Herbert Lang (1879-1957)
Gordy Slack
"[Herbert] Lang was a man of almost superhuman energy," said James Chapin, Lang's assistant on
the American Museum's 1909 -1915 expedition to the Congo. "He could work from before
daybreak to midnight and always be doing something useful." That energy, combined with his
artistic and descriptive talents and his passions for wildlife and exploration, made Lang the ideal
person to lead the first major scientific expedition into what Lang called Africa's "heart," the upper
Congo Basin.
Lang was born in Oehringen, Wurttemberg, Germany in 1879. He turned a childhood interest in the
natural world into a job as a taxidermist in Wurttemberg, and then, later, went to work for the
natural history museum at the University of Zurich. He went on to do taxidermy at Fasse et Cie in
Paris, a business that supplied natural history specimens to French schools.
The 24-year-old Lang emigrated to America in 1903 and joined the American Museum staff as a
taxidermist that same year. For the next three years he developed dioramas and other exhibits of
North American birds. In 1906, he left for Africa for the first time, representing the American
Museum on a big-game collecting expedition to Kenya led by the wealthy hunter Richard Tjader,
who agreed to give the museum most of his animal "trophies" in exchange for Lang's assistance.
Tjader and Lang brought back 178 mammal specimens (including antelopes, monkeys, giraffes,
rhinoceros, and lions), and 232 birds. After his return, Lang dedicated himself to cataloging and
preparing those specimens for the museum.
Partly because of Lang's experience in Africa, and partly because of his expertise preparing and
preserving animal specimens, the museum's Director, Herman Bumpus, offered Lang the job of
leading the Congo Expedition, a task he undertook with determination and diligence until the first
World War broke out in 1914. Upon his return to New York, Lang was made an Assistant in
Mammalogy and assigned to the preparation, arrangement, and description of the thousands of
specimens he and Chapin had collected on the Congo Expedition. In 1919, Lang was made an
Assistant Curator in the Museum's Department of Mammalogy, where he continued to work on the
fauna of British Guiana (now Guyana), making comparisons between the African and the South
American forests and savannas.
Image # P32297
Herbert Lang's prior experience in Africa and his expertise in both photography and the preparation
of animal specimens made him a natural choice to lead the expedition to the Congo.
Image # l_41_25
Lang with the white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) that now occupies a diorama in the Carl
Akeley Hall of African Mammals. Lang preferred to shoot animals with his camera than to shoot
them with guns. His work in the Congo required both.
Image # 224270
Photo note: Nombera, female--Amadi. Plaster cast of face. Side view. Okondo's village, Congo
Belge, May 1913.
The longer Lang remained in Africa, the more personal and expressive his photographs became,
especially those taken of African people. This Mangabetu woman was photographed in 1913 in
Chief Okondo's village.
The shift from fieldwork in Africa to animal and exhibit preparation in New York must have been
an anticlimactic one. Lang adjusted, but never lost his taste for the African wilds. In 1925, Lang
returned to Africa on another collecting expedition for the American Museum. He and Rudyard
Boulton went to Portuguese West Africa (now Angola) where they traveled 4,000-miles in pursuit
of mammals and, in particular, the rare giant sable antelope (Hippotragus niger variani) to complete
the Carl Akeley Hall of African Mammals. They brought back 1,200 mammal specimens, including
the giant sable antelope.
Lang remained in Africa after the Angola expedition, eventually settling into a job at the Transvaal
Museum in South Africa. He continued his association with the American Museum, however, and
worked on several joint projects, including an expedition to the Kalahari Desert that added many
specimens to the AMNH collection.
In 1935, Lang married Mrs. Sherwood, the widow of a close friend. He took over the management
of Sherwood's Eaton Hall Hotel in Pretoria. Lang and his wife eventually retired nearby in a
farmhouse they had built. Lang died there on May 29, 1957, at the age of 78.
Lang may be as well remembered for his excellent wildlife and ethnographic photography as for his
more traditional scientific collecting and preparation work. Although he collected tens of thousands
of animal specimens over his lifetime--from huge elephants and rhinoceros down to the tiniest bats,
shrews, butterflies, and ants—he said that he far preferred to shoot with his camera than with his
gun. And although he considered his photographs scientific documents in themselves, many of
them were humane and expressive as well. He clearly had a great deal of respect for the dignity and
individuality of his human subjects. The nearly 10,000 photographs from the American Museum
Congo Expedition are a unique, durable, and expressive record of the inland regions of the Congo
during that pivotal era. Thousands of other photographs, now at the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria,
document other remote and wild parts of twentieth-century Africa.
Image # 2A9923
Lang's note: Herbert Lang, Congo Belge
Lang holding a lion cub in the Congo.
Image # 124774
Photo note: Dr. James P. Chapin and Herbert Lang. 1956
Lang and Chapin remained lifelong friends. This photograph was taken by Ruth Chapin in Pretoria,
South Africa in 1956.
© 2002 American Museum of Natural History