Tongatapu

DER or rather DIE Südsee?

South Sea is another name for the South Pacific. Geographically, the South Sea covers all areas south of the 9th latitude.

The central island groups are the French Islands (French Polynesia / Tahiti), the Samoa Archipelago and the Fiji Islands. The term "South Sea" is often used for Oceania and in the narrower sense for Polynesia.

In fact, the name "South Sea" was coined by the Spanish conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513, when he crossed the narrow strip of land of Panama and called the ocean, the Pacific, which he was the first European to see, "Mar del sur" ("South Sea").

James Cook traveled several times in the South Seas. On his second trip to Tahiti, James Cook accompanied the two German scientists Johann Reinhold Forster and Georg Forster in 1773.

In the literature, Louis Antoine de Bougainville's travelogue "Voyage autour du monde" and Georg Forster's "A Voyage Round The World" published in 1777 spread the human image of the "noble savage" that the Europeans believed to have found in Tahiti. Jean-Jacques Rousseau describes it as "the Garden of Eden" that would give its inhabitants everything they needed to live.

The French painter Paul Gauguin also contributed to this picture. His paintings show the exotic paradise that the painter has dreamed of. Paul Gauguin reached Tahiti in April 1891 and painted 66 paintings. He left the island due to health and financial difficulties in 1892, but returned 1895 from Paris to Papeete. He died in 1903 on the Marquesas.

Emil Nolde took part in an expedition to Papua New Guinea in 1913-14. Max Pechstein lived from May 1914 until the outbreak of the First World War on the Micronesian Palau Islands. Henri Matisse visited Tahiti in 1931.

As we see, many well-known explorers and artists moved to the South Seas.

Well, who would not like to go to the South Seas?

If you now exchange "DIE" for "DER" it is perhaps not so paradisiacal, but closer. And this South Seas can be circulated without a boat or vehicle. And hey, we have islands here too.

We wish you lots of fun while traveling around the South Seas.