Meinhardt Maren - A Longing for Wide and Unknown Things: The Life of Alexander von Humboldt

First published in English in the United Kingdom in 2018 by

C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.,

41 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3PL

Maren Meinhardt, 2018

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United Kingdom

The right of Maren Meinhardt to be identified as the author of this publication is asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

A Cataloguing-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 9781849048903

ISBN: 9781787384378 (e-book)

This book is printed using paper from registered sustainable and managed sources.

www.hurstpublishers.com

For Iona and Mary

This book has taken an unfeasibly long period of time to write, and I have accrued a correspondingly huge number of debts of gratitude along the way.

In particular, Id like to thank:

My parents, Hanna and Volker Meinhardt, for their unstinting and unquestioning support, always.

My daughters, Iona and Mary Imlah, to whom Im grateful for more than I can say; in this case, though, for their patience and understanding.

Stig Abell and all at the TLS, in particular Catharine Morris, Jim Campbell and Rupert Shortt, for advice, support and encouragement whenever it was most needed.

Michael Dwyer, Alasdair Craig, Jon de Peyer, Alison Alexanian and Daisy Leitch at Hurst, working with whom has been a joy and a privilege. Also, Hursts two readers, for their insightful suggestions, as well as for saving me from embarrassing errors.

Maureen Allen, for kindness and generosity.

Jennie Erin Smith, for coming to South America with me, and for demonstrating what style and brilliance look like.

Hildegard Maier and the German choir, for nourishing my spirit with music, wine and cheese.

Those whose friendship, help and encouragement have accompanied me through long tracts of this seemingly interminable project: Vera Chalidze, Cathrin Cordes, Stephanie Homer, Janet Kroll, Julia and Ferdinand Mount, Nicola Penfold, Mandana Seyfeddinipur, Helen Simpson, Haf Stephens, Peter Stothard, Jane Wellesley, Mags Young and Meike Ziervogel.

Michael Rosen, for advice, and for happiness.

I wish I were able to thank Mick Imlah, whose presence lit up my life from when I first met him, in 1996, until 2009.

Henriette Herz, by Anna Dorothea Therbusch, 1778 Wikimedia Commons.

Rahel Levin Varnhagen, by Moritz Michael Daffinger, c. 1800 Wikimedia Commons.

Dorothea Schlegel, eldest daughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelsson, by Anton Graff, c. 1790, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin Wikimedia Commons.

Portrait of Caroline Bhmer Schlegel Schelling, ne Michaelis (17631809), by Johann Friedrich August Tischbein, 1798 Wikimedia Commons.

Humboldt as a young man, 1769, copper engraving by Charles Victor Normand (born 1814) after painting, 1795, by Franois Grard (17701837), later colouring akg-images.

The chateau at Tegel, coloured steel engraving by Johann Poppel, c. 1850, after L.Rohbock akg-images.

The Gucharo, named Steatornis Caripensis, by Humboldt Wikimedia Commons.

Steatornis Caripensis, print, between 1832 and 1835, Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam Wikimedia Commons.

Passionflower (Passiflora ligularis), collected by Humboldt and Bonpland in 1799, Herbarium of Paris (Herbier de Paris), Herbier Ancien, Laboratoire de Phanrogamie, Paris, Natural History Museum akg-images.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS handcoloured copperplate engraving from Edward Griffiths The Animal Kingdom by the Baron Cuvier, London, Whittaker, 1824 Florilegius/Science & Society Picture Library.

The rope bridge near Penipe, engraved by Bouquet of Paris, from Vues des Cordillres, et monumens des peuples indignes de lAmerique, Paris: Schoell, creation date 1810, Science Museum Library, Wroughton: Special Collections Science Museum/ Science & Society Picture Library.

A raft on the Guayas river, aquatint by Marchais/ Bouquet after a sketch by Humboldt from his travel writing Vues des Cordillres, Paris 181015 akg-images.

Inti-Guaicu, the Sun Rock, engraved by Dutterhoffer of Stuttgart, from Vues des Cordillres, Science Museum Library, Wroughton: Special Collections Science Museum/ Science & Society Picture Library.

Inca Chungana, engraved by F. Morel of Rome, from Vues des Cordillres, Science Museum Library, Wroughton: Special Collections Science Museum/ Science & Society Picture Library.

The Sun Rock in 2014, authors photograph.

Inca Chungana in 2014, authors photograph.

The house Humboldt thought of as the highest habitation in the world, on the slopes of the Cotopaxi. Authors photograph.

An engraving of Cotopaxi based on a drawing by Humboldt, aquatint by F. Arnold after G. Gmelin after A. von Humboldt Wellcome Collection.

Humboldt and Bonpland gathering plants at the foot of the Chimborazo, by Friedrich Georg Weitsch, 1806, Wikimedia Commons.

Cross section through South America based on the Chimborazo, engraving (1805) by Lorenz Adolf Schnberger and Pierre Franois Turpin after a drawing by Humboldt akg-images.

Evening lectures with King Frederick William IV of Prussia, with Alexander von Humboldt, Friedrich Karl von Savigny, Prince William (the future emperor), woodcut, c. 1870, after a drawing by Rudolf Oppenheim, magazine illustration, Berlin, Sammlung Archiv fr Kunst und Geschichte akg-images.

In August 1804, on his return from his great journey to the Americas, Alexander von Humboldt was very much the hero of the hour. His coffers were full of the scientific treasures of the New World, and regular bulletins about his progress, published in the papers, had ensured that his exploits had not gone unappreciated by the European public. The thirty-four-year-old, tanned, confident and gifted with social ease, had, everybody knew, climbed the highest mountain in the world, the Chimborazo. He had walked in untouched forests, spoken to the people who lived there, and discovered a secret natural canal, the Casiquiare, that linked the great water-systems of the Amazon and the Orinoco. He would have returned some months earlier had not Thomas Jefferson, the president of the United States, personally asked to make his acquaintance and to profit from his advice.

And yet, the fabric of Humboldts life does not settle easily into a narrative defined by superlative achievements and public honours. Here, after all, is a man who recoiled in dread when told that a statue was to be erected in his honour. What is more, many of the claims made for him dont quite hold up when pressed into the framework of a heroic narrative.

The Chimborazo, of course, turned out not to be the highest mountain in the world at all. And while Humboldt had probably climbed to a greater height than anybody before him, he did not reach the summit, but had to turn back at around 5,600 metres. The existence of the Casiquiare canal had not only been known to local people, but also to the Acadmie franaise, thanks to reports from the explorer Charles

If we change the focus and turn to presenting a man whose contradictions and ambiguous achievements are a function of his time, then a more nuanced, as well as a truer and more interesting picture emerges. Humboldts life was deeply in tune with the most significant and ambitious themes of early German Romanticism. It was an exceptional life, lived in no less exceptional times.