 While such criticism of Detzner's adventures might have been dismissed as post-bellum bellicosity, in 1929, Detzner's assertions came under more serious assault. Two of the German missionaries in the Finschhafen District, Christian Keyser (also spelled Kayser or Keysser) and Otto Thiele, claimed Detzner had not spent the war roaming the jungle, one step ahead of the Australians, but had been under the Mission's protection the entire time. Keyser's additional accusations were particularly specific: Detzner had appropriated his own scientific observations. Keyser's claims carried some weight. He had published a dictionary of the Kâte language, and was a reliable expert on New Guinean dialects, and the German-based creole languages that had arisen in New Guinea; he was also a bona fide explorer and adventurer, having lived from 1899 to 1920 among the mountain peoples of the island. In 1913, Keyser climbed the 4,121-meter (13,520 ft) Saruwaged Massif; over the course of his 21 years in New Guinea, he had identified hundreds of new plant and animal species, and had maintained a regular correspondence with the German Geographical Society in Berlin. Ernst Mayr, a rising star in ornithology, had heard about Detzner from Australians on a research trip to New Guinea. In Germany, during a meeting with Keyser, they discussed Detzner's claims, and Mayr lost no time in broadcasting the discrepancy to his scientific contacts in Europe and the United States.
