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“Mason without apron”
(2019)
While the lack of religion in Alexander von Humboldt’s work and the criticism he received is well known, his relationship with Freemasonry is relatively unexplored. Humboldt appears on some lists of “illustrious Masons,” and several lodges carry his name, but was he really a member? If so, when and where did he join a lodge? Are there any comments by him about Freemasonry? Who were the renowned Masons he was surrounded by? This paper examines these questions, but more importantly it analyzes what a membership might have meant for Humboldt’s scholarly work. It looks particularly at the unprecedented success he enjoyed in the United States in the early 19th century and the factors behind it. What could he have gained from these connections and how was he viewed by Masonic leaders and lodges in the trans-Atlantic world?
The author's recently published monograph on Alexander von Humboldt[1] describes the multiple images of this great cultural icon. The book is a metabiographical study that shows how from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present day Humboldt has served as a nucleus of crystallisation for a variety of successive socio-political ideologies, each producing its own distinctive representation of him. The historiographical implications of this biographical diversity are profound and support current attempts to understand historical scholarship in terms of memory cultures.
Since 2011 the Comorian Island of Mayotte has been France’s 101st département, thereby becoming part of the European Union. As a result, France has consolidated and strengthened its strategic position in the Indian Ocean. With the change of political status in 2011, new developments have occurred in Mayotte. It is still unclear whether the expected economic boom, extensive social benefits or injection of EU regional funds can help to alleviate poverty and raise living standards. There is concern, however, that massive immigration to Mayotte from the surrounding territories is diminishing any progress and will continue to do so. Not only France but also the EU will have to adapt to new immigration problems due to this new external border. In this situation one thing is clear: the language contact between French and the local languages, which is the result of political developments, is leading to new dynamics. The diglossic situation east of Africa, between French as the dominant language and local languages like Shimaoré or Shibushi spoken in Mayotte will become more marked in the next few years.
A few months before his death, A. v. Humboldt attended the celebration in honor of the 127th birthday of George Washington at the US legation in Berlin. A letter to the American Envoy, Joseph A. Wright (1810 – 1867), underlines Humboldt’s admiration for the fi rst president of the United States. At the same time Humboldt asked the diplomat to mail a letter to the German-American Bernard Moses (1832 – 1897) in Clinton, Louisiana, who had named his son Alexander Humboldt Moses (grave on the Hebrew Rest Cemetery #2 in New Orleans, burial plot A, 12, 5). It appears to be possible that the Moses family still owns Humboldt’s letter.
Though Humboldt’s travels to the Americas have been analyzed from a wide range of viewpoints, there are specific aspects that still await further investigation. Little is written about Humboldt in the field, specifically how he moved between different locations and simultaneously measured and mapped places and phenomena. The aim of this article is to discuss the triad movement-measure-ment-map that led to the development of specific practices of knowledge building on the move. Humboldt’s search for the connections between the watersheds of the Orinoco and the Amazon rivers and the resulting maps and drawings are used as an example to point out his cartographic impulse in his quest to understand and explain the physical world.
Address on the opening of the Alexander von Humboldt Season
in Quito, Ecuador, on 13 February 2019
(2019)
Writing travel, writing life
(2022)
The book compares the texts of three Swiss authors: Ella Maillart, Annemarie Schwarzenbach and Nicolas Bouvier. The focus is on their trip from Genève to Kabul that Ella Maillart and Annemarie Schwarzenbach made together in 1939/1940 and Nicolas Bouvier 1953/1954 with the artist Thierry Vernet. The comparison shows the strong connection between the journey and life and between ars vivendi and travel literature.
This book also gives an overview of and organises the numerous terms, genres, and categories that already exist to describe various travel texts and proposes the new term travelling narration. The travelling narration looks at the text from a narratological perspective that distinguishes the author, narrator, and protagonist within the narration.
In the examination, ten motifs could be found to characterise the travelling narration: Culture, Crossing Borders, Freedom, Time and Space, the Aesthetics of Landscapes, Writing and Reading, the Self and/as the Other, Home, Religion and Spirituality as well as the Journey. The importance of each individual motif does not only apply in the 1930s or 1950s but also transmits important findings for living together today and in the future.
Connecting the new world
(2012)
This article explores the link between the profound technological transformations of the nineteenth century and the life and work of the Prussian scholar Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859). It analyses how Humboldt sought to appropriate the revolutionary new communication and transportation technologies of the time in order to integrate the American continent into global networks of commercial, intellectual and material exchange. Recent scholarship on Humboldt’s expedition to the New World (1799-1804) has claimed that his descriptions of tropical landscapes opened up South America to a range of ‘transformative interventions’ (Pratt) by European capitalists and investors. These studies, however, have not analysed the motivations underlying Humboldt’s support for such intrusions into nature. Furthermore, they have not explored the role that such projects played in shaping Humboldt’s understanding of the forces behind the progress of societies. To comprehend Humboldt’s approval for human interventions in America’s natural world, this study first explores the role that eighteenth-century theories of progress and the notion of geographical determinism played in shaping his conception of civilisational development. It will look at concrete examples of transformative interventions in the American hemisphere that were actively proposed by Humboldt and intended to overcome natural obstacles to human interaction. These were the use of steamships, electric telegraphy, railroads and large-scale canals that together enabled global trade and communication to occur at an unprecedented pace. All these contemporary innovations will be linked to the four motifs of nets, mobility, progress and acceleration, which were driving forces behind the ‘transformation of the world’ that took place in the course of the nineteenth century.
Acclimatization
(2003)
Together with their wives Otto and Richard Schomburgk arrived in Port Adelaide (South Australia) on August 16th 1849. The essay looks at how these two brothers, who had received their scientific training and promotion in the circle surrounding Alexander von Humboldt, reacted to the unfamiliar conditions in the young British colony. Some indication will be given as to the differences between the Schomburgk brothers treatment of the natural resources of the new colony and that of the English colonists of the time.