Wolfgang Blumel, Geologist

Wolfgang Blümel was born in Düsseldorf, Germany. He has been living in Munich since 1976 during which time he completed his master's degree in geology at the University of Munich. The subject of his thesis for this degree covered the geological mapping of a mountain in the Italian Alps (Ortler Mountains). Afterwards, he studied contemporary Fine Arts and History of Art at the University of Munich and started his career as a journalist and editorialist.

From 1996 to 2003 he was an editor for the German edition of Microsoft Multimedia-Encyclopaedia Encarta, where he dealt with fine arts, anthropology, religion and geology. He currently works as a freelance editor. In summer 2003 he served as a lecturer for cultural anthropology, geology and history of discoveries during voyages in the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk. Since 2005 he worked for five seasons in the Arctic and Antarctic regions for Quark Expeditions. During the past ten years Wolfgang Blümel took part in four adventure expeditions in Siberia. He walked across the southern part of Kamchatka Peninsula, sailed the river Chutchya in Yamal Peninsula in a foldboat and was the leader of two ethnographic expeditions (main interests: shamanism and reindeer-breeders) on horseback in Tuva. He made several visits to Moscow to better acquaint himself with the Russian culture. The indigenous peoples of Siberia are the main focus for his voluntary work for the Society for Threatened Peoples, the second largest nongovernmental human rights-organisation in Europe.