Alexander von Humboldt visits Australia

Alexander von Humboldt was born on 14 September 1769, and the Australian Association of von Humboldt Fellows celebrates its namesake’s birthday annually, normally with dinners of Fellows in capital cities across Australia. This year, Covid-19 restrictions precluded physical gatherings and Fellows met on Zoom. The virtual space allowed for the birthday boy himself to put in an appearance, which greatly enhanced the joy of the occasion. His birthday speech is reproduced below.

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This evening I have ventured beyond the Americas which had such an impact on me in my younger years to come Down Under. I always wanted to visit to Australia with its rich diversity of landscapes, climates, flora and fauna, your Schnabeltier (platypus) and all the marsupials – regrettably, I did not make it in my first 250 years. I have been encouraged to come this evening in light of the celebrations that you had last year to mark my 250th birthday, including the fabulous symposium devoted to “Sharing Knowledge in the Spirit of Humboldt” at Macquarie University.

From a young age, I wanted to explore foreign lands. I developed a particular interest in Australia in the late 1780s as a student at the University of Göttingen. There I met Georg Forster (1754-1794), who had accompanied Captain Cook (1728-1779) on his second voyage to the Pacific. During my youth, I had read and been captivated by Cook’s journals. My lively conversations with Forster intensified my travel bug. Well-known not only as a scientific traveller but also a personage in the Enlightenment movement, Forster influenced me both in terms of pursuing my future explorations and of acquiring more progressive views.

After two semesters in Göttingen, Forster and I spent four months trekking through the Netherlands, England and France. While in England, Forster introduced me to Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), President of the Royal Society. Banks had been the botanist on Cook’s first voyage, which took him to Australia. That introduction was the origin of my valued scientific friendship with Banks who offered me first-hand knowledge of Australia.

I would have particularly liked to come here in the middle of the 19th century but I was too old by then. A number of young Germans arrived in the colonies at that time, seeking to emulate across the seventh continent my scientific travels in the Americas. Take, for example, the Australian explorer Ludwig Leichhardt (1813-ca. 1848). He wrote that I was one “of those men … whose deeds sounded like legends to the boy, filled the youth with rapture and finally drew him to follow a similar direction”.[1] How sad that Leichhardt disappeared without trace on his second major expedition and what a loss to Australian scientific exploration!

Then there was the first Victorian Government Botanist and Director of the Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, Dr Ferdinand Mueller (1825-1896). He said that my “works … inspired [him] to contribute to investigations of the realms of nature, drove [him] … with endless longing, to distant places in order to give the great master [that’s me] a few, potentially valuable stones for the construction of the palace of science”.[2] He was quite a character! He made a prodigious contribution to Australian botany, undertook journeys of exploration and gained such high offices as President of the Royal Society of Victoria. His international scientific recognition was marked by innumerable honours, including being made an hereditary baron by the King of Württemberg.

For a third example of these young scientific adventurers, I turn to Professor Georg Neumayer (1826-1909), Founder of the Melbourne’s Flagstaff Observatory, Government Meteorologist in Victoria and Director of the Magnetic Survey. Neumayer idolised me – it is said that, on his treks across Victoria, he discussed my “theorems with those he met and carr[ied] a well read copy of [my] Cosmos”.[3] I had been introduced to Neumayer between his two sojourns in Australia and backed the magnetic survey that he planned to conduct upon his return to Melbourne in 1857. Significantly, Neumayer was “the first professionally trained physicist to work in Australia”. He brought to his endeavours in the Colony “new standards of precision and sophistication in physical inquiry” while reinforcing my integrative so-called Humboldtian orientation in his work. With his “field-based, observational and world-encompassing style”, he was entirely in my own mould.[4]

Through German Australians such as these I was well-known Down Under in the 19th century. Like others of German background, I faded from the limelight as the German States became a colonial power in your region, and conflicts like the Boer War and World Wars I and II, put us on opposite sides.

However, two contemporary factors have seen me returning to public interest. In 2019, I celebrated my 250th birthday, as you know – such a momentous milestone saw work done all around the globe, including in Australia, re-assessing the significance and impact of my work.

The second factor leading to my ‘renaissance’ relates to one particular aspect of my work – let me remind you that, already in 1800, I contributed the first-recorded description of human-induced climate change. In South America, I saw the impacts of colonisation ― deforestation, the introduction of plantation agriculture, consequent soil erosion and ultimately altered climate patterns. Linking social and economic factors with environmental issues, I highlighted the importance of forests to the ecosystem. Over the years I not only spoke out against environmental destruction but also slavery, colonialism, and showed them all to be connected. I wanted a more democratic society than the repressive Prussian state. My country and yours now have that but, in other aspects, you have not heeded some of the understandings that I won over two centuries ago, when I was very much younger.

Let us consider your contemporary Australian challenges of severe droughts, unprecedented bush fires and increasingly alarming climate change. I look back over the years on interventions which have devastated parts of this ‘lucky’ country and continue to do so – the ravaging of native forests, uncontrolled proliferation of feral animals, severe soil erosion and clogging of some of the magnificent river systems about which young German and other explorers wrote home to us in Europe.

You seem to have forgotten some of the learnings that I sought to promote – the interconnection of the sciences, an integrated view of the natural world, the “unity of nature”, as I have called it. You have also ignored what the First Peoples of Australia would have been able to teach you about caring for and nurturing this country.

In many ways I like your global age, the ease of modern travel and the speed of social communications – how easily I could have conducted my scientific journeys and communicated my findings, if I had been active in the twenty-first century. However, globalisation has brought its own challenges. Seeing we are in 2020, I will highlight the COVID-19 pandemic. How rapidly and widely it has spread with what was your ‘normal’ lifestyle. Many of the countries which have suffered most are those with great deprivation of their people and devastation of their environment.

It is timely that I am with you this evening to highlight again the critical importance of the “unity of nature”. My integrated view of the natural world underpinned so much of what I achieved. Take it to heart as Australia seeks to address its contemporary challenges and contribute on the global stage. From my insights into the inter-connectedness of the sciences, it is clear that, like never before, we need communication and collaboration across disciplines to address the contemporary issues of climate change, sustainability and the pandemic.

I was always a great networker so it has been a delight this evening to widen my circle to include Australia. You will know how I relished receiving all those awards and honours in yesteryear. I am really touched that you still recognise my significance by celebrating my birthday each September. I am wondering what changes I might find in your fair land if I come Down Under again to join one of my birthday dinners in 10, 20 or 50 years time …

May the Australian Association of von Humboldt Fellows long keep my name and contributions alive in Australia – enjoy your evening together. Auf Wiedersehen!

Australian Association of von Humboldt Fellows

Humboldt Fellows have all undertaken periods of research in Germany funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. This year the Melbourne gathering had to go online due to the COVID-19 lock-down.  That enabled interstate colleagues to join the celebration as well as two members of the Foundation to link in from Bonn, Germany. The speaker on the occasion was current President of the Australian Association of von Humboldt Fellows, Professor Gabrielle McMullen AM FRACI BSc(Hons) PhD (Monash).

To learn more about the Australian Association of von Humboldt Fellows visit their website. A report about their most recent biennial meeting, the symposium “Sharing Knowledge in the Spirit of Humboldt” at Macquarie University in 2019, is available here. The proceedings of the symposium have been published by the Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of NSW and are available open access.

Want to learn more about becoming a Humboldt Fellow? Visit the website of the Humboldt Foundation.

To learn more about Alexander von Humboldt head over to this ABC Late Night Live podcast where Phillip Adams and Ingrid Piller discuss his legacy.

References

[1]     H Fiedler (2007) ‘Ludwig Leichhardt and Alexander von Humboldt’, Alexander von Humboldt im Netz (HiN), VIII (15), 1–7, see p. 2.

[2]     Melbourner Deutsche Zeitung, 7 (21 October 1859), 42.

[3]     C Heathcote (2001) ‘When Science Meets Art: Humboldt, von Guérard and the Australian Wilderness’, Art Monthly Australia, 145, 27–31, see p. 31.

[4]     RW Home (1991) ‘Georg von Neumayer and the Flagstaff Observatory, Melbourne’ in D Walker and J Tampke (eds.), From Berlin to the Burdekin: The German Contribution to the Development of Australian Science, Exploration and the Arts, Sydney: New South Wales University Press, pp. 40–53, see p. 51.