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Victor Englebert 1933 - 2015

Victor Englebert was born on February 5, 1933 in Brussels, Brussels Belgium, and died at age 82 years old on March 28, 2015.

Victor Englebert

February 5, 1933

Brussels, Brussels, Belgium

March 28, 2015

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Victor Englebert Victor Englebert (1933 - 2015)

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Victor Englebert's History: 1933 - 2015

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Introduction

Victor Englebert was a Belgian-born anthropologist, explorer, and author who dedicated his life to studying and documenting the cultures and traditions of remote and little-known peoples around the world. With a passion for adventure and a deep respect for indigenous knowledge and ways of life, he traveled extensively throughout Africa, South America, and Asia, bringing back stories, artifacts, and insights that enriched our understanding of the human experience. He began his life of adventures at the age of 24, riding a 125 cc Vespa scooter from his native Brussels to Cape Town across the length of Africa. Englebert has traveled by camel with a Tuareg salt caravan, by horse around Morocco's High Atlas Mountains, the Peruvian Andes, and across Patagonia from coast to coast, and with pack donkeys in Kenya's Great Rift Valley. He also joined another camel salt caravan between Ethiopia's high and low lands and a llama salt caravan in the Bolivian Altiplano. Englebert has crossed Borneo's rainforest from end to end by houseboat, canoe, and on foot, with eight porters to carry his money (trade goods). Victor has tramped through the Amazon many times, once in search of mysterious pyramids and once spending a month among the Yanomami Indians. Throughout his adventures, Englebert faced many dangers, including falling into the hands of Eritrean guerillas in Ethiopia who mistook him for an Israeli spy and put a revolver to his head. However, they spared him when they discovered two admissions into Algeria in his passport, as Israelis were not allowed into the Arab country.
02/5

1933

Birthday

February 5, 1933

Birthdate

Brussels, Brussels Belgium

Birthplace

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Ethnicity & Family History

Victor Englebert was born in Brussels, Belgium, to a well-to-do family of mixed Belgian and Austrian heritage. His father was a lawyer, and his mother was an amateur botanist who instilled in him a love of nature and exploration from an early age. Victor grew up in a bilingual household and was educated in French and German, which gave him a strong foundation in languages that would prove useful in his later travels and research. His family history and upbringing likely contributed to his intellectual curiosity and desire to understand different cultures and peoples.
Nationality & Locations

Victor Englebert lived and traveled extensively throughout the world, documenting the lives and cultures of tribal societies. He rode a Vespa scooter from Brussels to Cape Town across Africa and traveled by camel with a Tuareg salt caravan, by horse around Morocco's High Atlas Mountains and the Peruvian Andes, and with pack donkeys in Kenya's Great Rift Valley. He also traveled through the Bolivian Altiplano and Borneo's rainforest, crossed the Amazon many times, and spent a month among the Yanomami Indians.
Early Life & Education

He did not have formal academic training in anthropology or related fields but instead learned through his travels and experiences living among various indigenous communities around the world. He was also a keen observer and writer, and his books on his experiences in various regions demonstrate a deep understanding of the cultures and people he encountered.
Professional Career

Victor Englebert was a renowned Belgian photographer, writer, and self-educated anthropologist who dedicated his life to exploring and documenting tribal societies in some of the world's most remote and wild corners. He worked extensively for National Geographic, producing numerous articles and books on his travels and experiences. His career spanned over several decades, during which he lived among and studied the cultures of many indigenous communities, contributing significantly to the field of anthropology.
Personal Life & Family

He was a very private person and did not often speak about his personal life. However, it is known that he was married and had children. He often traveled alone to remote parts of the world for extended periods of time for his work as a photographer, writer, and anthropologist.
03/28

2015

Death

March 28, 2015

Death date

Unknown
Cause of death

Unknown
Death location

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Obituary

VICTOR ENGLEBERT IN HIS OWN WORDS. February 5, 1933 - March 28, 2015 Today, much of that life is behind me. Not so my quest for the lesser-known members of our fascinating humanity. Once, in what now seems like another life, a friend lent me the money to buy a camera--a small Kodak Retina with a fixed 50mm lens. He used it to take this picture of me. I was 18 and obviously happy, as if I knew the wonderful turn photography would give my life, years later, far from my native Belgium. But I knew not, of course. And it was just as well, for I would have to beat worse odds than I could ever imagine, starting with the need to self-educate. This friend had been my scout master until, at 15, I was forced to leave school and the boy scouts to go work 12 hours a day, often with no days off. He used a Leica to shoot action pictures that thrilled me. Besides helping me to buy my first camera he spent two days teaching me the basics of photography. I quit my job to free myself for this opportunity. I wonder sometimes what direction my life would have taken, had that loan not been offered. For life is a net of possible paths, every one leading in a different direction. To excitement or boredom. To success or failure. To happy or failed marriage. To longevity or early death... And we rarely know which path is best before having followed it for a while, sometimes too far. But I was lucky. I did not know it, but that precious little Kodak Retina was the first of many steps that would lead to a life of wonderful, though sometimes dangerous, adventures in Africa, Asia, and South America. At 21, after two years of military service as a sergeant in Occupied Germany, I worked on a ship bound for the Belgian Congo. There, spending my only two free days on land photographing the natives, I had an epiphany. As a kid I had dreamed of becoming an explorer. Since then, having learned that the world no longer needed explorers, I had cursed the fate that had brought me to this world too late. But now photography, I thought, could help me live the explorer’s life. I would seek out the little-known regions of the world and their intriguing people with a camera and a pen. I would produce magazine stories and books. I had no idea how difficult that would be, but I was ready for a conquest. To start, I needed money. And luck this time arrived with a Sabena Airlines three-year contract in Congo, where my salary would triple what I earned in Brussels. I was 22, and got married before leaving. At 24, having rebelled against an injustice, I lost my job and was flown back to Brussels with my wife and a Vespa 125 cc I owned. Three months later, now the proud owner of a Leica M3 and two lenses, I mounted my Vespa and rode it all the way to Cape Town, through the length of Africa and across an Algeria at war with France. It was not an intelligent idea, but that’s what occurred to me then. My naïve plans were to write a book about that adventure. I had read many travel books and thought I could write one too. And in my mind that book would pave my way to more adventures. That 1957 journey, along nightmarish trails rarely traveled by other vehicles, was lonely. Especially when my Vespa stopped working, and help, in the middle of nowhere, could take two days to arrive. Sand, rocks, and later the mud of a rainy season constantly catapulted me over my handle bar. To protect my tiny capital, I ate at indigenous markets and slept under the stars, occasionally pulled out of my sleep by prowling wild animals. Wildlife was abundant in Africa. Much more so than people. On my return to Brussels the Vespa Company invited me to speak at a press conference it convened in my honor. In exchange for the 125 cc beat-up Vespa, which the company would exhibit around Europe, it offered me a brand new 150 cc Vespa, which I accepted. I enjoyed a moment of fame, and a magazine editor approached me, interested in reading my story. But he found it unpublishable. I did not know where to seek editing help and the story was not published, except for free in several installments of a Vespa Club magazine (recently, I also told it in a memoir, which is in the hands of Neil Soderstrom, my agent). But nothing was lost. The Vespa journey had taught me much of what I would need to succeed later. For now, I realized that, as a solo traveler, I would have to learn not only to shoot better pictures, but also to write better. I would eventually learn to write for publication not only in my native French, but also in English and Spanish (25 years later, while living in Colombia, I would self-publish nine photo books on that country).
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The next six years brought me different kinds of adventures. First two kids. Then Immigration with my family to Montreal and, 15 months later, to New York. But my focus remained unchanged. Sleeping only five or six hours a night, I worked two jobs the whole time, always to earn enough to pay for another cheap African journey. I was finally ready for it in 1963. I was 30. This time my wife would not let me go alone, and my father-in-law thought aloud that I was a boy scout who would never grow up. We hitchhiked from Algiers to the coast of Benin and back, and hired some Tuareg nomads to guide us through the Sahara on a month-long camel journey between Niger and Algeria. Venture magazine gave my story its cover and ten pages. Argosy magazine, a photo agency, and other photo buyers paid me enough extra money for the use of my photography that I more than recovered the journey’s modest expenses and extra photographic gear I had purchased before leaving. National Geographic had also shown interest in my story. But I had shot it in black and white, and its editors had recently decided to go all color. They hesitated a whole year, but in the end decided against making a last exception. So I persuaded them to let me ride with a Sahara salt caravan, which they accepted. The story made the cover of their November 1965 issue. It also spread over 16 pages of Paris-Match magazine and covered more than half the pages of a French book on the Sahara. This sudden success started many decades of other adventurous travel assignments, for those two magazines as well as many others, besides books. I would eventually document the cultures of some 30 indigenous people in three continents, sharing their lives for weeks or months each time, and learning that below the surface humanity is one big family. I taught this to my children by taking them to many of my favorite places, including a five-month trans-African jeep journey:

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Victor Englebert lived 8 years longer than the average family member when died at the age of 82.

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47 Memories, Stories & Photos about Victor

Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

06/11/2018

Victor Englebert's scooter

A photo of Victor Englebert's scooter in Africa.

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

Comments

Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

12/18/2017

Victor Englebert photo

A photo by Victor Englebert of sub-Saharan girl - taken in North African in about 1964.

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

11/13/2017

Jean-Pierre and Philippe Englebert

A photo of Victor Englebert's sons Jean-Pierre and Philippe as boys with a donkey. They lived in Colombia for many years and all four kids are multilingual.

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

Comments

Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

11/13/2017

Victor Englebert and sons

A photo of Victor Englebert with sons Jean-Pierre and Philippe. All of his 4 children are college graduates. He was extremely proud of them.

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

Comments

Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

11/13/2017

Jean-Pierre and Philippe Englebert

A photo of Victor Englebert's two sons Jean-Pierre, the blond, and Philippe, the brunette, by wife Martha. Belgian father and Colombian mother.

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

Comments

Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

11/13/2017

Martha and Victor Englebert

A photo of Victor Englebert and second wife Martha Englebert who stayed with him for over 40 years.

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

02/27/2019

I love this photograph.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

11/13/2017

Victor and Barbara Englebert

A photo of Victor Englebert and grown daughter Barbara Englebert Adamsick.

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

11/03/2017

Victor Englebert

A photo of Victor Englebert

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

11/03/2017

Victor Englebert photo of Belgium

A photo of Victor Englebert

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Victor Englebert return address in Africa

Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

11/03/2017

Victor Englebert return address in Africa

A photo of Victor Englebert

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Victor Englebert's Family Tree & Friends

Victor Englebert's Family Tree

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Victor Englebert Feb 5, 1933 - Mar 28, 2015

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Other Biographies

Other Victor Englebert Biographies

Englebert, Victor (Jun 4, 1910 - Dec 1975)

Other Englebert Family Biographies

Englebert, Maurice (Sep 10, 1917 - Feb 10, 2000) Englebert, Tony (Dec 10, 1953 - Oct 20, 2010) Englebert, Louise (Sep 29, 1883 - Jun 1971) Englebert, Mary (Feb 1, 1899 - Apr 1985) Englebert, Oscar (Nov 9, 1897 - Feb 1970) Englebert, Geraldine (Oct 11, 1934 - Sep 1, 2009) Englebert, Sherman (Jun 17, 1887 - Aug 1962) Englebert, Mary (Apr 20, 1949 - Jun 14, 2002) Englebert, Rose (May 15, 1930 - Oct 1985) Englebert, Anna (Mar 6, 1906 - Aug 16, 1984)

Englebert, Carmella (Nov 1, 1908 - Jul 29, 2000) Englebert, Samuel (Aug 12, 1924 - May 11, 2009) Englebert, Rose (Nov 2, 1904 - Oct 6, 1981) Englebert, Joyce (Oct 21, 1941 - Mar 27, 2004) Englebert, Albert (Sep 12, 1906 - Dec 1978) Englebert, Anita (May 13, 1895 - Jun 1974) Englebert, Rose (Mar 10, 1927 - Nov 17, 2005) Englebert, Eugene (May 14, 1923 - Oct 31, 2007) Englebert, Henri (Dec 22, 1904 - May 1987) Englebert, Eugene (Feb 22, 1927 - Sep 1981)

About the AncientFaces Community

Victor Englebert 1933 - 2015

Victor Englebert's History: 1933 - 2015

Introduction

Birthday

Ethnicity & Family History

Nationality & Locations

Early Life & Education

Professional Career

Personal Life & Family

Death

Obituary

47 Memories, Stories & Photos about Victor

Victor Englebert's Family Tree & Friends

Victor Englebert's Family Tree

Victor's Friends

Other Victor Englebert Biographies

Other Englebert Family Biographies