Karl Weyprecht was one of the great German-speaking pioneers of polar research. The legendary Austro-Hungarian Arctic Expedition, conducted under his leadership from 1872 to 1874, aimed to explore the Northeast Passage from the Bering Sea to the Barents Sea, but it failed when the Admiral Tegethoff, Weyprecht's ship, was crushed in the pack ice and sank off Franz Josef Land. It is largely thanks to Karl Weyprecht that the expedition ended relatively well and, even more so, that it yielded remarkable scientific insights. This book tells the gripping story of the expedition and the fate of its participants.