Nov 10
By Haakon
We just finished our one-week trip around the eastern Gallopagos on one of the Rolf Wittmer boats. One of our stops was on Floreana island where our guide told us about the curious histories of the first three family’s that settled on Floreana during the 1930’s.
The first to come to Floreana was Dr. Friedrich Ritter, a dentist from Germany and his hygienist, Dore Strauch. In 1929, they left their spouses in Germany and ventured to the Galapagos to escape the inter war great depression after WWI and find peace and tranquility on a remote island. He envisioned life of strong work, a vegetarian diet and lack of creature comforts, even clothes (I am thinking of a bad ecuadorian sunburn). Knowing there would be no dentists for him there, he had all his teeth removed to avoid dental emergences; Dore declined to do the same. She brought with her, her best friend, a pet donkey.
The second group of European settlers was Heinz and Margaret Wittimer. Dr Wittmer was a veterinarian, he came with his blind son and his pregnant wife to escape Nazi Germany in 1934 and in hopes of finding a healthy environment for their son. When they first arrived, they used a cave which pirates lived and built it out to include some log and rock walls. Their second son, Rolf, was born soon after to be followed three years later by a sister, Floreanita. The family used other caves to store canned fruits and vegetables, some livestock left by buccaneers roamed the island so occasionally they killed bulls for meat and leather, used two cows for milk and cream, and they had a boat that came four times a year that supplied them with flour and other things they couldn’t obtain on the island by themselves. They raised chickens and vegetable garden later. The extended Wittmer family still lives in the small town on Floreana which we did not visit. A cool fact is: Margaret’s son, the first person born on Floreana, was Rolf Wittimer who started a small boat tour company with his fishing boat, which has now turned into multiple fleets for lots of family’s like us visiting the Galapagos.
The trouble started really with the third party to settle on the island. Austrian “Baroness’’ Eloise Wehrborn von Wagner Bosquet came as an aspiring entrepreneur with her entourage of three men, Rudolf Lorenz, Robert Philipson, and Felipe Valdiviseo all with whom the “Baroness” was said to have romantic relations. The baroness had an idea of starting a hotel business which may have been her worst decision ever.
Shortly after the Baroness arrived, the disputes started with everyone else on the island and the Baroness. Like I said the Baroness was an aspiring entrepreneur and her initial idea was to open a grand hotel on Floreana, the others did not want a huge hotel on their remote island. Out of the blue, in 1934, strange deaths and mysterious disappearances occurred that still haven’t been solved. The Baroness and Robert Philipson disappeared on a morning walk without a trace. Others say they boarded a passing yacht for Tahiti though there is no record of this, nor of them turning up in Tahiti. It was said that she never went anywhere without wearing her pearl necklace however the necklace was found in her home. Shortly after the disappearance, Rudolf Lorenz hired a Norwegian fisherman to take him to San Cristobal island where he could catch a boat to the mainland; months later both their bodies were found on Marchena (one of the far northern islands in the Galapagos), the fishing boat wrecked.
Dr. Friedrich Ritter, the vegetarian, apparently died of food poisoning as a result eating chicken soup. According to the Wittmers, he said before dying that Dore had poisoned him, though she always denied it. After Dr Ritter’s death, Dora returned to Germany with her donkey (and it is said she died later in a Blitz).
Some talk of the of the Tortoise curse – those that come to seek selfish profit from the islands invariably die or leave.
-San Cristóbal Galapagos Interpretation Center