The Galapagos Affair

[christine73]

posted by ohva
June 19, 2013

www.huffingtonpost.com/cecilia-alvear/coming-soon-to-a-screen-near-you_b_3462505.html

Coming Soon to a Screen Near You: the Saga of the Empress of the Galapagos


Huffington Post
Cecilia Avear
6/19/13




(The "Baroness" and her two lovers on Floreana Island, Galapagos)

There are many legends about the "Enchanted Islands" as some call the Galápagos, none more intriguing than the saga of several Europeans who arrived at the archipelago in the 1930's in search of "Paradise." Among the most fascinating yarns is that of a woman who called herself "The Empress of the Galápagos" and billed herself as a "Baroness." It is the stuff films noirs are made of. A tale of adventure, love or lust triangles, betrayals, violence, perhaps murder?

No wonder that all these years later those events inspired documentary film makers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine to co-produce and direct The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden, featuring the voices of Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger, Connie Nielsen, Josh Radnor, Sebastian Koch, Thomas Kretschmann and Gustaf Skarsgard. As reported in The Wrap, The film is now in post-production and will be released later this year.

It was one of the stories that I, as a native of the islands, heard my parents telling and re-telling. We even met some of the people involved in the events. So this is what I know (drum roll).

In the 1930's Galápagos had a population of only 571 people and the Ecuadorian government encouraged people to settle there. In Europe, there were dark times ahead and this motivated many to search for safer heavens. People like German dentist Friedrich Ritter who left his wife and eloped with one of his patients, Dore Strauch. She also left her husband behind. As a sanitary measure they both had all their teeth removed and shared a steel set of dentures. (Nothing says love like sharing a set of dentures!)

They started life anew in Floreana Island, imagining themselves as a modern version of Adam and Eve. Reportedly they preferred to work in the nude as they moved lava rocks to build a shelter, planted a vegetable garden and raised chickens. He wrote letters about their experience which were published in German papers and inspired others to follow in his footsteps.

In August of 1932 Heinz Wittmer arrived with his pregnant wife Margret and his teenage son Harry. Later that year Margret gave birth to their second son, Rolf. They were hardy pioneers who built themselves a home near a spring, planted vegetables and fruit trees and fished.. They were occasionally visited by members of scientific expeditions who left behind canned goods and other hard to get items.

The two German families got along but kept their distance.

However in October of 1932, another European party arrived and things were never the same. Their leader was a woman who claimed she was a "Baroness" by the name of Eloise Wehrborn de Wagner-Bosquet. She had with her two German lovers, Robert Philippson and Rudolf Lorenz. An Ecuadorian, Manuel Valdivieso, was also part of the retinue although he left a month later telling everybody that the Baroness was "totally crazy." The Baroness and her two men settled near the Wittmers, put up a sign calling the area "Hacienda Paradiso" and told everyone they were going to build a grand hotel for millionaires.

The Baroness had a penchant for self-promotion. She managed to get stories about her adventures in Time magazine and other publications. She claimed to be the "Empress of the Galápagos" and posed with a gun and a whip.

Several scientific expeditions arrived in Galápagos in those years. The most prominent was the one led by Captain Allan Hancock in his yacht Velero III. They photographed and filmed the Ritters, the Wittmers and the Baroness and her entourage.

But not everything was peaceful in "Hacienda Paradiso" since Lorenz had been demoted from lover to abused servant while Phillipson AKA "Bubi" had become the Baroness's favorite boy toy. There were also disputes with the Wittmers and Ritter over the scarce water and other, pettier issues.

Finally on March 27, 1934, the Baroness and Philippson disappeared.

According to Mrs. Margret Wittmer, the Baroness told her that a friend's yacht had arrived and invited the Baroness and Phillipson to sail to Tahiti with them. That was the last time the Baroness was seen. However, no ship was ever sited near the island on that day and the Baroness and Phillipson never arrived in Tahiti.

Lorenz, meanwhile, gave away the belongings of the Baroness and Phillipson and tried to get out of Galápagos in a rush. He begged a Norwegian fisherman named Nuggerud to take him in a small boat with an outboard motor to San Cristobal Island, where he could catch a ship to Guayaquil. They made a stopover in Santa Cruz island where they refueled.

They never made it to San Cristóbal. Months later, an American tunaboat, the "San Amaro" found the mummified bodies of both men on Marchena Island in the northern part of the Archipelago.

Back on Floreana, another strange death: Dr. Ritter, who claimed he was a vegetarian, died apparently of botulism due to eating improperly canned chicken. Some thought that Dore Strauch poisoned him because he mistreated her. She left for Germany soon after and wrote a book: Satan came to Eden. She died in Berlin in a bombing during WWII. Satan was very busy in those years.

I recently spent time in Santa Cruz with Mrs. Carmen Angermeyer, who was a child in those years. She remembered her father had accompanied the Ecuadorian Military Governor to serve as an interpreter during a cursory investigation of the facts on Floreana. "My father thought that Mrs. Wittmer knew more but was not telling the whole truth," she said. She also remembers seeing Lorenz and Nuggerud cast off on their final and fatal journey from Santa Cruz.

The Wittmers remained in Floreana and prospered. Mrs. Wittmer, who died in 2000, never changed her story. Her children and granchildren now run a successful tourist fleet. The mystery of what happened to the Baroness and Phillipson was never solved.

This new movie will probably revive interest in that mystery, as it raises more questions than answers.

[christine73]

posted by ohva
June 20, 2013

I am curious about which person Gustaf will voice. I'm presuming the various actors are the voices of the real life people and he'll maybe be one of the Germans.

Gustaf's voice is fantastic. I could see him doing narrative work on the side. I think he was doing so in Sweden.

[christine73]

posted by Sabermom
July 5, 2013

Details from imdb pro:

Genre
Documentary / Biography / Crime / Mystery

Plot Summary
Darwin meets Hitchcock in this feature-length documentary. THE GALAPAGOS AFFAIR is a gripping tale of idealistic dreams gone awry, set in the brutal yet alluring landscape of the Galapagos Islands. Featuring voice-over performances by Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger, Connie Nielsen, Sebastian Koch, Thomas Kretschmann, Gustaf Skarsgard and Josh Radnor, this film skillfully interweaves an unsolved 1930s murder mystery with stories of present day Galapagos pioneers (a handful of Europeans, Americans and Ecuadoreans who settled idiosyncratically on the Islands between the 1930s and 1960s). As such, it is a parable about the search for paradise -- about what happens when a handful of individualists settle on the same small island seeking their own distinct and sometimes clashing notions of Eden.
Summary written by Geller/Goldfine Productions

Country: USA / Ecuador / Germany / Norway
Language: English
Runtime: 126 min

Cast

Thomas Kretschmann - Friedrich Ritter
Cate Blanchett - Dore Strauch
Diane Kruger - Margret Wittmer
Sebastian Koch - Heinz Wittmer
Connie Nielsen - Baroness Von Wagner
Gustaf Skarsgård - Rolf Blomberg
Josh Radnor - John Garth

[christine73]

posted by Sabermom
July 5, 2013

Rolf Blomberg was a Swedish explorer, photographer, producer of documentary films, and writer. There's a short film he did about the Galapagos on svt's website. I've been fiddling with the embed code, but getting it to work is apparently beyond my capabilities tonight, so go watch it here if you're interested.

An article about the mystery published in The Pittsburgh Press in November 1934 mentions Blomberg several times and makes me think he knew the Baroness and her companions pretty well. It says that he and a German scientist named Martin Voegel "arrived in Guayaquil last Friday from the Galapagos. They reported that the Baroness and Philippson had disappeared. They added that Lorenz and Nuggerud had left the island by yacht." and that Blomberg and Voegel "filled in some blanks of the story of the romantic minded trio who went to the islands - the Baroness, former proprietor of a Paris curio shop, a woman familiar with the gay life of European capitals, and Philippson and Lorenz, German business men who had fallen in love with her and with her were willing to abandon the world they knew for live on a tropical island." (The article was interesting to read, going into detail about the lives of the trio on the island.)


Here's an interview with an author who recently published a biography on Rolf Blomberg, too. He sounds like he was a pretty cool guy, and not entirely unlike Bengt Danielsson.
Rolf Blomberg’s Biography: An Interview with Walter Repo

Posted by Benoit on Sunday, May 19, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Walter Repo, the Swedish author and adventurer has recently published an amazing biography of the explorer Rolf Bloomberg. Bloomberg was also a brillant writer, photographer and filmaker.
As described in his own book, Buried Gold and Anacondas, Blomberg led several expeditions in the Llanganates to discover the treasure of Atahualpa. Below is an exclusive interview with Walter Repo, author of “Folkhemmets äventyrare: en biografi om forskningsluffaren Rolf Blomberg”.

Can you first introduce us to Blomberg and tell us a little bit about your book?
Rolf Blomberg, born in Stockholm 1912, was one of the most influential explorers in Sweden and a true humanist. He valued curiosity, the human drive to explore more than money and personal fame. He never visited tribes and new environments as an ego-fueled ”great explorer”, he never took anything. He just observed and lived side by side, always humble. That makes him unique and, for me, attractive to write about.
Above all, he was one of the first ever to take a stand for human rights for ingenious people in South America. And as an early environmental activist he fought for the archipelago of Galapagos. Blomberg’s reports concerning the islands situations were used by Unesco as a background for their work to create protection. In 1959 the Galapagos was made a national park, but Blomberg was not satisfied and continued to fight.
Sweden had been an isolated country during WWII and after the war Blomberg showed the world to the cold, frozen Swedes, who knew very little about it. Blomberg explored and returned to Sweden with amazing, colorful images of a never seen world. With his images and lectures he toured Sweden, visited the smallest villages and in that way educated the Swedish people and gave them other perspectives.
He was one of the truly good guys in exploration. All this together made it easy for me to work with him – I see it as a collaboration, though he passed away in 1996. Sometimes I could feel his presence.

Why Blomberg? Why does he fascinates you more than any other explorer? When was the first time you’ve heard about him?
I have an image of him as a kind and non egotistic person. He never called himself an ”explorer”, instead he referred to himself as a ”research vagabond”. That is very appealing, it says a lot and it separates him from other explorers in a nice, humble way. Today exploring is too much about records, sponsor deals and personal gains. Explorers of today seldom get in close with people and habitats they encounter. Rolf Blomberg was the true opposite of all that. He was a true adventurer, always with the boyish curiosity intact and alive. I admire and share that in my own travels around the world. As many Swedes in my age, I was born in 1967, and the generation before me, read Blomberg as a child. But it was mainly in these past 15 years or so that I truly understood what the persona of Rolf Blomberg consisted of. Or rather, I suspected he was more than his books and films. Now, after writing and researching his life in depth, I know that my hunch was right. His books and films where merely means to earn some money for further exploration of life. He loved life and, in his own way, helped to create a better world and understanding for what is important.

When did you decide you wanted to write about Blomberg?
I always have a couple of book titles in my head and some of them are about what you might call adventures and adventurers. But I never wanted to write a book just about an adventurer for his adventures. I wanted an intrigue, a personal story, life’s ups and downs. I found this in Rolf Blomberg. His adventures is more of a frame for a very interesting personal story. A man’s search for happiness, his search for a formula on how to live well and not to hurt others in the way. I think he was close, but, as he says, he payed a high price. Happiness doesn’t come for free or without sorrows. When Blomberg’s letters and diaries were presented to me in Ecuador I knew that I could write a book that is more than about adventures. I did my best and I’m happy with the result. I want to thank my life comrade Katarina Arvidson, she always believes in me and supports me in all possible ways. I am very fortunate to have met her and we are both into adventures and writing. Of course there would not have been a book without the kind support of Blomberg’s family. My publishers Richard Herold and Moa Elf Karlén were also essential for this project. They were amazing. My friend Jonas Cramby, art director genius, created a wonderful book cover. You can’t bring a project like this to harbor without people who believes in it.

Which part of researching about the life of Blomberg was the most personally interesting to you?
Reading his beautiful letters. With them I could follow him for decades. I could share his frustration, his happiness, his sorrows and obstacles in life. Without the letters, thanks to his daughter Marcela Blomberg, it would not have been a book. Sometimes I felt too close, too nosy. But that is the dilemma of writing a biography. On the other hand, a biography without that kind of naked closeness is not a real biography.

Did you have any struggles or difficulties when you started writing? What was the most difficult part about this project?
As a writer you always have to deal with the presence of a self created pressure to write more than your best. Blocks, you might call it. But they passed quickly, they were nothing more than opportunities to reflect on the material, what to enclose and what to leave. Kill your darlings and there were many executed darlings in this project, believe me. The most difficult, painful thing was to feel Rolf Blomberg’s children longing for their father. They had their memories, but the person was gone. That was very sad and made me reflect more about my own life. The feeling that life is just a short sigh and then we are gone. Blomberg made the most of his life, seized the moments, and it turned out beautiful.

Of course, we want to talk about Atahualpa and the Lost Inca Gold. Blomberg, like many other explorers, tried to find this fabulous treasure. Do you know when was the first time he heard about this story and why he decided to go after.
For Rolf Blomberg the gold was just, really, an excuse for another adventure, to see something that very few get to see. The Llanganatis. I write about it in the chapter Lost in Llanganati. Over 2 000 tons of gold, just waiting to be found.
He heard about it in 1934, when he first arrived in the Oriente, the eastern provinces of Ecuador. But in 1947, when he returned to Ecuador, he got mesmerized by the legend of the Llanganati highlands. He studied the literature, old documents and became friends wit Erskine Loch and Brunner. Together with Luis Andrade Marin he made several expeditions, various in length, to the mountains. A land of false and broken hopes. But the POSSIBILITY intrigued him. Instead of gold he found frogs to bring home to museums in Sweden. You know that he found the New Worlds largest frog, a toad named Bufo blombergi, in Colombia?

What do we know about his expeditions in the Llanganatis?
I know a lot and have read his diaries. But the diaries does not give any clues to were to find gold. His expeditions to the Llanganati were mostly short and he was sick several times, just lying around the camp in fever and disbelief. The Llanganatis is hard work.

He tried six times to find the treasure and each of his six expeditions failed. Why so much interest? Why do you think he was so sure he could succeed where other had failed?
He was not, in contrary to what many people think, obsessed in the Inca gold. Not at all. Again, it was an excuse for an adventure and the mountains are spectacular, a very unique experience. But, you always have the POSSIBILITY to ”stumble” on some gold. Blomberg said that if he found it, he would give it to the rightful owners. The Indians. People shook their head, thought he was crazy, what kind of man would give away a treasure? Well, Rolf Blomberg was such a man and he believed in doing the right thing. He also knew that finding a treasure of such magnitude would probably not be all milk and hone. It can kill you.

Yourself, you’ve traveled to the Llanganatis with Franck Alte, a German explorer and archaeologist. Can you tell us more about your experience?
One of my best memories all time and Alte is phenomenal. Someone should write a book about him. No one knows the mountains like him and he was a true friend up there. I admire him very much.

35,000 photograph, 33 documentaries, 20 books, the legacy left by Blomberg is enormous. From your perspective, what makes his work so important today? What should we recognize him for?
His legacy to learn from is his humanism and understanding that life is sacred. Without people like Rolf Blomberg our world would be a much worse place than it is today. Go to the Galápagos and enjoy, but know that it is because of people like Rolf Blomberg.

Can we expect an English version of your book?
Absolutely, if someone wants to publish it. I would love to see a Spanish version too. But I lack contacts. Please visit www.rolfblomberg.se and write to me. I’m open for suggestions and believe that Rolf Blomberg is far more than a Swedish affair.

What advice might you have for aspiring explorers?
Keep your curiosity alive. And just do it. You don’t need expensive gear, just your curiosity.

Are you currently working on a new book? What’s next in Walter Repo’s life?
I have just returned from Sarek – the last wilderness in Europe and above the polar circle. Within a couple of days I’m off to Tanzania to be a naturalist guide for a week. Then there are mores stories to write for magazines. A new book is on my mind. It might be another biography, maybe set partly on Borneo. And I have received trustworthy reports that the mountains of Llanganati are still standing, so…

Walter Repo is a journalist and writer, based in Gothenburg, Sweden. His works has been published in various magazines, as Vanity Fair, Arena, Esquire, Café and BBC History in focus. He has received the Freelance Journalist of the Year award. He is a member of Travellers Club and enjoys exploration, big and small.

Read more about Rolf Blomberg and the book:
www.rolfblomberg.se
www.archivoblomberg.org

Buy the book:
www.adlibris.com/se/product.aspx?isbn=9173893803

[christine73]

posted by Sabermom
July 5, 2013

The Smithsonian has an interesting series about they mystery on their site. Find the posts here: siarchives.si.edu/blog/tag/empress-galapagos. With the exception of the photo that has a caption explaining who John Garth (voiced by Josh Radnor in the film), I'm not copying the pictures, just the text. There are a LOT of great pictures, though - of the Baroness and her lovers as well as the other two couples in the story. Do go check them out!


Members of the 1934 expedition: Captain Allan Hancock, standing, second from left, Waldo Schmitt (standing, third from left). Other participants included Dr. R.W. Kraft, ship’s surgeon; W. Charles Swett, chief officer and photomicrographer; John Garth & Fred Ziesenhenne, University of Southern California grad students; Louis Filley, photographer; Arthur Jensen & Sterling Smith, reptile collectors; and Bartley Hunt and Raymond Elliott, small mammal and bird collectors, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Waldo L. Schmitt Papers, Record Unit 7231, Box 89, Image #SIA2011-0771.

(John Garth appears in this film, voiced by Josh Radnor)


"The Empress of the Galapagos Islands
by Mary Markey

We were sitting around a table, putting the contents of the 189 boxes of Record Unit 7231, the Waldo Schmitt papers, in acid-free folders. Schmitt, an expert in marine invertebrates, worked at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History from 1915-1977. He was an engaging diarist and correspondent, monumental record-keeper, and packrat who left us a massive amount of material documenting his 60-plus year career. The volunteers I was working with started turning up some startling items amid the field reports and correspondence—pulp magazines from the 1930s, newspaper clippings with headlines straight out of the era of yellow journalism, and gruesome photos of dead bodies. They certainly piqued my imagination, so I thought the opportunity to blog for THE BIGGER PICTURE was a perfect excuse to go back to the Schmitt papers and try to piece together the story that those intriguing archival fragments told. And what a story it turns out to be! It has everything you’d expect (and wouldn’t expect!) from a Smithsonian expedition to tropical seas—exotic islands, fascinating wild fauna, stout-hearted scientists, a love triangle, and, very likely, murder.

The Hancock- Pacific Galapagos Expedition of 1934 was one of three financed and led by Captain Allan Hancock—oil and railroad magnate, pilot, ship builder/captain, and agriculturalist—one of those Renaissance Man/tycoons so typical of the early decades of the 20th century. He financed the first non-stop flight across the Pacific, donated the La Brea Tar Pits to Los Angeles, and toured cross-country as a cellist with his own string ensemble. Waldo Schmitt contributed his expertise in crustacea to three of Hancock’s expeditions, and later accompanied President Franklin Roosevelt on a cruise to the Galapagos.

Schmitt headed to the Galapagos once again with Hancock’s 1934 expedition, but according to his journal, the trip got off to a rocky start. On the first day at sea, there was the discovery of a stowaway on board—a young man who had been pestering the crew in California with requests to be part of the expedition. Fortunately, they were able to send him home via a passing fishing boat.

[pullquote]Today all had short shorts on . . . broad-brimmed beach or sailor hats . . . They wear sandals and paint their toenails a bright red . . . I told them I didn’t like it. Waldo Schmitt diary, Smithsonian Institution Archives[/pullquote] Then, the women of the expedition emerged on deck dressed like chorines in a Busby Berkely musical. What if the stowaway was actually a reporter in disguise? Schmitt hoped that it would be kept out of the papers—he could just see the headlines reading: "Smithsonian cuties on voyage to nudist isle." In his diary, he noted: "Today all had short shorts on . . . broad-brimmed beach or sailor hats . . . They wear sandals and paint their toenails a bright red . . . I told them I didn’t like it." The headlines on the expedition’s departure from California had been bad enough. The fact that they were on a voyage to collect specimens for the Smithsonian and the San Diego Zoo had been buried in the last paragraphs! As far as the press and public were concerned, their voyage had one purpose—the identification of two mysterious dead bodies spotted by fishing boats on deserted Marchena Island. On their 1933 Galapagos trip, the Hancock expedition had made acquaintance with some oddly assorted German Utopian colonists on Charles Island (also called Floreana Island). Charles Island’s denizens had already provided the type of story that Depression-era news media ate up and exaggerated all out of proportion—nudism! crackpots! canoodling in the tropics! The colonists themselves hadn’t helped matters any by contributing their own articles to the American press.

“A few years ago, there was a [controversial] story in the papers to the effect that a woman had made herself mistress of the Galapagos, proclaimed herself Empress over the Pacific Ocean, made war with Ecuador and had been pirating the sea with her horde of wild pirates…There was no speck of truth in the story, but whoever was the advertising manager for the Baroness—he was an expert. The Americans are crazy for her…” Excerpt from “Monsumens Reise”, H. Mielche, Translated by Miss Deichmann, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Waldo Schmitt Papers, Record Unit 7231, Box 88.
Charles Island is one of the fifteen main islands of the Galapagos archipelago, which belongs to Ecuador. The island’s sixty-seven square miles are covered in lava rock, which in turn is covered with a growth of thorny scrub. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the uninhabited island served as a hiding place for English pirates and way station for whalers. In 1832, Ecuador attempted to colonize Charles Island with a group of convicts. The attempt ultimately failed, but not before Charles Darwin visited the settlement in 1835.

During the 1920s, two events made Charles Island attractive to human inhabitants once more. Naturalist William Beebe wrote a best seller about his trips to the islands—Galapagos: World’s End—and the Ecuadorian government decided to try colonization again. Settlers were invited to enjoy free plots of land with hunting and fishing rights and no taxes for ten years. The dream of life on a tropical island was especially appealing to Germans suffering the political and economic upheavals of the 1920s. Perhaps the most outrageous of these émigré dreamers was Eloise Bosquet de Wagner, AKA Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn, AKA Eloise Wagner de Bosquet, known in the popular press as the “Empress of the Galapagos Islands.” Her fellow colonists simply called her, “the Baroness.”

"The Baroness curled up on one of the couches with gleaming, half-closed eyes, and told, without encouragement, her romantic story... She is dressed like a baby in the same kind of rompers used by chorus girls when they are exercising…" Excerpt from “Monsumens Reise,” H. Mielche, Translated by Miss Deichmann, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Waldo Schmitt Papers, Record Unit 7231, Box 88.

The Baroness circulated many wild versions of her biography, but the true story, which Smithsonian scientist Waldo Schmitt pieced together from interviews with fellow colonists, still sounds like the plot of an early Marlene Dietrich movie.

A secretary in Constantinople during World War I, the Baroness found herself jobless and stranded there at the war’s end. She found employment in a cabaret, where she attracted the attention of a French merchant named Bosquet. They married and went to live in Paris with his mother.

One suspects that her mother-in-law had ulterior motives when she began introducing the Baroness to eligible bachelors. Among them were Rudolph Lorenz and Robert Philippson. Madame Bosquet the elder’s plot was evidently successful, since Monsieur Bosquet filed for divorce.

During the plush times of her marriage, the Baroness had bankrolled a ladies’ clothing shop for Lorenz; to finance their trip, they sold out the shop and left without paying their creditors. There remained a generous stock of French silk lingerie from the shop, which the Baroness would find to be ideal beach wear.

The Baroness continued her Three Musketeers relationship with her boyfriends Lorenz and Philippson. They heard of Ecuador’s offer of land on Charles Island, and arranged through the Ecuadorian consul to make their home on the purported tropical paradise.

The trio landed on Charles Island with a vague notion of opening a resort, and soon were the subject of bizarre stories circulating in the American press. These attracted attention of American millionaires who made Charles Island a stop-off on their yacht cruises, delighted at a chance to goggle at genuine free-love advocates living in tropical sin. Most of them didn’t leave without giving a generous donation for the upkeep of the Baroness’ homestead, “Hacienda Paradise”.

Waldo Schmitt first became familiar with the Baroness and her cohorts while collecting specimens with a group of scientists in the Galapagos during the 1933-1934 Hancock- Pacific Galapagos Expedition upon the ship, the Valero. Even Schmitt wasn’t immune to a little eyebrow-raising, as seen in the article he wrote for the Velero newspaper, The Barnacle, after an afternoon visit with the Baroness on Charles Island:

"Among the most sparkling and delightful events of the wet and dry seasons of Charles Island were the entertainments pro and con, made possible by none other than the Viennese Baroness Wagner… the Baroness was gowned only in a sweater in honor of…Charlie Swett…& she wore also some simple lingerie.. 'Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?' was her welcome to one of the more Bohemian guests…' I heard that gag before some place, Countess, but I’m too much of a gentleman to say where it was,' was the good natured retort." —The Velero Barnacle, 1/29/1933, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Waldo Schmitt Papers, Record Unit 7231, Box 88.
As idyllic as all this might seem, there was a fly in the Baroness’ ointment of tropical bliss. Charles Island, as it turns out, wasn’t entirely uninhabited when her ménage arrived, and their antics were obnoxious to the earlier arrivals—particularly Friedrich Ritter and Dore Koerwein.

Dr. Friedrich Karl Ritter of Berlin was a dentist who longed for a retreat where he could indulge his raw food theories and complete his magnum opus, a philosophical theosophist treatise. He was accompanied by his devoted disciple and girlfriend, Dore Koerwein, who was known to island visitors as Dore Ritter, although their respective spouses had been left in Germany with instructions to take care of each other.


Dr. Ritter’s dentistry came in handy; while on the island he had had to extract most of Dore’s teeth. Unfortunately the two of them had only one pair of false teeth to share, and these were stainless steel—Dr. Ritter’s own invention.

The Ritters quickly came to understand the challenges of living on remote Charles Island. When they arrived, they didn’t know that their land would be covered with thorn bushes and hardened lava flow. To plant a garden, the lava had to be broken up and carried away in buckets before arable soil could be hauled down from their hilltop spring. Dr. Ritter wistfully thought how nice it would have been had they thought to bring along a wheelbarrow.

The couple also arrived expecting tortoises and iguanas, but not realizing that there were large mammals, such as cattle and pigs, on the island. Eighteenth century pirates had introduced goats; in the nineteenth century, the mainland government introduced dogs to control the goats. Earlier colonists left behind cattle, donkeys, cats, and pigs, and accidentally introduced rats, mice, and cockroaches. Hordes of feral animals greeted the Ritters, all eager to share the produce of their garden, and the Ritter’s defenses were a bird gun, rat poison, and dynamite. Their attempts to shoot, poison, and explode the wild hogs were unsuccessful, but in the end the dynamite made the hogs nervous enough to stay away.

The Ritters found that the best way to protect their feet and legs from thorns and jagged rock was to wear hip boots—and the best way to cope with tropical heat was to wear only their hip boots. Visitors were encouraged to shout their presence at their front gate, and were welcomed by the sound of the Ritters scurrying away to get dressed. Thus began Charles Island’s reputation in the press as the nudist island.

Smithsonian scientist Waldo Schmitt noted they weren’t really nudists because they went without clothes for practical reasons—not philosophical ones. In other words, they weren’t nudists—they were just naked.

The Ritters were nothing if not high-minded, and the sight of their fellow colonist, the Baroness (AKA Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn), traipsing around in French silk underwear with her two boyfriends was just too much. There was also jealousy provoked by the fact that they had written up their adventure for the Atlantic Monthly—but it was the Baroness who by virtue of her exotic lovelife captured the spotlight and reaped the rewards— gifts from wealthy American tourists. On his deathbed, Dr. Ritter would later speculate that he was being punished for thinking so often of killing the Baroness!

The story of colonists Arthur and Margarete Wittmer is shorter. They were a happy, relatively ordinary couple who had come to the Island with their children to escape Germany’s post-war financial meltdown. In retrospect, the Wittmers come off like the stars of a television sitcom—normal people surrounded by a cast of Charles Island’s daffy supporting characters.

The press wasn’t filled with racy stories about them, and if wealthy Americans came to visit the family, it didn’t make the papers. The best account of the Wittmers among Smithsonian scientist Waldo Schmitt’s papers comes from a translation of Danish travel writer Hakon Mielche’s account of his visit to Charles Island, Monsumens Reise:

"Wittmer was a quiet, ordinary man, who lived in a quiet, exceptionally beautiful stone house in the middle of a well kept garden. He had a sweet and natural wife and his two children were less noisy and more well-behaved than children usually are…

[Wittmer’s] story is sadly commonplace... German office worker…then the war came and threw him into the trenches…then completely nerve broken when he returned. No job, but a small capital. The inflation took care of that. He tried everything, but nothing would succeed…Sitting here in the quiet room and going through the hard conditions after the war…in spite of the distance in miles and years, his hands still shake and his voice trembles.

Then he broke out of it one day and came over here with his wife and young son. Then began peace and recovery. He is a happy man, and his wife and children thrive…No boxes of gifts are carried up to Wittmer’s house [as they are to the Baroness’], but it is perhaps therefore that his eyes are calm and his children happy. He drew in at his pipe while his children played with a Shepherd dog puppy, and his peace is comfortable."

The last words of Mielche’s chapter on Charles Island is prophetic:

"When Ritter and the Baroness have broken each other down to the level of the ground, when Paradise and Eden have gone down to smoking Hell, Wittmer will still be sitting outside his little comfortable house, sucking his pipe."

*Excerpts from “Monsumens Reise”, H. Mielche. Translated by Miss Deichmann. Waldo Schmitt Papers, RU 7231, Box 88.

In December 1934, the Velero arrived at Marchena Island in the Galapagos. As the ship approached the shore, Smithsonian scientist Waldo L. Schmitt and his colleagues spotted the two bodies that had been reported by passing fishing boats. The story of the Charles Island colonists, which had seemed like a screwball farce peopled by eccentrics, abruptly turned to tragedy.

The bodies had been mummified by the heat of the sun baked and arid island, and were immediately recognized by those on the Velero as Rudolph Lorenz, the young lover of colonist; Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn (aka, the Baroness); and Captain Nyggerud, the skipper of a small fishing boat that made regular trips between the islands.

The two men had erected a mast with signal flag before they died; under it rested a small skiff—but no oars were found. Scattered about were the remains of a bird and a sea lion that had evidently been killed and eaten by the castaways. There was food, but no drinking water to be had on Marchena Island; the men had died of thirst.

On December 2, 1934, the Velero dropped anchor at neighboring Charles Island, where they found the island and its inhabitants deeply changed. Members of the expedition were surprised when their friend, Dr. Ritter, didn’t meet them at Post Office Bay. They soon encountered Dr. Ritter’s weeping and distraught companion, Dore Koerwein, who led the group to Ritter’s grave. Schmitt pieced the story together through conversations with Margarete Wittmer, who witnessed the events on Charles Island since the Velero’s last visit.

With the island gardens failing in the drought, the Ritters, who were vegetarians, were forced to augment their diet with meat. Dore Koerwein believed that Dr. Ritter died of food poisoning from meat they had improperly canned, but from the symptoms of increasing paralysis she described, the Velero’s doctor suspected the actual cause of death was an aneurism. When Dr. Ritter became ill, Margarete Wittmer helped Dore nurse him, and recalled that before the power of speech left him,

“Ritter said [that] when he took sick; [he] thought [it] must be that he was being punished for having entertained the thought of killing the Baroness—she was such a plague to him that he seriously entertained the idea a number of times.” “Hancock-Galapagos Expedition, 1934-1935 Diary” by Waldo L. Schmitt.

Indeed, the Baroness was disliked by many of the other island inhabitants for her scandalous love life and flagrant desire for celebrity and money. In the end, Friedrich Ritter died on November 2, just as the Velero set off from America. He had only five months to savor life on the island post-Baroness.

At the Baroness’ compound, things were even worse; since this was usually the rainy season, the tourist yachts kept away—and the three inhabitants of the Baroness’ “Hacienda Paradise” depended on them for provisions. Their dwindling resources caused increasing tension; Lorenz burned slowly with anger as the Baroness showed favoritism to Philippson. Around the beginning of March, the two men came to blows. When Lorenz, the loser in the Baroness’ complicated love triangle, was driven out, he found refuge with the Wittmers.

On the 28th of March, Mrs. Wittmer reported, the Baroness came to the Wittmer’s fence and excitedly called for Lorenz, who was off gathering wood with the Wittmer’s older son. Mrs. Wittmer listened to her news—American friends had arrived in their yacht and invited her and Philippson on a voyage to the South Seas. They were leaving immediately and would probably not return; Lorenz could become sole master of the house and animals they left behind.

Mrs. Wittmer conveyed the message to Lorenz on his return, and he left for “Paradise.” On his return, he related that he found the cottage empty, the luggage and donkey missing, and the disorder of a hasty departure all around. Of Robert Phillipson and the Baroness, there was nothing to be seen.

Lorenz stayed at the deserted “Paradise” for the next several weeks, returning to the Wittmers for meals. He then moved to Post Office Bay, where he waited for a passing ship. However, when an acquaintance, Thomas Howell, Sr. of Miami, arrived in his yacht, Lorenz refused to leave with him.

Finally, on July 20th, the fishing boat captained by the Norwegian, Nyggerud, arrived. Mrs. Wittmer recalled that by then Lorenz was in a terrible hurry and even though the sea was dreadfully high, offered the skipper extra money to leave immediately. Two days later the deserted boat was seen drifting off Chatham Island. Nyggerud was known to be reckless; his rickety boat had no sails and an unreliable engine. It was believed that they had engine failure in rough seas and abandoned ship, setting out in the skiff to try and reach the nearest land. Unfortunately, that was the waterless Marchena Island.

So ran Margarete Wittmer’s account; however, there was another witness to the events of March 1934: one who reported from beyond the grave. Among Waldo Schmitt’s papers is a typescript that Dr. Ritter wrote shortly after the disappearance of the Baroness and Philippson. My German is rusty, but I was able to translate the document, and discover some telling discrepancies from Ms. Wittmer’s story. One was that the Ritters hadn’t witnessed a ship in Post Office Bay since January 1924.Their home possessed the best view of the bay, and they were the first to spot and welcome incoming ships—such as the American yacht that supposedly spirited the Baroness away. In addition, on the 28th of March—the day Mrs. Wittmer said that the Baroness made her trip to notify Lorenz, and then departed the island—was Dore Koerwein’s birthday. Dr. Ritter recalled Lorenz and Mrs. Wittmer arriving at their house that morning, with a cake and presents to celebrate, and excitedly telling them the news that the Baroness had sailed off to the South Seas.

Dore Koerwein left Charles Island on the Velero, returned to Germany, and wrote magazine articles about her life on Charles Island. She believed that Lorenz had indeed murdered his companions, and burned the bodies in a fire of the island’s acacia wood, hot enough to completely destroy them. She also thought that the Wittmers may have corroborated the story of the Baroness’ departure out of pity for Lorenz.

The Wittmer family stayed and prospered in their island home; their descendants pioneered the Galapagos tourism industry with their company, Rolf Wittmer Turismo, Ltd. Margarete Wittmer loved telling visitors the mystery story of Charles Island—and always hinted that she knew more than she could say.

The Velero returned to the United States after a successful expedition that collected the most Galapagos wildlife specimens since Darwin’s visit. Waldo Schmitt also collected numerous magazine and newspaper articles concerning Charles Island’s colony; they remain among the papers that he left to the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

As for The Baroness and Robert Philippson, were they killed by Lorenz during a fight or in cold blood, or did they vanish into the obscurity of some South Sea Island?

I’m inclined to agree with Dore Koerwein. My theory is that Lorenz, beaten, humiliated, and driven out by Philippson and the Baroness, hid in the brush until he was able to exact his revenge. He got hold of one of the numerous guns with which the compound was stocked and confronted his former lover and his rival—or picked them off from his hiding place.

Did Lorenz confess his guilt to the Wittmers when he appeared at their home—or did his story of departure on an American yacht deceive them? In any case, the fact that Lorenz, desperate to leave the island, refused Thomas Howell’s offer to take him from Charles Island seems suspicious to me. The reason for Lorenz’s refusal could be that Thomas knew Lorenz, the Baroness, and Philippson from previous visits, and would have asked too many awkward questions.

When the Velero sailed away in 1934, there was nothing left of the Baroness’ empire but a run-down house, a ruined garden, and a sign posted at Post Office Bay:

WHO EVER YOU ARE

FRIENDS:
Two hours from here is Hacienda Paradise . . . a little spot where the weary traveler is happy to find some rest, refreshment, and peace on his way through life.
Life, this little bit of eternity chained to a clock, is so short after all; so let us be happy, let us be good.
At “Paradise” you have no name but one, “friend”.
We will share with you the salt of the sea, the vegetables of our little garden, the fruits of our trees, the fresh water running down from the rocks; we will share with you what other friends who passed by gave us. We will spend with you some moments of life and give you the happiness and peace that God put into our heart and mind since we have left the restless turmoil of the metropolis to the quiet of centuries which has laid its mantle upon the Galapagos.

Baroness Wagner

Robert Philippson

Rudolf Lorenz"

[christine73]

posted by Sabermom
July 5, 2013

This video is included in those Smithsonian posts, as well. It's just about 3 minutes long and we're introduced to a few of the major players in the mystery. Be warned - they do show the remains of Lorenz and Nyggerud at the end, though it's (obviously) an old black and white film, so not particularly graphic.

[christine73]

posted by ohva
August 28, 2013

Telluride: Zeitgeist Films Explores ‘Galapagos Affair’

variety.com/2013/film/news/galapagos-affair-telluride-1200590905/

Variety
9/29/13
Dave McNary




In a deal made on the eve of Telluride Film Festival, Zeitgeist Films has acquired U.S. rights to the documentary “The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden.”

Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller’s film, which mixes the exploration of an unsolved 1930s murder with the clashing notions of the idea of an Eden with remembrances of Galapagos residents, will have its world debut on Thursday at the fest. It features vintage “home movie” footage of the characters in their Galapagos surroundings on the island of Floreana.

German doctor Friedrich Ritter had brought his wife to the island in 1929 and began drawing others to their neo-primitive living experiment.

Voice cast includes Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger, Connie Nielsen, Sebastian Koch, Thomas Kretschmann, Gustaf Skarsgård and Josh Radnor.

Celeste Schaefer Snyder co-wrote and produced and Jonathan Dana exec produced.

Zeitgeist is planning a spring theatrical release. The deal was negotiated by Zeitgeist’s Nancy Gerstman and Emily Russo with Goldfine, Geller and Dana.

[christine73]

posted by ohva
August 29. 2013

Film: Telluride lineup includes SF filmmakers

blog.sfgate.com/dwiegand/2013/08/28/film-telluride-lineup-includes-sf-filmmakers/

SF Gate
David Weigand
8/28/13



Filmmakers Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller in their San Francisco home with Seymour. The pair’s latest film will be screened in the Telluride Film Festival (SF Chronicle photo by Russell Yip)



This is the Austrian Baroness Eloise von Wagner Bosquet and her two lovers from the film “The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden,” by Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine, which will be screened at the Telluride Film Festival this weekend. (Courtesy Geller-Goldfine Productions)

The 40th anniversary edition of the Telluride Film Festival this weekend will include a new documentary by San Francisco filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine.

By tradition, the festival lineup is kept under wraps until just before the festival begins. It was announced Wednesday morning in Colorado. “The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden” by the husband and wife team is both about an unsolved 1930′s murder on the islands and about the present-day population whose families came to the Galapagos from the 1930s to 1960s.

The film features the voice talents of Josh Radnor, Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger, Connie Nielsen, Sebastian Koch, Thomas Kretschmann and Gustaf Skarsgard. Geller and Goldfine’s previous films include “Something Ventured,” a documentary on the original venture capitalists of Silicon Valley which aired on PBS, and “Ballets Russes,” a documentary about the two legendary dance companies that shared that name, featuring interviews with several of their surviving stars, some of whom have passed on since the film was made.

The festival, presented by the National Film Preserve, will include tributes to Robert Redford, the Coen brothers, T-bone Burnett and Mohammad Rasoulof. This year’s four-day anniversary edition of the festival in Telluride, CO, will include more than 100 films from 25 different countries.

It will also include the official christening of the 650-seat Werner Herzog Theater. The director is the fourth film great, after Chuck Jones, Abel Gance and Pierre Rissient to be honored with a theater name.

There’s another Bay Area connection: The screening of the film “Palo Alto,” starring Palo Alto native James Franco, as well as Emma Roberts. The film is directed by Gia Coppola, granddaughter of Francis Ford and Eleanor Coppola.

Other films in this year’s festival include ”Burning Bush” by Agnieszka Holland, Herzog’s “Death Row: Blaine Milam + Robert Fratta,” Alfonso Curaron’s “Gravity,” Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Inside Llewyn Davis,” Jason Reitman’s “Labor Day,” Ralph Fiennes’ “The Invisible Woman” and Alexander Payne’s “Nebraska,” among others.

The festival kicks off Thursday.

[christine73]

posted by ohva
September 5, 2013

Tickets now on sale for Telluride by the Sea (New Hampshire)

www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20130905-ENTERTAIN-309050319

September 05, 2013

The secret is out: six diverse, original films with international casts of both seasoned actors and fresh new faces, directed by some of the world's most acclaimed filmmakers, are coming to The Music Hall's Telluride by the Sea festival in Portsmouth, —transforming the Seacoast town into a mecca for cinephiles for three exciting days, Friday, Sept. 20-Sunday, Sept. 22. Individual film tickets, Patron and Weekend passes are now on sale.

Here's a look at films to be featured in the festival:

United States, 110 minutes, Paramount Pictures
Woody (Bruce Dern, winner of Cannes best actor prize) is a booze-addled alcoholic. Convinced that he has won a mail-order sweepstakes, he embarks on a cross-country journey, his youngest son David (Will Forte) playing Sancho to his Don Quixote. Telluride favorite Alexander Payne ("Sideways," "The Descendants") creates a bittersweet elegy to the American extended family.

"The Lunchbox"
India, subtitled, 105 minutes, Sony Pictures Classics
Winner of the critic's week Viewer's Choice Award at Cannes. A mistaken delivery in Mumbai's famously efficient lunchbox delivery system connects a lonely young housewife (Nimrat Kaur) to a nearly retired number cruncher (Irrfan Khan, "Slumdog Millionaire"), as they build a fantasy world together through notes in the lunchbox. The story of the life we dream of versus the life in which we live, and of the courage it takes to turn fantasies into reality, in this elegant Chekhovian comedy-drama.

"The Invisible Woman"
United Kingdom, 111 minutes, Sony Pictures Classics
A rich Victorian tale of romance and secrets. Charles Dickens (Ralph Fiennes, who also directs), Britain's preeminent creative force at the height of his fame, falls in love with a struggling 18-year-old actress, Nelly (Felicity Jones), thus beginning a torrid, long-term affair. Kristin Scott Thomas also stars.

"12 Years A Slave"
United Kingdom, 134 minutes, Fox Searchlight Pictures
From director Steve McQueen. Based on an incredible true story of one man's fight for survival and freedom. In the pre-Civil War United States, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery. Facing cruelty personified by a malevolent slave owner (Michael Fassbender), as well as unexpected kindnesses, Solomon struggles not only to stay alive, but to retain his dignity. Solomon's chance meeting with a Canadian abolitionist (Brad Pitt) will forever alter his life. Film contains sequences of harrowing violence.

"Before the Winter Chill" (Avant l'hiver) France, subtitled, 103 minutes, courtesy of TF1
Kristin Scott Thomas and Daniel Auteuil star in this subtle story of a man in the autumn of his life, torn between a loving wife and his dangerous attraction for a troubled, mysterious young woman. Novelist-filmmaker Philippe Claudel's second film offers an unforgettable glimpse at the skeleton beneath the elegant skin of suburban gentility.

"The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came To Eden"
United States, 126 minutes, courtesy of Geller/Goldfine Productions
Darwin meets Hitchcock in this documentary. Directors Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine have created a parable about the search for paradise, set in the brutal yet alluring landscape of the Galapagos Islands, which interweaves an unsolved 1930s murder mystery with stories of present day Galapagos pioneers. A gripping tale of idealistic dreams gone awry, featuring voice-over performances by Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger and Gustaf Skarsgard.

Individual film tickets $15, weekend pass $85 and patron pass $200. For information or to buy tickets, visit The Music Hall box office, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, call 436-2400 or visit www.themusichall.org.

• Friday, Sept. 20
7:30 p.m.: "Nebraska"
9:30 p.m. Post-film party at Radici
• Saturday, Sept. 21
11 a.m.: "Silents, Please!" "Safety Last!" (Loft)
2 p.m.: "The Lunchbox"
4-5 p.m.: "Cinemange"
6:15 p.m.: "The Invisible Woman"
8:50 p.m.: "12 Years a Slave"
• Sunday, Sept. 22
10:30 a.m.: "Silents, Please!" "La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc" (Loft)
Noon-1 p.m.: Patron passholder brunch at The District
1:30 p.m.: "Before the Winter Chill"
4 p.m.: "Silents, Please!" "Lonesome" (Loft)
6:30 p.m.: "The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden"
Brewery wrap party
"Nebraska"

Individual film tickets $15, weekend pass $85 and patron pass $200. For information or to buy tickets, visit The Music Hall box office, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, call 436-2400 or visit www.themusichall.org.

[christine73]

posted by ohva
September 19, 2013

Battle for paradise, island mystery floats film at Telluride

www.unionleader.com/article/20130919/NEWHAMPSHIRE01/130919190

September 19. 2013


Battle for paradise, island mystery floats film at Telluride

By MELANIE PLENDA
Special to the Union Leader

Friederich Ritter and his lady love, Dore Strauch, had made it, finally, to Paradise. Alone but for the turtles and other wildlife on the Galapagos Islands, they looked forward to a long life of living off the land, quietly enjoying the solitude.

That is until a baroness with several male companions and a family with a teenage son also decided to move in.

"The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden," tells the true story of what happens when different ideas about what makes a paradise collide. The film is part of the Telluride Film Festival, both being held this weekend at The Music Hall in Portsmouth and at Dartmouth College in Hanover.

The filmmakers are touting "The Galapagos Affair" as a sort of Darwin-meets-Hitchcock documentary. Directors Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine have created a parable about the search for paradise, set in the landscape of the Galapagos Islands. They've interwoven a tale of an unsolved 1930s murder with stories of present-day Galapagos pioneers. The film features footage ranging from the intentional 1930s castaways as well as voice-over performances by Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger and Gustaf Skarsgard.

Getting Away

According to the filmmakers, the mystery surrounding the isolated site started with Berlin physician Friedrich Ritter, who left Germany with Strauch in 1929 to settle on the deserted Galapagos Island of Floreana.

"They called themselves the Adam and Eve of Floreana," said Goldfine.

Their vision of paradise featured just the two of them. However, once the international press got hold of the plan, that was the end of their solitude. Soon others began landing on what they thought of as their private shores, each with his or her own idea of paradise. Heinz Wittmer, his pregnant wife and teenage son, who left Cologne in 1931, wanted to be "The Swiss Family Robinsons of the Galapagos." The Austrian Baroness Eloise von Wagner Bosquet, declaring herself the "Empress of Floreana," arrived toting a pearl-handled revolver and surrounded by a harem of young men. Her plan, filmmakers said, was to open a luxury hotel catering to billionaire yachtsmen.

The resulting clash of eccentrics wreaked havoc on an island barely capable of supporting human life, and it ended with mysterious disappearances — likely murders — as well as takes if survival and triumph for others, the filmmakers said.

"If you go in expecting perfection, you're going to be disappointed," Geller said, about the quest for paradise. "How can you achieve perfection, and even if you do, for a brief moment, how do you maintain it?"

Murder Mystery

Though the filmmakers declined to specify who perished or disappeared, questions about the fates of many of the main characters of the time remain, including the baroness and one of her lovers.

Geller and Goldfine stumbled on this little known period of history while shooting scenes for another movie.

"Early on in that trip we found this little book on our boat about the human history of the Galapagos Island," Goldfine said. "What drew our attention in that was a section called 'Murder in Paradise.'"

Part of their surprise was the fact that anyone had lived on the Galapagos at all, since the island isn't known for indigenous inhabitants.

Piquing their interest further was the discovery that there was years' worth of archival footage nearly disintegrating at the University of California. It had been taken by a cinematographer hired by a sea captain who also took up residence on the island during that chaotic time.

"We thought if that's the case, (perhaps) we can get down there and get that footage and save it from disintegration," Goldfine said. "That, along with photos and journals, could serve as the backbone to our film. So, once that piece fell into place, we knew we had a film."

During the process of filming the documentary, Geller and Goldfine also found descendents of those who lived on the island, as well as now grown-up kids whose parents had brought them to the island way back when.

As for whodunit, neither filmmaker is talking.

"Well ... it is really impossible to totally solve it," said Goldfine. "I think the closest you can come is to have each viewer come up with his or her own hunch."

Film Lineup

Meanwhile, the touring Telluride lineup is studded with star turns, including performances by Brad Pitt, Bruce Dern, Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas and Michael Fassbender, as well as international actors Daniel Auteuil, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Irrfan Khan. The festival also highlights new work from returning favorites, including directors Alexander Payne ("Sideways"/"The Descendents") and Steve McQueen ("Hunger"/"Shame").

This year's films are: "Nebraska," in which Woody (Bruce Dern), a booze addled alcoholic, is convinced he's won a mail-order sweepstakes and embarks on a cross-country journey with his son David (Will Forte); "The Lunchbox," in which a mistaken delivery in Mumbai connects a lonely young housewife (Nimrat Kaur) with a nearly retired number cruncher (Irrfan Khan); "The Invisible Woman," in which Charles Dickens (Ralph Fienne) falls in love with a struggling 18-year-old actress, Nelly (Felicity Jones); "12 Years A Slave," which centers on a pre-Civil War United States in which Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery; "Before the Winter Chill," in which Kristin Scott Thomas and Daniel Auteuil star in a story of a man in the autumn of his life, torn between a loving wife and his dangerous attraction for a troubled, mysterious young woman.

Both Dartmouth's Telluride Festival and the Telluride by the Sea event in Portsmouth will be held Friday through Sunday. Screenings of "The Galapagos Affair" to Eden" are scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Sunday at The Music Hall in Portsmouth and 4 and 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 24, at the Hopkins Center for the Arts in Hanover.

For schedule details, visit themusichall.org and hop.dartmouth.edu.

[christine73]

posted by Sabermom
October 21, 2013

www.screendaily.com/news/distribution/film-sales-co-finds-galapagos/5062493.article

EXCLUSIVE: The Film Sales Company president Andrew Herwitz has acquired international sales rights to Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller’s documentary The Galapagos Affair: When Satan Came To Eden.

The murder mystery story received its world premiere at the Hamptons International Film Festival and investigates through archival footage and home movies the mystery surrounding the fate of three groups of settlers in the 1930s.

Goldfine and Geller produced with Celeste Schaefer Snyder while Jonathan Dana served as executive director.

The film features the voice performances of Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger, Connie Nielsen, Sebastian Koch, Thomas Kretschmann, Gustaf Skarsgård and Josh Radnor.

As previously announced, Zeitgeist Films acquired US rights after watching a sneak preview at Telluride and plans a spring 2014 theatrical roll out.

“The film is an extraordinary and voyeuristically fascinating thriller, proving once again that truth is stranger than fiction,” said Herwitz.

“Dayna and Dan perform an amazing service by bringing to light this tale, which was huge international news at the time but then, because of WWII and other impediments, was as all but lost to time, until now. Buyers everywhere will surely respond to this virtuoso filmmaking.”

[christine73]

posted by ohva
December 3, 2013

You all probably know this, but The Galapagos Affair has a twitter account.

GalapagosAffair ‏@galapagosaffair1h
@thedomenews We appreciated this! We'll be in theaters starting April 2014 via @zeitgeistfilms

[christine73]

posted by Sabermom
December 21, 2013

cateblanchettsource.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-galapagos-affair-satan-came-to-eden.html?spref=tw
"The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden" goes to Palm Springs International Film Festival
Another film festival for "The Galapagos Affair": the documentary will be screened at the 2014 Palm Springs International Film Festival (January 3-13, 2014) on January 5th and January 7th. More info here

Other Festival films with notable talent and directors include: Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas (France) starring Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (UK) starring Steve Coogan and Colm Meaney, Le Chef (France) starring Jean Reno, Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me (USA) featuring Elaine Stritch, Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Nathan Lane, The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden (USA) featuring the voices of Cate Blanchett, Diana Kruger and Josh Radnor, The Invisible Woman (UK) directed by and starring Ralph Fiennes, Mystery Road (Australia) starring Aaron Pedersen, Hugo Weaving and Ryan Kwanten, Reaching for the Moon (Brazil) starring Miranda Otto, Tim’s Vermeer (USA) directed by Teller and featuring Penn Jilette,Two Lives (Germany) starring Liv Ullman, Unforgiven (Japan) starring Ken Watanabe, Walking with the Enemy (USA) starring Ben Kingsley. - Source

[christine73]

posted by Sabermom
January 7, 2014

Coming to theaters April 4!

blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/the-galapagos-affair-review#.UsrxWk0gVVA.twitter
Palm Springs Review: Mystery Doc 'The Galapagos Affair' a Riveting Reconstruction of Paradise Gone to Hell

by Beth Hanna
January 6, 2014 6:00 AM

Dore Strauch and Friedrich Ritter in 'The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden'
Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that Hell is other people. Several of the ill-fated subjects at the center of Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine’s riveting historical mystery documentary “The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden” would have probably agreed with him.

In 1929, German doctor Friedrich Ritter and his mistress Dore Strauch, eccentric intellectuals inspired by Nietzsche, uproot themselves from Berlin and move to Floreana, a completely uninhabited island in the Galapagos. Their Eden of solitude and self-reliance quickly falls apart, as menacing problems in their relationship come to the fore. Then, more alarmingly for the two pioneers, neighbors arrive. First it’s the Wittmers, a family Friedrich and Dore find too bourgeois for their tastes, and then it’s a flamboyant Baroness, with a duo of kept men in tow, who plans to build a tourist hotel on the island. Paradise lost, indeed.

What follows plays out like a game of tropical “Clue” writ large. We know from the outset that some of these Floreana inhabitants will end up dead, perhaps murdered. And in such a confined setting, with only a handful of people, everyone has their reasons for wanting someone else bumped off.

Constructing a true-crime film where all of the first-hand subjects are long gone is a tricky thing. Yet Geller and Goldfine rise to the challenge, with a wealth of archival documents and first-rate voice actors reading the various writings by the Galapagos settlers. Quite the star-studded voice cast has been assembled: Cate Blanchett is marvelous as Dore, while Sebastien Koch (“The Lives of Others”) and Diane Kruger play the Wittmers. (The only disappointment here is Josh Radnor as an American researcher; he chews the scenery.)

Through arresting black-and-white photographs, sensational newspaper articles and even a pristinely preserved, truly bizarre home movie produced by the Baroness, Geller and Goldfine let us glimpse at what the fraught living situation on Floreana might have been like. They also interview a number of the Galapagos’ current civilians, many of whom are the direct descendants of those caught up in the scandal. One of these family members astutely observes that searching for Paradise is futile, because people can never get away from being themselves. Is Hell other people -- or is Hell inside of us all?

"The Galapagos Affair" screens at the 2014 Palm Springs International Film Festival. It hits theaters April 4, via Zeitgeist Films.

[christine73]

posted by ohva
January 9, 2014

Unsolved Murder Mystery: The Galapagos Affair Who Killed "The Baroness?"

latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/20thcenturylatinamerica/a/09galaffair.htm

The Galapagos Affair: Sex, Murder and Mystery in The Enchanted Islands

The Galapagos Islands are a small chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean off the western coast of Ecuador, to which they belong. Not exactly a paradise, they are rocky, dry and hot, and are home to many interesting species of animals found nowhere else. They are perhaps best known for the Galapagos finches, which Charles Darwin used to inspire his Theory of Evolution. Today, the Islands are a top-notch tourist attraction. Normally sleepy and uneventful, the Galapagos Islands captured the world's attention in 1934 when they were the site of an international scandal of sex and murder.

The Galapagos Islands

The Galapagos Islands are named after a sort of saddle which is said to resemble the shells of the giant tortoises that make the islands their home. They were discovered accidentally in 1535 and then promptly ignored until the seventeenth century, when they became a regular stopping point for whaling ships looking to take on provisions. The government of Ecuador claimed them in 1832 and no one really disputed it. Some hardy Ecuadorians came out to make a living fishing and others were sent in penal colonies. The Islands' big moment came whenCharles Darwin visited in 1835 and subsequently published his theories, illustrating them with Galapagos species.


Dr. Friedrich Ritter



Dore Strauch

Friedrich Ritter and Dore Strauch

In 1929, German doctor Friedrich Ritter abandoned his practice and moved to the Islands, feeling he needed a new start in a faraway place. He brought with him one of his patients, Dore Strauch: both of them left spouses behind. They set up a homestead on Floreana Island and worked very hard there, moving heavy lava rocks, planting fruits and vegetables and raising chickens. They became international celebrities: the rugged doctor and his lover, living on a far off island. Many people came to visit them, and some intended to stay, but the hard life on the islands eventually drove most of them off.

The Wittmers

Heinz Wittmer arrived in 1931 with his teenage son and pregnant wife Margret. Unlike the others, they remained, setting up their own homestead with some help from Dr. Ritter. Once they were established, the two German families apparently had little contact with one another, which seems to be how they liked it. Like Dr. Ritter and Ms. Strauch, the Wittmers were rugged, independent and enjoyed occasional visitors but mostly kept to themselves.


“Baroness” Eloise Wehrborn de Wagner-Bosquet and Robert Philippson in 1934



Rudolf Lorenz

The Baroness

The next arrival would change everything. Not long after the Wittmers came, a party of four arrived on Floreana, led by "Baroness" Eloise Wehrborn de Wagner-Bosquet, an attractive young Austrian. She was accompanied by her two German lovers, Robert Philippson and Rudolf Lorenz, as well as an Ecuadorian, Manuel Valdivieso, presumably hired to do all the work. The flamboyant Baroness set up a small homestead, named it "Hacienda Paradise" and announced her plans to build a grand hotel.

An Unhealthy Mix

The Baroness was a true character. She made up elaborate, grand stories to tell the visiting yacht captains, went about wearing a pistol and a whip, seduced the Governor of Galapagos and anointed herself "Queen" of Floreana. After her arrival, yachts went out of their way to visit Floreana: everyone sailing the Pacific wanted to be able to boast of an encounter with the Baroness. But she did not get along well with the others: the Wittmers managed to ignore her but Dr. Ritter despised her.

Deterioration

The situation quickly deteriorated. Lorenz apparently fell out of favor, and Philippson started beating him. Lorenz started spending a lot of time with the Wittmers, until the Baroness would come and get him. There was a prolonged drought, and Ritter and Strauch began to quarrel. Ritter and the Wittmers became angry when they began to suspect that the Baroness was stealing their mail and badmouthing them to visitors, who repeated everything to the international press. Things turned petty: Philippson stole the Ritter's donkey one night and turned it loose in the Wittmer's garden. In the morning, Heinz shot it, thinking it feral.

The Baroness Goes Missing

Then on March 27, 1934, the Baroness and Philippson disappeared. According to Margret Wittmer, the Baroness appeared at the Wittmer home and said that some friends had arrived on a yacht and were taking them to Tahiti. She said she left everything they weren't taking with them to Lorenz. The Baroness and Philippson departed that very day and were never heard from again.

A Fishy Story

There are problems with the Wittmers' story, however. No one else remembers any ship coming in that week. They never turned up in Tahiti. They left behind almost all of their things, including - according to Dore Strauch - items that the Baroness would have wanted on even a very short journey. Strauch and Ritter apparently believed that the two were murdered by Lorenz and the Wittmers helped cover it up. Strauch also believed that the bodies were burned, as acacia wood (available on the island) burns hot enough to destroy even bone.

Lorenz Disappears

Lorenz was in a hurry to get out of Galapagos and convinced a Norwegian fisherman named Nuggerud to take him first to Santa Cruz Island and from there to San Cristobal Island, where he could catch a ferry to Guayaquil. They made it to Santa Cruz, but disappeared between Santa Cruz and San Cristóbal. Months later, the mummified, desiccated bodies of both men were found on Marchena Island. There was no clue as to how they got there. Incidentally, Marchena is in the northern part of the Archipelago and not anywhere near Santa Cruz or San Cristóbal.

The Strange Death of Dr. Ritter

The strangeness did not end there. In November of the same year, Dr. Ritter died, apparently of food poisoning due to eating some poorly-preserved chicken. This is odd, first of all because Ritter was a vegetarian (although apparently not a strict one). Also, he was a veteran of island living, and certainly capable of telling when some preserved chicken had gone bad. Many believed that Strauch had poisoned him, as his treatment of her had gotten much worse. According to Margret Wittmer, Ritter himself blamed Strauch: Wittmer wrote that he cursed her in his dying words.

Unsolved Mysteries

Three dead, two missing over the course of a few months. "The Galapagos Affair" as it came to be known is a mystery that has puzzled historians and visitors to the islands ever since. None of the mysteries have been solved: the Baroness and Philippson never turned up, Dr. Ritter's death is officially an accident and no one has any clue how Nuggerud and Lorenz got to Marchena. The Wittmers remained on the islands and became wealthy years later when tourism boomed: their descendants still own valuable land and businesses there. Dore Strauch returned to Germany and wrote a book, fascinating not only for the sordid tales of the Galapagos affair but for its look at the hard life of the early settlers.

There will likely never be any real answers. Margret Wittmer, last of those who really knew what happened, stuck to her story about the Baroness going to Tahiti until her own death in 2000. Wittmer often hinted that she knew more than she was telling, but it's hard to know if she really did or if she just enjoyed tantalizing tourists with hints and innuendos. Strauch's book doesn't shed much light on things: she is adamant that Lorenz killed the Baroness and Philippson but has no proof other than her own (and supposedly Dr. Ritter's) gut feelings.

If you're interested in learning more (or solving the mystery yourself!) some of the links below will take you to online versions of first-hand accounts, such as Strauch's book or interviews with the Wittmers.

Source:

Boyce, Barry. A Traveler's Guide to the Galapagos Islands. San Juan Bautista: Galapagos Travel, 1994.