Humboldt’s genius

It is one hundred and fifty years since the death of the great German geographer Alexander von Humboldt. When travelling, it seems, he was a careful and meticulous diarist, although I cannot find any published editions of his diaries in English. However, a large collection of letters to his friend Karl Varnhagen von Ense along with many diary entries by Varnhagen about Humboldt is widely available on the internet.

A detailed biography of Alexander von Humboldt can be found at Wikipedia, and a briefer one at ThoughtCo. He was born in Germany, in 1769, into a prominent Pomeranian family, his father being an officer in the Prussian army. He enrolled in various universities, before undertaking geology at the Freiberg technical university, where he studied under the famous geologist A G Werner. In 1792, when still only 22, he was appointed government mines inspector in Franconia, Prussia. Five years later, his mother died leaving him a wealthy man, and he soon set about planning a major expedition to Latin America with a French botanist, Aime Bonpland.

For five years, from 1799 to 1804, the two explored over 6,000 miles of Central and South American territory, collecting plant samples, meteorological observations and information on the earth’s geomagnetic field. On his return to Europe, Humboldt remained in Paris to write and publish 30 volumes of information accumulated during the expedition, creating a work that, Wikipedia says, ‘may be regarded as having laid the foundation of the sciences of physical geography and meteorology’.

In 1827, Humboldt returned to Berlin and took up teaching, tutoring the Prussian crown prince and lecturing on physical geography at the university. In 1829, he travelled through Siberia, at the invitation of the Russian government, to visit the gold and platinum mines. The later years of his life were devoted to studying magnetism, and to writing Kosmos. This latter work (five volumes, the last of which appeared posthumously) was focused on physical geography and the natural sciences, and tried to unify the various branches of scientific knowledge. He died on 6 May 1859, one and a half centuries ago today.

Humboldt certainly wrote diaries on his travels in Latin America. Ulrike Leitner has a note about them on the University of Potsdam website. She says that in compiling his diary, Humboldt considered ‘all observations worthy of writing down, but his preference for precise measurements [was] especially remarkable’. Humboldt’s diaries, she believes, are ‘the essential source for a full account of his stay in Mexico’ since an unfinished work on his American journey (published in French in three volumes as Relation Historique du Voyage aux Régions Équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent) ends with his arrival in Columbia in 1801. She explains that Humboldt referred to his diaries regularly and made them ‘the basis of his publications on the results of the American journey, especially for the Relation Historique’. He later took the diary notebooks apart and had them bound into nine volumes.

Leitner gives one example from Humboldt’s diary, dated August-September 1803: ‘[it was one of the] most exhausting periods of my life. I climbed all mountains using my barometer. In Valenciana I descended three times to the bottom of the mine, two times in Rayas, in Mellado, in Fraustros, in Animas and in San Bruno. I visited the mine of Villalpando, spent two days in Santa Rosa and in Los Álamos [. . .] I had a dangerous fall on my back in Fraustros, and experienced extreme pain for 14 days due to a sprain of the base of my spine!’

Elsewhere on the same university website is a short conference paper brief by Michael Zeuske of the University of Cologne. It focuses on the Diario Habana 1804, Humboldt’s last unpublished diary, and was written during or soon after the Haitian revolution. Zeuske is particularly concerned with Humboldt’s attitude to slavery and some conflicts between the stance he always takes when writing in his diary and the actual relationships he has with slaveholding elites in Cuba and Venezuela.

These references apart, I can find little evidence of Humboldt’s diaries on the internet, and I can find no sign of them ever having been published in English. However, his letters are a different matter. A large collection written to his friend Varnhagen von Ense were published (by Rudd & Carleton, New York) the year after his death with a selection of extracts from Varnhagen’s diary about Humboldt.

A short preface written by Humboldt’s niece, Ludmilla Assing, says: ‘The following letters of Humboldt furnish a contribution of the highest importance to the true, correct, and unveiled representation of his genius and character. That they should be delivered to publicity after his death was his desire and intent, which have found their positive impression in the words preceding this book as its motto. Never has he spoken out his mind more freely and sincerely, than in his communications with Varnhagen, his old and faithful friend, whom he esteemed and loved before all others. . . The interest of Humboldt’s letters is sometimes pleasantly heightened by entries in Varnhagen’s diary - they will indicate the verbal sentiments of Humboldt in addition to those written by him.’

Here are a few of Varnhagen’s diary observations about Humboldt taken from the book - Letters of Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense from 1827 to 1858 with extracts from Varnhagen’s Diaries, and Letters of Varnhagen and other to Humboldt - which is freely available at Internet Archive and other websites.

3 May 1837
‘In the evening, at the Princess of Pueckler’s, the long-promised lecture by Herr von Humboldt. The lecture was very fine, and made an excellent impression. I had a conversation with General von Ruhle on Humboldt’s genius. He totally agreed with me, saying, ‘When he shall have died, then only shall we understand well what we have possessed in him.’ ’

19 April 1839
‘I saw Humboldt to-day, who told me many things, and showed me a beautiful portrait of Arago, which pleased me very much. He talked much about the difficulties between Russia and England, as to their interests in the East Indies and in Persia, and repeated what he had heard about it from the Russian Emperor himself. The Czar was in a great passion against the English, and thought it highly important to oppose their supremacy in Asia. Humboldt agrees with me that the English have nothing serious to fear for the next fifty years from Russia in the Indies, but that fear and jealousy may engender a quarrel in Europe prior to any conflict in the East, although conflicting parties will certainly think twice before allowing it to come to that pass.’

9 June 1839
‘Humboldt agrees with me in the assertion made by me at different times, that too much cannot be inferred from the silence of the historians. He refers to three highly important and undeniable facts, which are not mentioned by those whose first duty it should have been to record them. In the archives of Barcelona, no vestige of the triumphal entry held there by Columbus; in Marco Polo, no mention of the Chinese wall; in the archives of Portugal, nothing of the travels of Amerigo Vespucci, in the service of that crown.’

30 April 1841
‘Humboldt has a great many enemies, as well amongst the savans as at court, who are constantly seeking an opportunity to malign him, but the moment he is praised all vituperation ceases for it is all vituperation. It is seldom that anybody is able to maintain it. Some time ago a gentleman said to me, that he did not know what to think of Humboldt, and that he could not come to a conclusion concerning him. I answered: ‘Think always the best of him, believe him always capable of the best action, and you always will be nearest the truth.’ Another said, same day, sneeringly: ‘Humboldt was a great man before he came to Berlin, where he became an ordinary one.’

4 July 1857
‘Yesterday Humboldt spoke of the time when he lived in a house at the side of George’s Garden, and was so assiduous in his magnetic observations that he once stinted himself of sleep for seven successive days and nights in order to examine the state of things every half hour; after that he changed the watch with substitutes. This was in 1807, just fifty years ago. I often saw the little house in which the experiments were made, when I visited Johannes von Mueller, who also lived in a house at the side of the same garden; or Fichte who lived in a garden house in the middle of the garden. When old George, a wealthy distiller, showed the garden to his friends, Humboldt went on to say, he never failed to boast of ‘his learned men’. ‘Here I have the famous Mueller; there is Humboldt, and there is Fichte, but he is only a philosopher, I believe.’

(Postscript: Many of Humboldt’s travel journals can now be found online thanks to edition humboldt digital; and there is also much information about his American travel journals, as well images of various pages, at the Alexander von Humboldt Portal.)

Christian Daniel Rauch

Today marks the 240th anniversary of the birth of Christian Daniel Rauch, the most important German sculptor of the 19th century, and yet barely known of in the English-speaking world - he’s not even mentioned in modern editions of Encyclopaedia Britannica (print or online). The only readily available source of information is a late 19th century biography of Rauch, free to download at Internet Archive, which also contains many references to the diary he kept, both as a young man and a very old one.

Rauch was born at Arolsen in the Principality of Waldeck in the Holy Roman Empire on 2 January 1777. His father was employed at the court of Prince Frederick II of Hesse. From the age of 18, Christian was apprenticed to the court sculptors, in Arolsen (now Bad Arolsen) and Cassel (now Kassel). After the death of his father and older brother, he moved to Berlin where he found employment as groom of the chamber in the court of Frederick William III. Continuing to sculpt in his spare time, he came under the influence of Johann Gottfried Schadow. In 1802, he exhibited Sleeping Endymion.

After surprising Rauch at work one day, Queen Louise (Frederick’s wife) sent him to study at the Prussian Academy of Art; and, in 1804, Count Sandrecky sponsored him to continue his studies in Rome, where he stayed for six years. There he was befriended by Wilhelm von Humboldt, Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen, and it was there that he produced a life-size bust of Queen Louise in marble. Back in Berlin, he was commissioned to sculpt another likeness of Louise, this time a representation of her in a sleeping position. It was placed in the mausoleum in the grounds of Charlottenburg, a city close to the west of Berlin. Subsequently, he created a similar statue which was placed in the Sanssouci Park at Potsdam.

By this time, Rauch had become famous and much in demand for public statues, some very large: Bülow and Scharnhorst at Berlin, Blücher at Breslau, Maximilian at Munich, Francke at Halle, Dürer at Nuremberg, Luther at Wittenberg, and the grand-duke Paul Frederick at Schwerin. In 1824 alone, he is said to have produced 70 busts. In 1830, he began collaborating with the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel to build a colossal equestrian monument in Berlin in honour of Frederick the Great (who had died nearly 50 years earlier). The monument was inaugurated with great pomp in 1851, and, according to the 1911 version of Encyclopædia Britannica (there is no mention of him in modern editions of the encyclopaedia), it was regarded as ‘one of the masterpieces of modern sculpture’ (though, obviously, ‘modern’ sculpture has come a long way since then).

Rauch was much feted and honoured during his later years, but continued to work, producing a statue of Kant for Königsberg and a statue of Thaer for Berlin, before dying in 1857 while still working on a statue of Moses. There is very little information in English about Rauch online, other than at Wikipedia, which itself has taken information from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article. The only substantial source of biographical information about Rauch in English is probably the 1893 biography by Friedrich Eggers - Life Of Christian Daniel Rauch - published by Lee & Shepard in Boston. Modern print-on-demand editions are readily available, but it is also free to download from Internet Archive.

Eggers’ biography is also the only English-language source of information about Rauch’s diaries. Eggers refers to, and quotes from, Rauch’s diary regularly throughout his biography, usually without any exact date. Here are some extracts from the biography selected because they mention Rauch’s diaries.

‘The young traveller had already begun to keep a diary, as he continued to do all his life, but it was usually more a record of observations and facts than of feelings; but as he started on this eventful journey he looked back over his youthful life and made these notes in pencil.

“I left Schwalbach with peculiar reflections. I was here in March, 1793, at the beginning of the second campaign of Prussia against the French. I met my brother on the march hither near Wickert, and made the march to that place with him; slept one night there, and then, having seen my brother less than twenty-four hours, I travelled back in storm and snow over Wiesbaden to my parents. I was then a little more than sixteen years old, and beginning to learn sculpture. The future lay in the dark distance before me. All was expectation: this tumult of strife before me, never before seen; the crowds of discontented people; the devastation of war, then incomprehensible to me; the throng of people, which formed like lines on foot and horseback on all the roads, amazed me. One saw this scene from every hill, the fearful Mainz always before the eyes. All this made me sick, although I was sound in body. At Wiesbaden, where I slept the next night, I became homesick, and I hurried with all my force towards home, where my parents and friends expected and received me. Perhaps I tell this little digression without connection, but it escaped me without my will, and my last word was ‘reflections.’

With these I left this morning the misty Schwalbach, which brought back again all the ideas and wishes with which I then travelled this way; and I now compared them, thanking Heaven and blessing my parents that what I longed for eleven years before (it always seemed to me as if my innermost wishes would be gratified, but I could not count upon it then) was brought to me in all its fulness at this moment, when I was hastening to glorious Rome, - my goal, the goal of all men who love the noble, especially the goal of artists and poets. I have the joy of which hundreds are worthy, and yet they cannot reach it.

Grateful and happy, I stood upon the height and looked over the broad Rhine valley. The Rhine streams through this beautiful meadow about green islands which seem made for his pastime, or as if he made them himself. Above, perhaps in the region of Mannheim, one sees it in a long stripe as it bounds the horizon, and through this distant opening it seems to rush towards one. Mainz has something fearful to me, it lies so big, so strongly fortified there, watching the Rhine; there is something commanding in this part of the landscape. The cathedral, the castle, the specially large buildings, have a decided blood-red color, and this is fearfully mirrored in the water. The long bridge of seven hundred and thirty paces appears from the road like a little string of pearls binding both shores together.” ’

***

‘Rauch’s diary has preserved for us a most interesting and precious record of his experiences and thoughts.

At Ludwigsburg he first saw a monument of Dannecker’s, and soon afterwards became acquainted with him. He speaks thus of the now world-renowned Ariadne: “Dannecker has modelled a life-sized nude Ariadne riding on a tiger; she is so boldly outstretched that, while taming this wild beast, she seems to be pleasantly carried along with it!”

He shows in his journal the keenest sensibility to the beautiful natural scenery of the Rhine, and no less to the interesting historic associations, as well as the rare objects of scientific interest, like the beautiful crystals. Always and everywhere he had his eyes open, and was never weary of observation and study.’

***

‘During the last year of his life Rauch’s diary contains frequent notices of meetings with his friend Alexander von Humboldt, who survived him a year and a half.’

***

‘On the first of September, Rauch, with his daughter Agnes and her husband, went to Donaustauf. In the afternoon they went to the Walhalla. Here they were received by the builder Estner, who had kept charge of the work for fifteen years; and the splendid bronze doors were opened to them. Rauch says in his diary: “I found the six statues on their stagings near the place of erection, all freed from the boxes, and not injured in the least. The impression of the whole on us was above all magnificent, such as was never seen; the novelty and beauty of the materials, the finished work, praising alike the builder and the architect, such as has never been accomplished in Germany in any time.” ’

***

‘Rauch at this time took a warm interest in the development of German painting. When the frescos of the museum were unveiled in 1844, he wrote in his diary: “I never experienced such a powerful impression from a work of art as from this. God bless the artists and princes through whom arise such genuine works of art for the joy and satisfaction of the present and the future!” ’

***

‘He writes in his diary only: “Towards evening, in the company of Bunsen and Dr. Meyer, the private physician to his highness Prince Albert, I visited the first wonder-works of antique sculpture at the British Museum, the Elgin marbles, taking but flying notice of the other art treasures.” His friends seem to have done their duty most thoroughly in showing him all the sights of London, including also visits to Oxford and the Isle of Wight, where he saw Prince Albert, Queen Victoria, and Barclay’s brewery.’

***

‘The king rewarded Rauch’s loyal affection with every mark of confidence and honor. Rauch notes in his diary of May 31, 1842: “Morning, six o’clock. To my great surprise, and without the least suspicion, I received through the general-order commission the insignia and the order of the statute of peace, ‘pour le mérite,’ from his majesty the king.” ’

***

‘He notes in his diary the names of many titled visitors to his atelier, sometimes with an affectionate word of comment; but dearest of all to him are the visits of artists, among which that of the Nestor of sculpture, Thorwaldsen, is especially welcome.’

***

‘In his diary he gives an account of the festivities of his seventieth birthday, January 1, 1847. After giving a full account of the music, speeches, etc., he wrote, “This was the most beautiful day of my life;” and adds, to complete his felicity he had the hope of his daughter’s family being reunited to him in Berlin. We have seen how sad was the fulfilment of this hope.’

***

‘Rauch kept his eightieth anniversary quietly with his beloved daughter Agnes, and in the evening had a great feast with his pupils and workmen. Rietschel came to the feast, and modelled his friend’s bust. His diary, faithfully kept, gives us brief notes of his last year of life. It contains affectionate mention of his old friends Humboldt and Rietschel; speaks of social enjoyments and kind attentions from the king, and of short excursions for health and pleasure. On the fourteenth of October his diary closes.’

The Diary Review’s fifth birthday

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the launch of The Diary Review. During its five years, the column has included extracts from the diaries of over 450 diarists. The Diary Review and The Diary Junction together can claim to provide the internet’s most extensive and comprehensive online resource for information about, and links to, diary texts. Here listed are all the diarists that have been written about in The Diary Review. Copy any name into the Blogger search box (above) to access the article(s). All the articles are also tagged with keywords (below right) by century, country, and subject matter.

The Diary Review diarists: May 2008 - April 2013 (most recent first)

John Addington Symonds; Henry James; Edwina Currie; Alan Clark; Tony Benn; Idris Davies; William Henry Jackson; Adam Winthrop; Noël Coward; Richard Hurrell Froude; Deborah Bull; Joseph Warren Stilwell; King Edward VII; William Cobbett; John Evelyn Denison; William Macready; Michel de Montaigne; Joseph Goebbels; George Barker; Anais Nin; Thomas Crosfield; Alec Guinness; Amrita Sher-Gil; Gordon of Khartoum; Hugh Gaitskell; Swami Vivekananda; Albert Jacka; Joe Orton; William Bray; Anthony Wood; William Cole; Henry Greville; Louisa Alcott; Dang Thuy Tram; John Rabe; John Manningham; Mary Berry; Edmund Franklin Ely; Sergei Prokofiev; Guy Liddell; Richard Burton; Marina Tsvetaeva; Rutherford B Hayes; John Thomlinson; Elizabeth Simcoe; August Gottlieb Spangenberg; George Croghan; William Booth; Iris Origo; George H Johnston; Dawn Powell; Arthur Hamilton Baynes; Roger Twysden; William Cory; William Grant Stairs; Celia Fiennes; Edmond de Goncourt; August Strindberg; Edward Lear; Charles Abbot; May Sarton; Ralph Waldo Emerson; A C Benson; George Cockburn; George William Frederick Howard; Frederick Hamilton; Clifford Crease; Father Patrick McKenna; Robert Musil; Michael Spicer; Chris Parry; Rick Jolly; Tony Groom; Neil Randall; Peter Green; Samuel Sewall; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; Isabella Augusta Persse Gregory; Mochtar Lubis; Alice James; John Byrom; Lawrence Durrell; Thomas Moore; Beatrice Webb; Alexander Hamilton Stephens; William Charles Macready; Charles Dickens; John Baker; William Swabey; Derek Jarman; Edith Wharton; Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen; William Tayler; Robert Boyle; Roald Amundsen; Henry L Stimson; Victor Andrew Bourasaw; Robert W Brockway; Louis P. Davis; Robert Hailey; Sydney Moseley; Rodney Foster; Xu Zhimo; Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov ; David Livingstone; Christopher Columbus; George Whitwell Parsons; Arthur Schnitzler; Thomas Edison; Nathaniel Dance Holland; Frederic Remington; Lady Mary Coke; Henri-Frédéric Amiel; Engelbert Kaempfer; Henry Melchior Muhlenberg; Walter Scott; Alan Lascelles; Lord Longford; Thomas Isham; Hiram Bingham; Earl of Shaftesbury; Hannah Senesh; Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville; Allan Cunningham; Thomas Asline Ward; Robert Lindsay Mackay; Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Queen Mary; King George V; John Reith; Philip Toynbee; Robert Wyse; Tappan Adney; Brigham Young; Gideon Mantell; Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz; Alfred Domett; Alfred Kazin; Joseph Hunter; George Jackson; Prince Albert; 7th Earl of Shaftesbury; William Dyott; Ford Madox Brown; William Brereton; Adam Eyre ; Aubrey Herbert; Anne Chalmers; Walter Powell; Ron Hubbard; Taras Shevchenko; Xu Xiake; Cecil Harmsworth King; Henry Martyn; Countess of Ranfurly; Anne Morrow Lindbergh; Charles Crowe; Mary Shelley; Hester Thrale; Queen Victoria; Eliza Frances Andrews; Ananda Ranga Pillai; Abraham de la Pryme; Henry Fynes Clinton; Jane Carlyle; Jacob Bee; Paul Bowles; José Lezama Lima; Stendhal; Ludwig van Beethoven; Benjamin Constant; Charlotte Bury; Hugh Prather; Leo Tolstoy; Eric Gill; Ernst Jünger; Thomas Cairns Livingstone; George Bernard Shaw; King Chulalongkorn; Julia Ward Howe; Richard Boyle; Charles Ash Windham; Elizabeth Gaskell; Étienne Jacques Joseph Macdonald; Leonard J Arrington; Takehiko Fukunaga; Porfirio Díaz; William Holman Hunt; John Hutton Bisdee; Mother Teresa; Graham Young; Wilfrid Scawen Blunt; Florence Nightingale; Elizabeth Percy; Luca Landucci; Timothy Burrell; William Lyon Mackenzie King; William Byrd; Marius Petipa; Conrad Weiser; Lester Frank Ward ; Minnie Vautrin; Tsen Shui-Fang; Katherine Mansfied; Peter Pears; Richard Pococke; Axel von Fersen; Gonzalo Torrente Ballester; Li Peng; Robert Schumann; Chantal Akerman; William Windham; Anne Lister; Alan Brooke; Guy Liddell; Hugh Casson; Jules Renard; Alastair Campbell; Fridtjof Nansen; Ricci the sinologist; Matteo Ricci; John Carrington; Gustave Flaubert; Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky; Anne Frank; Virginia Woolf; Marie Louise of Austria; Dorothy Wordsworth; Antera Duke; Edward Hodge; Jeffrey Archer; Vaslav Nijinsky ; John Poindexter ; Cosima Liszt Wagner; Lady Cynthia Asquith; Thomas Clarkson; William Marjouram; Roland Barthes; Franklin Pierce Adams; Murasaki Shikibu; Caroline Herschel; Mikhail Bulgakov; Han Feng; William Griffith; Casanova; Victor Klemperer; Nelson Mandela; Josef Mengele; Ted Koppel; Henriette Desaulles; Ole Bull; Anton Chekhov; Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen; Cecil Beaton; Douglas Hyde; Donald Friend; Barbara Pym; Antonia Fraser; Fanny Burney; Jack Lovelock; Richard Newdigate; Albert Camus; William Gladstone; Thomas Babington Macaulay; Chet Baker; Paul Klee; Henry Edward Fox; Peter Scott; David Hamilton; Chiang Kai-shek; Washington Irving; Fanny Kemble; André Gide; Edwin Hubble; Tomaž Humar; William Howard Russell; Pehr Kalm; Gareth Jones; Anatoly Chernyaev; Leon Trotsky; Bernard Berenson; Benjamin Britten; Jacob Abbott; Otto Rank; Gurdjieff; Itō Hirobumi; George B McClellan; Jack Kerouac; Benjamin Roth; Lee Harvey Oswald; Roger Boyle; Meriwether Lewis; Abel Janszoon Tasman; Alfred Dreyfus; Alfred Deakin; John Narbrough; Gandhi; Arnold Bennett; Jim Carroll; Mahmoud Darwish; George Rose; Maria Nugent; James Fenimore Cooper; Henry Hudson; Kim Dae-jung; Georges Simenon; Henry Peerless; Drew Pearson; Earl Mountbatten of Burma; William Wilberforce; Alfred A Cunningham; Rosa Bonheur; Hana Pravda; Isaac Albéniz; Marie Curie; Dr Alessandro Ricci; John Skinner; General Patrick Gordon; Alexander von Humboldt; Charlotte Grimké; Christian Gottlieb Ferdinand Ritter von Hochstetter; General Hilmi Özkök; George Eliot; Aurora Quezon; Ludwig Wittgenstein; Stafford Cripps; Edward Bates; Alexis de Tocqueville; Elizabeth Lee; John Steinbeck; Harvey Cushing; Robert E Peary; John Rae; Dwight Eisenhower; Thomas Mann; A E Housman; Joseph Liouville; Lady Anne Clifford; Harold Nicolson; Neville Chamberlain; Edward Abbey; John Lennon; Georg Wilhelm Steller; Derk Bodde; Joe DiMaggio; Raoul Wallenberg; Leonard Woolf; Howard Carter; Stephen Spender; Chris Mullin; August Derleth; Olave Baden-Powell; William H. Seward; Charles Darwin; John Ruskin; Felix Mendelssohn; Alexander Selkirk; Ken Wilber; Jacob Roggeveen; Christopher Hibbert; Breckinridge Long; Sir George Rooke; Jeremiah Dixon; David Garrick; Sir John Moore; Abraham Plotkin; Steve Carano; William Keeling; Naomi Mitchison; Susan Sontag; Hanazono; Emily Brontë; Mary Leadbeater; Pope John XXIII; Robert Coverte; George Monck; Johann August Sutter; Sir George Hubert Wilkins; Christopher Isherwood; Charles Everett Ellis; Edmund Harrold; Selma Lagerlöf; Elizabeth George Speare; Georgy Feodosevich Voronoy; Edith Roller; Henry Machyn; Jedediah Hubbell Dorwin; Piseth Pilika; Marie Bashkirtseff; Jacques Piccard; Herculine Barbin; Catherine Deneuve; George Washington; Hélène Berr; Humphrey Lyttelton; Ted Hughes; Sylvia Plath; Charles XIII; Arthur Jephson; Harry Allen; Yves Bertrand; Sean Lester; Douglas Mawson; Thomas Turner; Henry Chips Channon; John Blow; Robert Louis Stevenson; Abel J Herzberg; Elizabeth Fremantle; August Möbius; John Churton Collins; Krste Misirkov; Mika Waltari; Bernard Donoughue; William Bray; Cesare Pavese; John Home; Samuel Pepys; Edward Walter Hamilton; Bernard Leach; Max Brod; Che Guevara; Lorenzo Whiting Blood; Harriet Stewart Judd; Angelina Jolie; Robert Dickinson; John Longe; George H W Bush; Jikaku Daishi; Choe Bu; Arthur Munby; Hanna Cullwick; Mary Blathwayt; Alexander MacCallum Scott; Walt Whitman; Helena Morley; Carolina Maria de Jesus; Alice Dayrell Caldeira Brant; Rachel Corrie; Lady Nijo; Paul Coelho; Sir Henry Slingsby; Edgar Vernon Christian; Dorothy Day; Mary Boykin Chesnut; Lord Hailsham; Nia Wyn; Rutka Laskier; Tom Bradley; Richard Pearson; Barbellion; Pekka-Eric Auvinen; Chester Gillette; James Giordonello; Simon Gray; Harry Telford; Özden Örnek; Anna Politkovskaya; Serge Prokofiev; Rasputin

The father of NZ geology

Christian Gottlieb Ferdinand Ritter von Hochstetter, a German geologist famous for his work in the Antipodes, was born 180 years ago today. He was one of the leading scientists appointed for an Austrian expedition to circumnavigate the world in the mid-1850s, and made a particular impression in the Antipodes. Both he and at least one of his colleagues kept diaries during the voyage; some extracts from these are available online and in English thanks to Australian and New Zealand websites.

The son of a clergyman and scientist, Hochstetter was born at Esslingen, Germany, 180 years ago today. He was educated at the evangelical seminary in Maulbronn and at the university of Tübingen where he studied geology. In 1852, he joined the staff of the Imperial Geological Survey of Austria and became chief geologist for Bohemia. He was selected, along with a group of other scientists, to take part in the Novara expedition, starting in 1857, which aimed to circumnavigate the world. After visiting South America, Asia and South Africa, the ship’s captain was encouraged to make a diversion to New Zealand to allow scientific examination of the North Island volcanic regions.

While in New Zealand, in 1859, Hochstetter was chosen to make a geological survey of the islands, and remained behind after the Novara sailed for Europe. He returned to Austria the following year, and was appointed professor of mineralogy and geology at the Vienna Polytechnic Institute. The following year he married Georgiana Bengough, the daughter of an Englishman who was director of the Vienna city gasworks. They had four sons and four daughters.

Apart from his teaching work - during which he introduced new teaching practices, built up teaching collections, and led popular fieldwork expeditions - Hochstetter also served as president of the Geographical Society of Vienna from 1866 to 1882. In 1876, he was appointed the first intendant of the Imperial Natural History Museum. Just before his death in 1884, he was granted a hereditary knighthood by the Austrian emperor. Today, he is considered one of the founders of engineering geology. Wikipedia has a short bio, but a more substantial biography can be found in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography.

Indeed New Zealand remembers Hochstetter fondly - calling him the Father of New Zealand Geology. In 1863 he published Neu-Seeland, the first substantial work about New Zealand to appear in the German language. It contains vivid descriptions of his New Zealand travels, geological observations, and encounters with indigenous communities. An English translation appeared in 1867. (Original copies can be found on Abebooks, but cost several hundreds of pounds.)

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the Novara in Auckland in December 1858, the Auckland City Libraries organised an Hochstetter exhibition. An online version of the exhibition - called Ferdinand von Hochstetter: Father of New Zealand Geology - can be accessed via the Libraries website. It includes many photographs, and images of documents and maps. But there are also images of Hochstetter’s diary, the one surviving volume of five he wrote during his time in New Zealand.

Hochstetter is also a bit of a historical hero in Australia. Michael Organ, a one-time Green Australian politician and academic, runs a website with substantial information about the Navara expedition, and the work undertaken by the Austrian scientists - including Hochstetter and his colleague Karl Scherzer  - when visiting New South Wales. This site also includes transcripts of a journal kept by Scherzer, and these mention Hochstetter a number of times. Here are two extracts.

23 November 1858
‘Fancy dress ball given by the citizens of Sydney to the Right Worshipful Mayor & Lady Mayoress to reciprocate the ball recently given by the Mayor (reputedly at a cost of £800). The Commodore and all the officers had been invited to attend, and so I went there at about 9 o’clock. The ball took place in the Prince of Wales Theatre. The company was very mixed, there was pushing and shoving. Very few respectable families. Hill was also there. By chance I was introduced to a certain Dr. Berncastle, a local doctor, who looks and behaves like an adventurer. He claimed to have earned the gratitude of the Expedition because he had shown Dr Hochstetter the shortest route to Bathurst! This gentleman made a terrible fool of himself later on which served him right for his arrogance.’

25 November 1858
‘At 6 o’clock in the evening a dinner was given in the German Club by a number of Germans in honour of the presence of an Imperial Austrian warship. The great dining-room was very elegant and decorated in keeping with the occasion. Perhaps about 40 persons took their seats. The customary toasts concluded proceedings: - the Queen! - The Emperor of Austria! - the members of the Austrian Imperial family! To which the Commodore responded with a toast to Prince Albert. Then: - to the Commodore and the officers of the Novara - responded to by the Commodore with a very pretty toast - to the Germans in Australia, responded to - German Science! - to which I replied with a toast to the unity, might and greatness of our common Fatherland - in which I endeavoured to stress that in recent years no German state had, by fusing material and national economic interests, contributed so much to German unity as the new regenerated Austria! Dr. Hochstetter spoke a few very moving words in memory of Leichhardt [a Prussian explorer who had disappeared earlier that year while in northern Australia, and whose expedition inspired Patrick White’s novel Voss], whereupon all those present rose in silence from their seats. This was followed by toasts to Alexander von Humboldt, Sir William Denison, etc. The festivities closed at 11 p.m.’

Michael Organ also provides the only significant extract from Hochstetter’s diary I can find on the internet. It concerns a visit the Novara made to an island - then called Sikyana, now part of the Soloman Islands - in October 1858, and an alleged incident in which the Novara crew robbed the island’s natives of livestock. Organ provides a learned and referenced essay on the incident. It includes a rebuttal of the accusations made by Hochstetter along with quotes from his diary.