Carl Von Hoffman

Carl Von Hoffman

Karl von Hoffman (St. Petersburg, Russia, c. 1889 – New York, New York, USA, 8 July 1982) was a soldier, adventurer, author, and photographer of German ancestry. He was a descendant of Melchior Hoffman; journalist Nicholas von Hoffman is his son.

At the age of 17, von Hoffman—then a military cadet—disobeyed his mother's wishes and joined the Russian army during the Russo-Japanese War. For actions during the war he was awarded the Order of St. Anna. He participated in World War I, serving in the Russian army, and then under Admiral Kolchak on the White Russian side in the Russian Civil War. Von Hoffman is said by some sources to have been on the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition in 1913; however, Theodore Roosevelt does not mention him in his memoir of the expedition, so this must be dismissed.

Von Hoffman was an explorer who once led a safari from Cape Town, South Africa, to Cairo—a walk that took him three years and was the basis of his two books, Jungle Gods (New York, H. Holt and Company ) and Jerry on Safari: A 7,000 Mile Journey from Cairo to the Cape (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1936). Von Hoffman's photographs of the Mexican Revolution and of Theodore Roosevelt were celebrated. He was the cinematographer on films including The Life of General Villa, (1914,), featuring Pancho Villa himself. The movie was produced by D. W. Griffith. Von Hoffman often said his knowledge of the use of machine guns was one of the things Griffiths offered Villa to gain his participation in the movie. (In 2003, the filming of the documentary about Villa was turned into a TV movie, And Starring Pancho Villa As Himself, directed by Bruce Beresford and written by Larry Gelbart with the minor role of von Hoffman played by Julian Sedgwick.) Von Hoffman was also cinematographer of The Marriage Bond (1916) directed by Lawrence Marston. He was a member of the Explorers Club.