Who was Alexander von Humboldt?*
A German genius?
Definitely a privileged aristocrat from an old German noble bloodline.
Confirmed bachelor, no love affair to any woman has been documented - homosexual?
All-round academic, intellectual and a good friend of Goethe?
A lunatic traveller challenging the boundaries of the humanly possible with no regard to his own health?
An eloquent, charismatic orator and respectable guest in the world's major houses?
A pedant and manic writer in the service of science?
Probably a little bit of everything. Certainly an outstanding personality, a visionary with the ability to think within complex structures and a mentor for freedom and human rights.
What does Humboldt mean to us?
Not only did he provide the route but also a very special spirit of travelling . And of course the most important book in our luggage: Humboldt's "Letters from Russia".
* "Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt (September 14, 1769 – May 6, 1859) was a German naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist, Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography was the foundation of the field of biogeography. Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in Latin America, exploring and describing it for the first time in a manner generally considered to be a modern scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. He was one of the first to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). Later, his five-volume work, Kosmos (1845), attempted to unify the various branches of scientific knowledge. Humboldt supported and worked with other scientists, including Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, Justus von Liebig, Louis Agassiz, Matthew Fontaine Maury, and most notably, Aimé Bonpland, with whom he conducted much of his scientific exploration."
