Adelbert von Chamisso
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Adelbert von Chamisso | |
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Champagne, Kingdom of France | |
Died | 21 August 1838 | (aged 57)
Nationality | Prussian |
Occupation(s) | Poet and botanist |
Known for | Peter Schlemihl, the man who sold his shadow, Views and Remarks on a Voyage of Discovery, Description of a Voyage Round the World, description of many trees of Mexico |
Spouse | Antonie Piaste |
Parents |
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Awards | Prussian Academy of Sciences |
Scientific career | |
Author abbrev. (botany) | Cham. |
Adelbert von Chamisso (German pronunciation:
Life
The son of Louis Marie, Count of
In 1790, the French Revolution drove his parents out of France with their seven children, and they went successively to Liège, the Hague, Würzburg, and Bayreuth, and possibly Hamburg, before settling in Berlin. There, in 1796, the young Chamisso was fortunate in obtaining the post of page-in-waiting to the queen of Prussia, and in 1798 he entered a Prussian infantry regiment as an ensign to train for a career as an army officer.[citation needed]
Shortly thereafter, thanks to the
Chamisso had become a lieutenant in 1801, and in 1805 he accompanied his regiment to
He set out to take up the post, but instead joined the circle of
In 1815, Chamisso was appointed botanist to the
In 1827, partly for the purpose of rebutting the charges brought against him by Kotzebue, he published Views and Remarks on a Voyage of Discovery, and Description of a Voyage Round the World. Both works display great accuracy and industry. His last scientific labor was a tract on the Hawaiian language. Chamisso's travels and scientific researches restrained for a while the full development of his poetical talent, and it was not until his forty-eighth year that he turned back to literature. In 1829, in collaboration with Gustav Schwab, and from 1832 in conjunction with Franz von Gaudy, he brought out the Deutscher Musenalmanach, in which his later poems were mainly published.[1]
Chamisso died in Berlin at the age of 57. His grave is preserved in the
Chamisso collected numerous zoological and botanical specimens as well as occasional human bones.[5] His collections are in the care of a number of European museums.
Botanical work
Chamisso is chiefly remembered for his work as a botanist; his most important contribution, done in conjunction with Diederich Franz Leonhard von Schlechtendal, was the description of many of the most important trees of Mexico in 1830–1831. Also, his Bemerkungen und Ansichten, published in an incomplete form in Kotzebue's Entdeckungsreise (Weimar, 1821) and more completely in Chamisso's Collected Works (1836), and the botanical work, Übersicht der nutzbarsten und schädlichsten Gewächse in Norddeutschland (Review of the Most Useful and the Most Noxious Plants of North Germany, with Remarks on Scientific Botany), of 1829, are esteemed for their careful treatment of their subjects.[1] In 1824 he became a member of the Regensburg Botanical Society.[6]
The genera
Belles lettres (Beautiful letters)
Chamisso's earliest writings, which include a verse translation of the tragedy Le Comte de Comminge in which "heilsam" is used in place of "heilig", show a 20-year-old still struggling to master his new language, and a number of his early poems are in French. Between 1801 and 1804 he became closely associated with other writers and edited their journal.
As a poet Chamisso's reputation stands high.
Legacy
Otto von Kotzebue named Chamisso Island after him.[9] Chamisso is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of Chilean snake, Philodryas chamissonis.[10]
Literary work
He is the author of the famous story, Peter Schlemihl, about a man who sold his shadow and the poet of the short poem "Tragic Story" which tells about a wise monk without the knowledge of common sense who tries to change the direction of his pigtail.[11]
See also
- Adelbert-von-Chamisso-Award
- Chamisso Island
- Chamisso Wilderness
- European and American voyages of scientific exploration
- List of plants of Caatinga vegetation of Brazil
- List of plants of Cerrado vegetation of Brazil
Notes
- ^ a b c d e f g h public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Chamisso, Adelbert von". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 5 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 825–826. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ISBN 978-0-947643-90-4
- ^ Daum, Andreas W. (2019). "German Naturalists in the Pacific around 1800: Entanglement, Autonomy, and a Transnational Culture of Expertise". In Berghoff, Hartmut (ed.). Explorations and Entanglements: Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I. Berghahn Books. pp. 79–102.
- ^ "Botanical Exploration of Southern Africa" - Gunn & Codd (1981)
- ^ Matthias Glaubrecht, Nils Seethaler, Barbara Teßmann, & Katrin Koel-Abt, 2013. The potential of biohistory: Re-discovering Adelbert von Chamisso’s skull of an Aleut collected during the “Rurik” Expedition 1815–1818, in: Alaska. Zoosystematics and Evolution 89 (2): 317–336.
- ^ "History". Regensburg Botanical Society. Retrieved 6 October 2022.
- ISBN 978-1-84246-085-6.
- ^ International Plant Names Index. Cham.
- ^ "Chuckchi Sea Unit, AMNWR". Archived from the original on July 20, 2011.
- ISBN 978-1-4214-0135-5. ("Chamisso", p. 51).
- ^ Adelbert, von Chamisson; William, Makepeace Thackeray. "Tragic Story".
References
- Beidleman, Richard G. (2006). California's Frontier Naturalists. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 48–70. ISBN 978-0-520-92750-6.
- Garland, Mary; Garland, Henry B. (1997). The Oxford companion to German literature (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-815896-7.
- Mornin, Edward (1999). "Adelbert Von Chamisso: A German Poet-Naturalist and His Visit to California". California History. 78 (1): 2–13. JSTOR 25462523.
- Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920). Encyclopedia Americana. .
- Sterling, Paul Gary (2011). "The Voyage of the Rurik: An Historic 1816 Russian Voyage to San Francisco Bay". The Argonaut. 22 (2): 6–35.
External links
- Works by Adelbert von Chamisso at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Adelbert von Chamisso at Internet Archive
- Works by Adelbert von Chamisso at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl, 2005 translation by Michael Haldane
- Biographical sketch (1893) at Google Books
- Hall of Fame-Medusozoa
- Georg Friedrich Kaulfuss and Adelbert von Chamisso: Enumeratio filicum quas in itinere circa terram legit cl. Adalbertus de Chamisso etc. 1824, on GoogleBooks
- Biography and works on Zeno
- Adelbert von Chamisso at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Adelbert von Chamisso at Library of Congress, with 106 library catalogue records