A chemist by training, a scientist, journalist, hunter, a tireless traveller and a very prolific writer. His life story could be the basis of an adventure film. Biographers claim he published more than 80 books, while he himself said he published 130, some of which have been translated into at least 20 languages and have become global bestsellers. Between the wars, he was the most widely read writer in Poland. Apart from Sienkiewicz, no other Polish author of the inter-war period gained such global fame and popularity, but after the Second World War he was condemned to oblivion until 1990.
He was born on 27 May 1876 in Ludza, near Vitebsk. He studied in Petersburg and Paris and participated in scientific expeditions to the Yenisei, Baikal, and the Caucasus. His desire to travel was so strong that as a young boy he worked as a ship’s writer on ships sailing on the Odessa-Vladivostok route during the summer. In this way, he visited India, Japan, China, and the islands of the Indonesian Archipelago. In 1899, he published the first book in Russian describing a journey through the Altai and the Kyrgyz steppes. After graduation, he worked at the Technical Institute in Tomsk, publishing scientific articles. Commissioned by the military authorities, he researched the use of mineral and plant resources in Siberia and Manchuria. He published the results of this research in the professional Russian, Austrian and Polish press. In 1918–1920, he taught chemistry and economic geography at the Polytechnic and Agricultural Academy in Omsk. As a chemist, he travelled a lot at that time, including to Sakhalin, the Ussuriysk Krai, Manchuria, and Korea. He wrote articles, short stories, novels, becoming a well-known and popular writer in Russian circles. For some time, he served as secretary of the branch of the Russian Geographical Society in Vladivostok.
In 1918, he became – as he himself claimed – a technical advisor to the army of Admiral Alexander Kolchak, which fought against the Bolsheviks. In 1920, after Kolchak’s army was defeated, Ossendowski escaped on horseback through the Siberian taiga and Uryankhai Krai (Republic of Tuva) to Mongolia. In 1921, he found himself in Urga (now Ulan Bator), where he met General Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, commander of the Asian Cavalry Division, and Bogdo Khan, the last ruler of Mongolia. Here he also met a Pole, Kamil Giżycki, who fought in Ungern’s division and with whom he travelled to Africa a few years later.
Before the Bolsheviks conquered Urga, Ossendowski travelled – equipped with letters of recommendation from Ungern and a Fiat 501 car (which he left somewhere in the desert) – through the Gobi Desert, Harbin, China, from there by ship to the United States, and then to Poland. Some of his travel companions died along the way, but he wrote a travel journal in which he described people he met on the way, their customs, traditions, and rituals, but also nature, animals, rivers, and minerals.
Influenced by all these experiences, the autobiographical novel Beasts, Men, and Gods was created, published in 1920 in New York and in 1922 in London. It was published in Poland in 1923 under the changed title Through the Country of People, Animals and Gods (on Horseback Through Central Asia). The novel became so popular that within a few years it was translated into 19 foreign languages and had over 140 editions worldwide. There is no doubt that after the Nobel Prize winner Henryk Sienkiewicz, Ossendowski was the most widely read Polish writer of the interwar period.
After this incredible success, based on his memories and travels, he continued to write adventure novels – as they were called in the interwar period. In the years 1924–1926, together with his wife and Kamil Giżycki, he travelled several times to North and West Africa. He was still writing. Some of his novels and articles were first published abroad (in English and French), and only then in Poland, such as the two-volume, 800-page collection of African literary reports, written in a lively, colourful style. This collection was published in Poland in 1926 under the title The Fiery North. A positive review even appeared in the famous “The Geographical Journal” – the official organ of the Royal Geographical Society in London. Here is a fragment: [the book] “is a valuable commentary on the controversy that arose around his Asian journeys. It sheds light on the author’s acumen and his ability to make observations and gather information (…)”.
In the 1930s, Ossendowski, the most popular writer in Poland at the time, published four to five books a year, edited magazines, was socially active, and travelled.
So why was such a popular writer forgotten overnight after World War II? Well, because of his second most popular book, published in 1930 under the title Lenin. It was a fictionalized biography of the leader of the October Revolution, containing not only sharp criticism of the revolution and communism, but also describing the financing of Lenin’s activities and the Bolshevik party by German intelligence. It is no wonder that the Soviets hated him. In 1951, all of Ossendowski’s books were subject to censorship and withdrawn from libraries. They could only be reissued from 1989.
This outstanding writer spent the war in Warsaw and was involved in the underground activities of the National Party. He spent the last months of his life in Żółwin and died in a hospital in Grodzisk Mazowiecki on 3 January 1945, just after a mysterious visit from a German officer posing as a relative of Baron Ungern. There is an interesting story about Ossendowski’s death and Ungern’s treasure, which has not been found to date. It is known that in 1921, after occupying Urga, the capital of Mongolia, the Bolsheviks did not find the Asian Mounted Division’s treasure, which had been previously sent with a small detachment of trusted Mongols and Tatars led by the Pole Kamil Giżycki. As Ossendowski’s biographer, Witold Stanisław Michałowski, writes: “The gold in 24 chests, each weighing four pounds (a total of approx. 65 kg), was loaded onto horse-drawn carts. Each chest contained 3.5 pounds of gold coins net. (…) After deliberation, they decided to bury the gold about 160 km from Khajvar. In a slightly undulating area, sparsely covered with bushes, a small depression was found in which the 24 chests and the Baron’s 7-pound tin-plated trunk were placed”. The division’s treasure has not been found to this day. As Ossendowski wrote, in the Mongolian monastery of Wan-Kure, Lamai monks foretold the day of death for him and Ungern. The monk’s prophecy concerning Ossendowski said that he would not die until Ungern reminded him that his time had come. The prophecy came true: after a visit from this German officer, who pretended to be Ungern’s relative, Ossendowski died.
When the Red Army occupied Warsaw on 17 January 1945, NKVD officers also came to Żółwin, looking for Ossendowski. When they found out that he had died two weeks earlier, they brought in a local dentist, dug up the body, and after examining the teeth made sure that their hated enemy had indeed been buried.
Piotr Malczewski – traveller, photographer, author of books about Siberia and the Far East.
Translated by Sylwia Szarejko.
Read about the journey in the footsteps of Ferdynand Ossendowski here: https://swiatsybiru.pl/en/wedrowka-sladami-ferdynanda-ossendowskiego-po-pograniczu-rosyjsko-mongolskim-i-republice-tuwa/