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Charles Neufeld
Karl Otto Neufeld (4 August 1856 - 2 July 1918) was a German merchant and adventurer who was held captive by the Khalifa in Omdurman from 1887-1899.
Born in Damerau, West Prussia (near what is now...view moreKarl Otto Neufeld (4 August 1856 - 2 July 1918) was a German merchant and adventurer who was held captive by the Khalifa in Omdurman from 1887-1899.
Born in Damerau, West Prussia (near what is now the Polish town of Bydgoszcz), Neufeld, who spoke both English and Arabic, travelled to Japan and then arrived in Constantinople in 1875. In 1877 he married Charlotte Emma Netherton in Alexandria and went to work as a doctor on Egyptian steamships. He was also employed by the Gordon relief as a translator for the British Army, on whose behalf he soon erected entire barrack towns. When Britain surrendered Sudan after the Mahdi uprising, Neufeld remained as a merchant trader in Aswan.
In 1887, Karl (who called himself Charles in Egypt) Neufeld became involved in a venture to bring from the Sudan a large quantity of rubber and ivory, which could be bought cheaply and then sold at a high price in Egypt. He was ultimately betrayed by a guide and taken to the Khalifa in Omdurman by Dervish forces, where he would spend the next twelve years in captivity. In 1898, as the British Army advanced, and following the Battle of Omdurman—which effectively ended the Khaleefa’s rule of the Sudan—Herbert Kitchener, the British commander-in-chief, personally freed him.
Following Neufeld’s recover from captivity in Egypt, he gave lectures about in England and traveled to Germany. He returned to Egypt to live once again in the city of Aswan and became a seller of German machines.
He worked as an engineer in occupied Belgium during the First World War, but died of pneumonia in a Berlin hospital in 1919, aged 61.view less
Books by Charles Neufeld
A Prisoner of the Khaleefa: Twelve Years’ Captivity at Omdurman [Illustrated Edition]