orig. Eduard Schnitzer
born March 28, 1840, Oppeln, Silesia
died Oct. 23, 1892, Kanema, Congo Free State
German physician, explorer, and administrator in Egyptian Sudan.
Schnitzer adopted a Turkish name while serving as a medical officer and administrator in the Ottoman government. In 1876 he joined with British forces led by Gen. Charles George Gordon at Khartoum. In 1878 he was appointed governor of Equatoria province. During the Mahdist movement uprising, the Egyptian government abandoned the Sudan (1884), and the isolated Emin was rescued by Henry Morton Stanley in 1888. On an expedition to equatorial Africa, he was killed by Arab slave-traders. Through his scholarly papers and specimen collections, he contributed vastly to the knowledge of African geography, natural history, ethnology, and languages.