Laura Schlitz - The Hero Schliemann

Heinrich made up his mind to leave Ankershagen and strike out for himself. He was not to see his childhood home for eleven years.

Heinrich’s first journey took him to the German port of Hamburg. It was the beginning of a lifelong passion for traveling. Heinrich wrote: “The view of Hamburg . . . carried me off to seventh heaven. . . . I turned into a dreamer.” His dream, at this point in his life, was to regain his health and to rise in the world.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t find work. No one wanted an employee who coughed up blood. At last Heinrich grew so poor that he wrote to ask his uncle for help. His uncle sent money with a letter that shamed Heinrich so deeply that he promised himself: “I would never again ask a relative for aid; rather would I starve to death than beg such a man for the loan of a bread crumb.”

He kept that promise. He also kept the money. Shortly afterward, he heard there was a ship sailing to South America, and the prospect of a job in La Guaira, Venezuela. The ship’s agent accepted Heinrich’s application gratefully. It was not easy to find young men who were willing to travel two thousand miles to a land that was best known as a breeding ground for yellow fever.

On November 27, 1841, the ship Dorothea “flew like a seabird over the dark foamy waves.” Heinrich was bound for South America.

But he never got there. The weather was stormy, with high winds and temperatures below zero. Around midnight on December 10, Heinrich was awakened by the captain’s shouts. Waves dashed against the boat with such force that the portholes were shattered, and water gushed in. “I barely saved my life running almost naked on deck,” wrote Schliemann. He lashed himself to the ship’s railing so that he wouldn’t be swept overboard. Snowflakes fell from the sky. He said a silent farewell to his family, prayed to God, and “gave my body over to the sharks.” The ship began to sink.

Then, suddenly, Heinrich’s fear was swept away. He untied himself and began to climb the rigging, determined to postpone death as long as possible. As he was climbing, the broken ship rocked and pitched, sinking deep below the waves. Heinrich grabbed hold of a floating barrel. He lost consciousness. Some hours later, he awoke and found himself on a sandbank off the Dutch coast. His body was covered with bruises and deep gashes, and two of his teeth had been knocked out — but he was alive.

Fearsome though the shipwreck was, it left Heinrich feeling optimistic. Only three men survived the wreck of the Dorothea . “God must have chosen me for great things,” he wrote. “I felt reborn.” And it is a curious fact that after his shipwreck, Heinrich was seldom troubled by ill health. He took up sea bathing. He stopped coughing up blood. Though he was a small man all his life, he was tough and hardy — and his energy was boundless.

When Heinrich Schliemann made his way from the coast to the city of Amsterdam, he was penniless. He spoke no Dutch, and he didn’t know a soul in the city. Nevertheless, he decided to settle there.

He found work as a kind of grown-up errand boy, carrying messages and bills around town. He lived in an attic room — freezing cold in the winter, stiflingly hot in summer. Solitary study was his only amusement, as he could not afford to go to concerts or plays. “Friendships were made in coffee-houses,” wrote Schliemann, “and since I did not visit any, I had no friend.”

He spent every idle moment in study. He came to realize that he had a gift for languages. He memorized long passages from French and English novels, which he recited aloud. When he came to a hard passage, he shouted at the top of his lungs. Landlords and neighbors did not appreciate the Schliemann method for learning languages — several times he was forced to find new lodgings — but he persisted. He taught himself French, English, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.

It must have been a lonely life, but Heinrich did not pity himself. He drew strength from his belief that he was destined for great things; he was a hero, fighting his way to fortune.

He found a better job. He became a bookkeeper for the firm of Messrs. B. H. Schröder and Company. Though Schröder and Company traded extensively with Russia, no one spoke the language. Within six weeks, Heinrich taught himself enough Russian to write letters for the firm. By 1846, he had become the Russian agent for Schröder and Company, and moved to St. Petersburg, where he was “crowned with the fullest success.” Russian traders seemed to like the cocky young man who had mastered their language so quickly.

Heinrich was now twenty-four years old. Five years before, he had been a penniless nobody. Now he was a prosperous merchant, and ready to marry. He wrote to the Meincke family, only to learn that his darling Minna had already married. The older Schliemann wrote that this was “the greatest disaster” that could have befallen him.

Still, he was not altogether wretched. He loved his home in St. Petersburg. He traveled widely, going to London and Paris, Brussels, Hamburg, and Berlin. And he was earning more money all the time.

All his life, Heinrich Schliemann craved money. He never took it for granted. Even when he was a millionaire, he was stingy with small sums of money. He liked staying in grand hotels, but he always stayed on the top floor, where the rooms were cheapest: he would rather climb six flights of stairs than pay for a room lower down. He always carried his own trunk — why waste a dollar on a porter? He could not bear for anyone to cheat him.

On the other hand, he could be both generous and extravagant. He had a weakness for well-tailored clothes and spent a surprising amount of money to have his shirts regularly cleaned and starched. He was endlessly loyal to his family, sending ever-increasing amounts of money to his brothers, sisters, and father.

In 1850, Heinrich learned that his brother Ludwig had died of typhoid fever in California. Ludwig Schliemann was one of the many treasure seekers who headed to California during the Gold Rush. Heinrich went to America to settle his brother’s debts and to make sure that Ludwig had a proper gravestone. Graves were always important to Heinrich — but he had another reason for going to California. Ludwig had made it clear that there were fortunes to be made in the Gold Rush. If there was money to be had, Heinrich wanted his share. Though he criticized the Californians for their “swindling,” “cunning,” and “immense love of money,” he was their equal in every way.

One of Heinrich’s oddest lies was contrived in California. In his diary, he wrote a vivid eyewitness account of the San Francisco fire, which he claimed took place in June 1851. The fire actually took place in May, when Heinrich was elsewhere. It seems that Heinrich read about the fire in the newspapers and decided to write about it as if he had been there. He wrote his version of the story on a single sheet of paper and glued it into his diary so cunningly that it looks like one of the diary pages.

This was a bizarre thing to do. He was not just showing off. Heinrich lied in his diary . Once again, he was changing the details of his life in order to fabricate a better story. As the hero of the story, he felt that he belonged at the Great Fire.

Heinrich’s time in California was not wasted. He opened a bank and traded in gold dust. During the Gold Rush years, California was a hotbed of crime and disease. Heinrich, who was finicky about cleanliness, hated it — but he stayed in California long enough to double his fortune.