Oscar Baumann was an Austrian cartographer with a keen interest in ethnography

Ethnography

Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...

.

He attended classes on natural history

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

 and geography

Geography

Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...

 at the University of Vienna

University of Vienna

The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...

, and in 1885 was part of an Austrian exploratory expedition of the Congo Basin

Congo River

The Congo River is a river in Africa, and is the deepest river in the world, with measured depths in excess of . It is the second largest river in the world by volume of water discharged, though it has only one-fifth the volume of the world's largest river, the Amazon...

 headed by Oskar Lenz

Oskar Lenz

Oskar Lenz was a German-Austrian geologist and mineralogist who was a native of Leipzig.In 1870 he earned his doctorate in mineralogy and geology at the University of Leipzig...

. However, he had to leave the expedition early due to illness. In 1886 he did ethnographical research on the island of Fernando Po. When he returned to Europe, he obtained his PhD from the University of Leipzig

University of Leipzig

The University of Leipzig , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest universities in the world and the second-oldest university in Germany...

 in 1888.

Baumann is best known for his exploration of the interior of German East Africa

German East Africa

German East Africa was a German colony in East Africa, which included what are now :Burundi, :Rwanda and Tanganyika . Its area was , nearly three times the size of Germany today....

 (present-day Tanzania

Tanzania

The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...

, Rwanda

Rwanda

Rwanda or , officially the Republic of Rwanda , is a country in central and eastern Africa with a population of approximately 11.4 million . Rwanda is located a few degrees south of the Equator, and is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo...

 and Burundi

Burundi

Burundi , officially the Republic of Burundi , is a landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and south, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Its capital is Bujumbura...

), and producing maps of the region. In 1888 he explored the Usambara region with geographer Hans Meyer

Hans Meyer (geologist)

Hans Heinrich Josef Meyer was a German geographer from Hildburghausen, who was the son of publisher Herrmann Julius Meyer . Hans Meyer is credited with being the first European to reach the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro 5,895 m...

, with designs of continuing on to Mount Kilimanjaro

Mount Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro, with its three volcanic cones, Kibo, Mawenzi, and Shira, is a dormant volcano in Kilimanjaro National Park, Tanzania and the highest mountain in Africa at above sea level .-Geology:...

. However, their progress was stopped due to ramifications associated with the so-called "Abushiri Revolt

Abushiri Revolt

The Abushiri Revolt was a so-called insurrection in 1888-1889 by the Arab and Swahili population of the areas of the East African coast which were granted to Germany by the Sultan of Zanzibar in 1888...

" (1888–89). Within a matter of days Baumann and Meyer were captured and held as prisoners, and only after a large ransom was paid to rebel leader Abushiri ibn Salim al-Harthi

Abushiri ibn Salim al-Harthi

Abushiri ibn Salim al-Harthi was a wealthy merchant and plantation owner of Arab-Oromo parentage who is known for the Abushiri Revolt against the German East Africa Company in present-day Tanzania...

 were the two men released.

Baumann's most celebrated mission was the 200-member "Maasai Expedition" of 1891-1893. On this trek, he performed map-making duties, and was the first European to visit Lake Eyasi

Lake Eyasi

Lake Eyasi is a seasonal shallow endorheic salt lake on the floor of the Great Rift Valley at the base of the Serengeti Plateau, just south of the Serengeti National Park and immediately southwest of the Ngorongoro Crater in the Crater Highlands of Tanzania...

, Lake Manyara

Lake Manyara

Lake Manyara is a shallow lake in the Natron-Manyara-Balangida branch of the Great Rift Valley in Tanzania. Said by Ernest Hemingway to be the "loveliest [lake] .....

 and Ngorongoro Crater. As a result of the journey, he produced a book titled Durch Massailand zur Nilquelle (By Massailand to the Source of Nile) in 1894. In 1892, he became the first European to enter Rwanda.

In 1896, Baumann was appointed consul to Zanzibar

Zanzibar

Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...

 by the Austro-Hungarian government. However, he died a few years later of an infectious disease at the age of 35. Today at the Vienna Museum of Ethnology

Vienna Museum of Ethnology

thumb|The Museum of Ethnolog is housed in a wing of the [[Hofburg Imperial Palace]].thumb|InteriorThe Museum of Ethnology in Vienna is the largest anthropological museum in Austria, established in 1876. It currently resides in the Hofburg Imperial Palace and houses a quarter million ethnographical...

are nearly 3500 artifacts that Baumann amassed from his African journeys. These include weapons, tools, jewellery, herbal perfumes and musical instruments.

Written works by Oscar Baumann

• Beiträge zur Ethnologie des Kongo (Contributions to the Ethnology of the Congo), Vienna (1887)
• Fernando Po and the Bube. Vienna (1888)
• In Deutsch-Ostafrika während des Aufstandes (In German East Africa during the Rebellion), Vienna (1890)
• Usambara. Berlin (1891)
• Karte des nordöstlichen Deutsch-Ostafrika (Map of northeast German East Africa), Berlin (1893)
• Durch Massailand zur Nilquelle (By Massailand to the Source of Nile), Berlin (1894)
• Die kartographischen Ergebnisse der Massai-Expedition (The cartographic results of the Massai expedition), In: Petermann's Geographische Mitteilungen, Ergebnisheft 111, Gotha (1894)
• The Sansibar archipelago. 3 booklets. Leipzig (1896–99)
• Afrikanische Skizzen (African Sketches), Berlin (1900)