Theodor Lerner was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 journalist and polar explorer who conducted several expeditions to Svalbard

Svalbard

Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic, constituting the northernmost part of Norway. It is located north of mainland Europe, midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. The group of islands range from 74° to 81° north latitude , and from 10° to 35° east longitude. Spitsbergen is the...

. In 1897 he witnessed the start of S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897

S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897

S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 was an ill-fated effort to reach the North Pole in which all three expedition members perished. S. A. Andrée , the first Swedish balloonist, proposed a voyage by hydrogen balloon from Svalbard to either Russia or Canada, which was to pass,...

 and took part in the search for Andrée in 1898 during a journey with Friedrich Römer and Fritz Schaudinn

Fritz Schaudinn

Fritz Richard Schaudinn was a German zoologistBorn in Röseningken, East Prussia, he co-discovered, with Erich Hoffmann in 1905, the causative agent of syphilis, Spirochaeta pallida...

. He visited Bjørnøya in 1898 and 1899, exploring the viability of coal mining and eventually claiming ownership of the island as a territory of the German Empire

German Empire

The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...

. This enterprise proved unsuccessful but raised some publicity, earning him the nickname "Nebelfürst" ("prince of the mists"). In 1908 after overwintering the polar night

Polar night

The polar night occurs when the night lasts for more than 24 hours. This occurs only inside the polar circles. The opposite phenomenon, the polar day, or midnight sun, occurs when the sun stays above the horizon for more than 24 hours.-Description:...

 with Hjalmar Johansen

Hjalmar Johansen

Fredrik Hjalmar Johansen was a polar explorer from Norway. He shipped out with Fridtjof Nansen's Fram expedition in 1893–1896, and accompanied Nansen to notch a new Farthest North record near the North Pole on what was then the frozen Arctic Ocean...

 in a cabin at Cape Boheman

Bohemanneset

Bohemanneset is a cape defined by the sotheastern spit of the peninsula Bohemanflya, located at the nortwestern side of Isfjorden, at Oscar II Land on Spitsbergen, Svalbard. It is named after Swedish entomologist Carl Henrik Boheman. Bohemanneset has a length of about...

 on Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Constituting the western-most bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea...

, he and Johansen travelled over the inland ice to Spitsbergen's northwest coast.

In popular culture

Lerner's history is the basis for the 2001 German novel Der Nebelfürst by Martin Mosebach

Martin Mosebach

Martin Mosebach , has published novels, stories, and collections of poems, written scripts for several films, opera libretti, theatre and radio plays....

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