The ceremony took place as part of the opening of the 14th Forum of the Russian Germans “25 Years. Building Future Together!” in Moscow today. Vladimir Shelikhov, Deputy Head of the Federal Communications Agency; Olga Martens, the First Deputy Chairman of the International Union of the German Culture; Sergey Tikhotskiy, Director of the Schmidt Institute of Physics of the Earth of the Russian Academy of Sciences; and Fyodor Schmidt, the grandson of Otto Schmidt, took part in the event.
Otto Yulyevich Schmidt (1891–1956) was a Russian German, geographer, geophysicist, an explorer of the Polar Circle and a member of the Russian Geographical Society. He was a unique personality with broad knowledge and unparalleled back-story. His biography is surprising with unexpected twists — he went from a mathematician to a public figure, got fascinated by creating the
Great Soviet Encyclopedia, and later became a traveler and a discoverer.
Schmidt initiated the founding of an academic geophysics institution. In 1930–1934, he led the famous arctic expeditions on
Georgy Sedov and
Chelyuskin steam icebreakers.
Otto Schmidt was an honorary member of the Russian Geographical Society. In 1932, Schmidt was the head of the expedition on the
A. Sibiryakov steam icebreaker, which made a non-stop voyage along the Northern Sea Route without wintering for the first time in history. On 27 June 1937, under a Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Otto Schmidt was awarded a title of the Hero of the Soviet Union for spearheading establishment of the North Pole-1 drifting ice station.
Design: F. Sukhinin.
Circulation: 15,000 copies.
« back