Pioneer in the Desert: Baroness Marie-Thérèse Ullens de Schooten
- Sergio Volpi
- Aug 7
- 1 min read
In the second episode of the series on Western women travelers, we recount the journey of Baroness Marie-Thérèse Ullens de Schooten to Siwa, which took place in February 1926.
Baroness Ullens was married to the Belgian diplomat Jean Ullens; their wedding took place in 1926, just before the couple’s stay in Egypt. This period marked one of the first stages of their married life and of the diplomatic and cultural journeys linked to her husband’s profession.
A prominent figure among European women travelers and documentary filmmakers of the first half of the 20th century, Baroness Ullens arrived in Siwa as a tourist, participating in a tour organized by Captain Hillier, a former British officer known for accompanying small groups of aristocrats, intellectuals, and noblewomen to the oases and archaeological sites in the desert.
During the second half of the 1920s, the baroness accompanied her husband on his diplomatic assignments in Egypt and took the opportunity to embark on an ambitious endeavor for that era: an extensive film documentary aimed at documenting the physical, human, and cultural variety of both modern and ancient Egypt. The final 15 minutes of this lengthy documentary feature Siwa in 1926. This was not simply a travel diary, but a true cinematographic work, created with the most advanced equipment of the time, filmed on 35mm film stock.
The segment on Siwa can be viewed in the video available on YouTube at the following address:
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