday to Sunday. He had tamed two of the wild dogs and used these to run with the cattle. Then on Sunday a big wild bull he had wounded attacked him and would have killed him if the two dogs had not driven it away. After that Dr. Ritter did not use any more hired help." Here Mr. Schimpff refers to the little Indian boy "Hugo", who helped Frederick and Dore in their first weeks on Floreana Island.

"Adam could not shift from eating to talking or back again without juggling his steel teeth" told Mr. Schimpff, "so I asked him no more questions until that meal of boiled eggs, fruits and ground-up vegetables was finished. When I suggested to my hostess that they had no doubt built a circular house because it is the simplest geometrical design, she laughed: “Try and build any other kind with this wood”, Dore replied. "Then I learned that there were only two forms of lumber available", said Schimpff, "one a wood so hard that nails cannot be driven into it. The other, a species of acacia, is soft enough, but grows only in curves. As usual, man proposes and Nature disposes. It was a roundhouse or nothing. One of the chief complaints against civilization is that everything is standardized. Well, that is one thing Nature tried never to do, and so no two of those curves were exactly alike, and therefore, I saw cracks and chinks in the walls through which I could stick my arm. However, there were no peeping Toms and the weather is always so even and balmy that holes in the wall didn't matter. Moreover, they told me that much of the wood was still alive and in the rainy seasons sprouted leaves and roots, which did not matter either, because the leaves could be stripped off and the roots cut. It had been hard to nail the tarred felt roofing brought from Germany to such curly planks, and, therefore, he had weighted it down with the corrugated iron borrowed from the Captain of a Norwegian tramp steamer. Like most everybody else, this skipper had always cherished a suppressed desire to give up the sea and live like Adam and Eve. It had been necessary to cut considerable of that iron wood in clearing the garden, and this had been used, together with the acacia, in constructing that fence, whose peculiar appearance had attracted my attention from the start. The thing was a wide, thick tangle, reinforced here and there with blocks of lava, and somehow suggesting barbed wire entanglements and a battlefield.

“Battlefield is right,” said Adam alias Dr. Ritter. “The war has been on ever since we moved in. Every night there is an attack, and about once a week the enemy storms the walls and sacks the place. So far we have only had one minor victory.” “Who is the enemy?” Mr. Schimpff inquired. “The animals, confound them!” said Adam, with more bitterness than I had ever heard from a vegetarian. “Yes,” Eve alias Dore Strauch added, “all wild animals are communists, except the carnivore, and even those have no respect for any property but their own.”"This was a surprise", declared Schimpff: "Much has been written about the flora and fauna of these islands, and I understood that since the extermination of the giant tortoises there had been no sizeable beasts except some lizards, one of which is the only species known to live in salt water. So I suggested that these must be the foe." “No,” said Adam, “the lizards are the best behaved creatures on the place. Our persecutors are wild asses, wild pigs, wild dogs and wild descendants of tabby cats.”