"Baron Karl Klaus (Carl Claus) von der Decken (born 8 August 1833 in Kotzen, Brandenburg, Germany; died 2 October 1865 near Bardera, Somalia) was a German ...
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explorer of eastern Africa and the first European to attempt to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.
Following a stint in the military, von der Decken first travelled to eastern Africa in May 1860. There he explored the region around Lake Nyasa, only a year after David Livingstone had been the first European to reach the area. The following year, von der Decken set out from Mombasa to survey the Kilimanjaro massif. During the journey inland, he met the young English geologist Richard Thornton (1838-1863) – who had left Livingstone´s Zambezi expedition – and invited him to accompany him to Kilimanjaro. When the massif loomed into view, it was the first time it had been sighted by Europeans since Johannes Rebmann had been the first European to see it in 1848." - (en.wikipedia.org 08.12.2020)
