German mountain engineer and polar explorer, who participated as a doctoral student in the 1930-1931 German Greenland Expedition headed by Alfred Wegener. Wegener chose Herdemerten mainly as an explosives expert. His tasks in the expedition consisted in taking seismic measurements of the thickness of the inland ice cover, which he carried out together with the geophysicist Kurt Wölcken, as well as in the shaft for the planned stations “West” at Qaumarujuk (Scheidck House) and “Eismitte”.
The events surrounding the death of Alfred Wegener during the expedition led to a rift between Herdemerten and the expedition participant Johannes Georgi. He publicly accused Kurt Wegener, Georgi and Ernst Sorge of being indirectly to blame for the death of Alfred. In 1937 this came to a judicial dispute between Herdemerten and Georgi, which ended with a settlement. Both parties were prohibited to continue the dispute in public.
Under the Nazi regime, he led the Herdemerten-Greenland-Expedition in 1938 on behalf of the Braunschweiger Jägerhof Foundation. The goal of the ornithologically-oriented expedition was the exploration of the Greenland flora and fauna. Special interest was given to the living conditions of white gyrfalcons native to Greenland. At the behest of the Reichsjägerhof Hermann Göring he was requested to capture and send specimens back to Germany, in order to get used to the Central European climate and settle there.
After his return Herdemerten built the polar trial station “Goldhöhe” in the Giant Mountains, which initially served the acclimatisation and further exploration of the gyrfalcon. Later, soldiers, mainly the so-called naval squadrons (MWT), were trained there for deployment in polar regions.
After the Second World War Kurt Herdemerten went to West Germany and gave numerous lectures on the German Greenlandic expeditions. He died on 21 December 1951 in Essen, aged 51.
Link to Wikipedia biography (German)