The impact of the Americas on the German-speaking world, as on Europe itself, was incalculable in its manifold scientific and artistic aspects. The “discovery,” and the urge to explore further, energized the development of cartographic and navigation science. The accumulation of vast new natural history data and specimens boosted the awareness of biological and physical science. Plant products like tobacco, chocolate, and abundant sugar began revolutionizing European social life and discourse. Advanced thinking about science led to new readings of scripture and to new exploration of traditional understandings.
Encounters with indigenous peoples offered new images of human existence, sponsored new linguistic study, led to new artistic and literary portrayals, and to a thoroughly new ethnological consciousness. Colonial experiments led to new notions of government and social order. Late eighteenth-century German intellectual interest focused in particular on the promise of a newly conceived nation in North America, removed from the rigid traditional economic and social categories and stratification of Europe.
Sebastian Brant, 1458-1521. Stultifera nauis: Narragonice p[ro]fect[i]onis nunq[uam]satis laudata nauis. Basel: Johann Bergmann, [1498].
Known in English as The Ship of Fools, this is a translation of: Das Narrenschiff, originally published in 1494 in Basel. The work is a long didactic poem in which Brant comments upon human weakness and contemporary behavior. In one he comments that men sent out by King Ferdinand had found people in distant islands who live much like beasts in a state of nature—a very early literary reference to Columbus’s narrative report. In the present section, Brant makes light of those who surround themselves with many books, but have little understanding of their content or how to use them.
Historische Beschreibung der Fürstlichen Kindtauff Fräwlein Elisbethen zu Hessen. Kassel: Wilhelm Wessel, 1598.
This festival book provides a visual record and narrative of the event celebrating the baptism of Elizabeth of Hessen-Kassel, daughter of Moritz (1572-1625) Landgrave of Hessen-Kassel, and the tournament held at that occasion. The illustrations are by Wilhelm Dilich, who also produced an influential topographic survey of Hesse. The book includes a generous section on the Americas along with this etching depicting a procession of American Indians playing instruments, with six figures carrying an Indian princess on a palanquin; another etching includes a female warrior. Supporting text provides information on the history of American voyages and ethnographic information for Mexico, Brazil and Virginia. American natives were featured in European festivals as early as 1551.
Johannes Kepler, 1571-1630. Tabulæ Rudolphinæ, quibus astronomicæ scientiæ, temporum longinquitate collapsæ restauratio continetur. Tandem traducta in Germaniam, inque aulam et nomen Rudolphi imp. anno MDIIC. [Ulmæ :Ioannes Keplerus] for Jonæ Saurii, [1627-after 1658].
The work in this volume was planned and the initial steps begun by Tycho Brahe (a Dane), who was also responsible for the selection of the title. While much of the book was printed in 1627-28, the world map by Philipp Eckebrecht, dated Nuremberg, 1630, was issued much later, after 1658; it is dedicated to Holy Roman Emperor Leopold who ruled from 1658 to 1705. The world map is displayed in one central full circle and two outer semicircles; America is principally represented on the left side, but some part of it appears in each of the divisions. The map is bordered by a double-headed Hapsburg eagle. The map was prepared by Eckebrecht, a German merchant, at the request of the noted German astronomer, Johannes Kepler, to illustrate his published astronomical tables. The book itself credits Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612) as a patron of the sciences.
Athanasius Kircher, S. J., 1602-1680. Mundus subterraneus, in XII libros digestus. Amsterdam: Johan Janssonius à Waesberge & sons, [1678].
In this study of the complex world beneath the earth, Kircher, a Jesuit polymath, addressed mining in one chapter. Here is shown how the silver mines, specifically in Potosí, Peru (present-day Bolivia), were worked. Miners are shown, one holding a torch, climbing a double ladder from a mine in a mountain. The miners wear packs on their backs to carry the ore.
Theodor Zwinger, 1658-1724. Theatrum botanicum, das ist: Neu vollkommenes Kräuter-Buch. [Basel: Jacob Bertsche; Franckfurt: Johann Philipp Richter, 1696].
The present herbal was based on Bernhard Verzascha's edition of P. A. Mattioli's early Kreüterbuch, but so much enlarged and altered that it practically constituted a new work. Among the 1209 woodcuts of plants in the volume, shown here are views of the Datura plant with its roots, leaves, spiny fruit, and flowers. Datura stramonium, on left, might be native to Asia and introduced first to Europe and then to North America by Europeans as early as the Jamestown settlement. One of its common names, jimson weed, is thought to be a corruption of Jamestown weed. The stinking datura on right may be Datura wrightii, native to Mexico and the southwestern United States. Datura is commonly known as sacred thorn-apple, jimsonweed, thorn apple, angel trumpet, and sacred datura. All its parts are toxic. It is considered native to the Americas, but is now known throughout India and Asia. The text notes that the plant shown on the left was introduced to Europe from the Orient, although its names include Pomme de Peru and Hyoscyamus Peruvianus. The original illustrations (1586) were by Konrad Gesner and Joachim Camerarius. Zwinger was professor of physics and botany at Basel.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1646-1716. Relatio ad inclytam Societatem Leopoldinam Naturae Curiosorum de novo antidysenterico Americano magnis successibus comprobato. Hanover & Wolfenbüttel: Gottfried Freytag, 1696.
The indigenous American drug, ipecacuanha, seems not to have been used in Europe before 1672. It was applied as an emetic and a remedy for dysentery. The renowned mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz cites it as one of the Brazilian botanical resources described by Willem Piso in his mid-century Dutch study. Leibniz performed advanced work in a host of different disciplines and is recognized as one of three great seventeenth-century advocates of rationalism, along with Descartes and Spinoza. After losing two of his patrons and seeing no opportunities for service in the courts of Paris or Vienna, Leibniz accepted a post from the Duke of Brunswick in Hanover, including the important roles as Privy Counselor and Librarian of the Ducal Library. During that time the Duke became an Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, and the House of Hanover was designated as the royal family of England. Leibniz played some role in the diplomatic negotiations that resulted in the British Act of Settlement of 1701, under which the Electress Sophia of Hanover and her descent were legally empowered to assume the British crown at a future time.
Rudolf Christian Wagner, 1671-1741. Gyros convolvulorum. praeside Rudolpho Christiano Wagnero mathematum in hac julia professore publico ac ordinario dissertationibus duabus mathematico-physicis evolvere tentabit autor respondens Johann. Georg. Gvilielm. Starcken Nortstemio-Hildesiensis. [Helmstedt]: Stanno Hammiano, [1705].
The engraved frontispiece shows microscopic crosscut sections of sixteen plants (climbers), depicting their cellular structures. Among the plants treated in this botanical dissertation are samples from Virginia, Brazil, and Jamaica. The author at the Universität Helmstedt was Johann Georg Wilhelm Starcken. The work was done under the direction of the mathematician and physicist Rudolf Christian Wagner, who was a close colleague of Leibniz. Numerous German academic dissertations in the eighteenth and late seventeenth centuries addressed American plants and often their medical properties.
Mosheh bar Avraham. [Sefer Tela'ot Mosheh]. [Halle] : [Mosheh bar Avraham], 472 [1711].
This work of geography contains a description of America, only the third ever to appear in Yiddish. The accounts are based on the works of Abraham Farissol and Gedaliah Ibn Yahya (1697). Yiddish is a blend of medieval German dialects; it served as a lingua franca for Jews across central and eastern Europe, often picking up loan words from Slavic languages. The title is transliterated from Hebrew, and the text is in Yiddish in Hebrew characters.
Pierre Le Lorrain, abbé de Vallemont. Merckwürdigkeiten der Natur und Kunst, in Zeugung, Fortpflanzung und Vermehrung der Gewächse; Oder der Ackerbau und die Gärtnerey in ihrer Vollkommenheit. Welchen beygefüget eine kurtze Unterweisung die Obst-Bäume recht zu beschneiden. Bautzen: Johann G. Hüneln, 1714.
Offered in this German translation of Vallemont’s work is a view of sugar maple tapping in America, where the tree is indigenous. The text on growing fruit trees was translated by Ferdinand Ludwig von Bressler from Vallemont’s original, Curiositez de la nature et de l'art sur la végétation (Paris; 1705). The Abbé de Vallemont had interests in theology, medicine, numismatics, and botany. At Versailles he was said to frequent the gardens, observing with great curiosity the plants and the work of the gardeners. Another curiosity in the volume is the account of oyster-bearing tree in Guadeloupe.
Johann Jakob Scheuchzer. Physica Sacra. Augsburg & Ulm: [Christian Ulrich Wagner], 1731-35.
In his Biblical nature series popularly known as the “copperplate Bible” or Kupfer-Bibel, J.J. Scheuchzer drew in texts and illustration for the natural world far beyond the lands of the Bible, incorporating American snakes and birds and creatures of more remote parts of Africa and Asia, all in the dual purpose of celebrating increased knowledge of the natural world and affirming the Bible as a work of universal application.
Kurt von Faber du Faur wrote, “In Scheuchzer's gigantic work, Physica sacra, the Baroque attains, philosophically as well as artistically, its high point and its conclusion. It is the last of those elegant works which do not really contain illustrations to a text but which are, in effect, composed of splendid plates with a text to accompany them. In Scheuchzer's works everything tends toward the new style in the art of illustration; nonetheless the old technique is still predominant.”
Scheuchzer’s central designs were developed by Johann Melchior Füssli and the elaborate borders by Johann Daniel Preissler. The plates were finely executed by a group of skilled engravers including Georg Daniel Heumann and Johann August Corvinus. The author died in the course of the monumental task of publication.
Johann Jakob Scheuchzer. Physica Sacra. Augsburg & Ulm: [Christian Ulrich Wagner], 1731-35.
Like his father. J. J. Scheuchzer collected fossils, believing them to be relics of the Noachian Flood in biblical times. He spent much time exploring the Alps and noting their physical features. Mountains were a bewildering part of the natural landscape insofar as there was no specific explanation for their purpose in the Bible, and Scheuchzer regarded all of nature's creation as physical manifestations of the Divine mind. He concluded that mountain ranges and valleys must have been formed as a result of enormous pressure, as an unprecedented volume of water flooded the landscape.
Over the previous century, Protestant scholars mostly in western Europe speculated that another race of humans might have inhabited the New World, that the Flood might not have swept over the entire globe, being theologically necessary only for the descendants of Adam. Scheuchzer emphatically rejected these theories, which conflicted with a literal interpretation of Scripture. Instead, he offered a view of the Flood encompassing the entire globe, including America and Africa.
Johann Friedrich Fritz. Orientalisch- und occidentalischer Sprachmeister. Leipzig, Christian Friedrich Gessner, 1748.
This survey of languages includes specimens of the Lord's prayer in eight Indigenous languages of the Americas: "Mexicana", "Poconchica", "Carabaica", "Savanahica", "Virginiana", "Mohogica", "Karirica", and "Guarinica sive Brasilica".
Pedro Cudena, active ca. 1634; Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1738-1815), editor. Beschreibung des portugieschen Amerika … Ein spanisches Manuscript in der Wolfenbüttelschen Bibliothek, herausgegeben vom Herrn Hofrath Lessing. Mit Anmerkungen und Zusätzen begleitet von Christian Leiste. Braunschweig: Ducal Orphanage Bookstore, 1780.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, best known as a dramatist, philosopher, and essayist, introduced Enlightenment values to the German stage, among them the ideal of religious tolerance, as dramatically conveyed in Nathan der Weise (1779). In it there is a symbolic confrontation between the three great Abrahamic, monotheistic religions, resolved with the help of a pious Jew. The character was inspired by Lessing's friendship with the Jewish-German philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. Lessing himself favored a “Christianity of Reason.”
Lessing worked as an editor and labored on the project of creating a national theater, but accepted in 1770 the post of Librarian of the Ducal Library at Wolfenbüttel, being preceded in this role by Leibniz. Among many other projects, he discovered and promoted the publication of a manuscript entitled "Discripcion de mil y treinta y ocho leguas de tierra del esto de Brasil, conquista del Marañion y Gran Pará," dated Madrid 20 de Septemb., 1634. The Wolfenbüttel manuscript includes an anonymous early German translation, here edited with corrections by C. Leiste. For this publication, Lessing provided an explanatory foreword. The text was also published in an academic journal.
Johann Christian Müller, 1796. Anleitung zum Selbstunterricht auf der Harmonica. Leipzig: Siegfried Lebrecht Crusius, [1788].
Benjamin Franklin greatly improved the technology of the armonica, or glass harmonica, which a number of European musicians had experimented with in various ways and played. In this volume, Müller offers instruction and tunes, including a small engraved portrait of the master, who was a popular figure in Europe.
August von Kotzebue, 1761-1819. Die Spanier in Peru: oder Rollas Tod. Ein romantisches Trauerspiel in fünf Akten. Leipzig: Paul Gotthelf Kummer, 1796.
Kotzebue comments on tragic aspects of the conquest of Latin America, but at the same time held a certain contempt for popular movements, freedom, and liberal aspirations. John Quincy Adams reported from Germany that he had seen most of Kotzebue’s plays, then in fashion.
Johann Gottfried Seume, 1763-1810. Rückerinnerungen von Seume und Münchhausen. Frankfurt am Main: Varrentrapp & Venner, [1797].
As a young man, Seume was caught up in a Hessian press gang and sold into British service during the American Revolution. He was delivered by ship to Halifax, Nova Scotia, but was never actively involved in the war. Afterward, he held military and academic positions in Europe and traveled extensively. There are in this memoir numerous references to Nova Scotia, and one senses a certain wistfulness about his time there, involuntary as it may have been.
Johann Gottfried Herder, 1744-1803. Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. Carlsruhe: Christian Gottlieb Schmieder, 1792-94.
Herder was a philologist, philosopher, poet, theologian, and literary critic. He was raised in a modest Prussian household, but with self-focused learning was able to study under Immanuel Kant and Johann Georg Hamann at the University of Königsberg. Growing up in the easternmost part of Germany at the time, and later teaching in Riga on the Baltic, Herder had a strong sense of the importance of national identity for the Lettish (Latvian) and various Slavic populations whose culture was suppressed by cosmopolitan German culture, just as various ethnic identities were suppressed by the mainstream cultures in France, Spain, and Great Britain. Herder’s study of the History of Mankind laid the intellectual foundations for a romantic veneration of the nation as the basis for identity.
Herder accepted and admired the concept of the Noble Savage of America and believed the Americas offered Europeans an opportunity to reflect upon their own false Christianity and degeneracy. But he also understood America to be a vast and complex aggregation of climates and nations, and advised against common generalizations about it. Herder expected western Europe to shed its Christian identity and decline, while he thought the Slavs would hold to their religious identity and values, and prevail.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832. Werter and Charlotte. The sorrows of Werter. A German Story. Boston: For Thomas and Andrews; Sold by I. Thomas, Worcester; by Thomas, Andrews, and Penniman, Albany; and by Thomas, Andrews, and Butler, Baltimore, 1798.
Here the first of two works was translated from Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, originally published in 1774 in Leipzig. This passionate novel in the form of letters was fueled by the poet’s own life and was a popular sensation in Europe, inspiring many other works. The novel was eventually printed in North America, with an edition appearing in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1789. The present edition was financed through sales in four cities.
Christian Ernst Wünsch, 1744-1828 Unterhaltungen über den Menschen. Leipzig : Johann G. I. Breitkopf, John & Co., 1796.
Wünsch’s anthropological study has been opened to drawings of Native Americans, men and women from Canada, the Caribbean, Florida, Mexico, Peru, Guiana, and Patagonia (the mythical giants). Included as well are articles from those cultures: bows and arrows, the pineapple, feather headdresses, and an axe. Wünsch thought at length of possible migration patterns, and offered in another plate some theoretical pathways across Asia and into the Americas by way of the Anian or Bering Strait and the Pacific islands. Wünsch was a colorful figure, rising from being a lowly helper in a weaving shop to master weaver, then a self-taught mathematician, astronomer, traveling merchant, and finally doctoral student in Leipzig. Wünsch published a number of books and was named Professor of mathematics and physics at Frankfurt an der Oder. From an early age he adopted a critical attitude toward Biblical learning, but retained his religiosity.
Joachim Heinrich Campe, 1746-1818. [Entdeckung von Amerika. Hebrew].[Metsi’at ha-arets ha-hadashah : kolel ha-gevurot ... le-‘et metso ha-arets ha-zot... sefer rishon]. Altona : [Samuel & Juda Bonn, brothers, 1807].
The American Revolution spurred greater interest in the continent’s history as a whole. One of many works to come out of this trend was Joachim Campe’s narrative of Columbus and the discovery of America. It was first published in German at Hamburg in 1780 and soon translated into other languages. The Hebrew edition of the first part was first published in 1806. The author was a resident of Hamburg, and the uncle of Samson Raphael Hirsch. It was translated by Frankfurt Moses Mendelsohn, and includes an approbation by Zebi Hirsch, rabbi in Altona. Also included are a Hebrew-Yiddish glossary, and a navigational illustration.
Just west of Hamburg, Altona used an open gate in its coat of arms, and was indeed a town that accepted persons who had been persecuted elsewhere, among them Huguenots, Mennonites, Jews, and others, including at times the poor of Hamburg. It was in the late eighteenth century a northern German center of the Enlightenment. In the 1790s, compulsory education was enacted and essential steps were taken toward Jewish emancipation.
Alexander von Humboldt, 1769-1859. Recueil d'observations de zoologie et d'anatomie comparée, faites dans l'océan Atlantique, dans l'intérieur du Nouveau Continent et dans la mer du Sud pendant les années 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802 et 1803; par Al. de Humboldt et A. Bonpland. Paris: F. Schœll, et chez G.el Dufour et Comp., J.H. Stône., 1811-1833 [1812-1833].
Alexander von Humboldt’s extensive research stays in Latin America yielded much new information on natural history, including new taxonomies. The extensive publications resulting from his field notes represent the first work on that large area from a modern scientific point of view. Humboldt was also one of the first to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic were once joined, in particular, South America and Africa. Shown here are the Andean condor and a small monkey, perhaps a red howler. Humboldt’s brother Wilhelm was a linguist, philosopher, and official in the Prussian government. The Humboldt University of Berlin, founded by Wilhelm, was named for both of them.
Maximilian, Prinz von Wied, 1782-1867. Travels in Brazil, in the years 1815, 1816, 1817. London: S. & R. Bentley, for Henry Colburn & Co., 1820.
This popular text was translated from Reise nach Brasilien in den Jahren 1815…bis 1817, 1820. Encouraged by his mentor, Alexander von Humboldt, Wied traveled to Brazil from 1815 to 1817. In this scene, a Puri man, woman, and child in their lean-to. The man reclines in a hammock while the woman embraces the child. A creature, probably a monkey, roasts over a fire while a dog sleeps nearby. Spears and gourds or melons are also portrayed.
Gotthilff Nicolas Lutyens. Etwas über den gegenwärtigen Zustand der Auswanderungen und Ansiedlungen im Staate von Pennsylvanien in Nord-Amerika, besonders in Ansehung der Deutschen. Hamburg : Carl Ernst Bohn, 1796.
From the advanced viewpoint of the 1790s, Gotthilf Lutyens offers a greatly more positive assessment of the life available for Germans in North America than did the anxious Mittelberger of the 1750s, or the deeply concerned Weckerlin. At the beginning of this volume, he offers, “In its ever-increasing prosperity, the united America exceeds the expectations of those who held the most favorable opinions of this developing empire upon its confirmed independence in 1783.” He writes that in Pennsylvania one finds “entire duchies that are occupied mostly by Germans or their descendants.”
“Here one encounters German customs, German prejudices, and, though somewhat corrupted, the German language, so that one believes himself to be transported to the middle of the Palatinate, to Alsace or Swabia, from which regions most of the Germans here namely originate.” These Germans, he adds are largely poor artisans or farmers without education, yet nearly all are at least very prosperous. America is no place to get rich quickly, like the East Indies or Peru, but a fruitful, beautiful land where industrious, steadfast and motivated persons are able to gain property, adequate income, and an independent prosperity. On the other hand, no one should think he can support himself through the use of a pen there, and there is no place more acrimonious over property than America, where several people may believe themselves the owner of an estate, and ownership must be established through costly legal suits that often leave someone the owner of nothing.
Exhibition prepared by dennis landis.
on view in the reading room from may to September 15, 2013.
Images: Das Kleine Davidische Psalterspiel der Kinder Zions, Ephrata, 1795 & Hernán Cortés, Ferdinandi Cortesii. Von dem Newen Hispanien, Augsburg, 1550