Tracing Alexander von Humboldt in Europe

Alexander von Humboldt is Germany's most renowned naturalist. To measure the world, he climbed the highest mountains in the Andes and crossed remote primeval forests along the Orinoco River in South America (picture). As an explorer, he was already a legend in his own time. This famous portrait of the young Humboldt is now in Berlin's Old National Gallery.

Alexander von Humboldt was born 250 years ago, on September 14th, 1769. He spent his childhood in Schloss Tegel, or Tegel Palace. Even as a child he loved to collect insects and stones in its huge garden. He and his brother Wilhelm were privately educated by the best tutors available; books whetted his appetite for scientific exploration. Nowadays there are guided tours through the palace.

Humboldt studied at the Mining Academy in Freiberg, the world's oldest university of mining and metallurgy. In eight months, he completed a course that took others three years. Every day he went underground with the miners to search for plants and minerals. Tourists can now also go down into the shaft. Freiberg has been part of the Erzgebirge Mining Region UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2019.

In Weimar, Humboldt met the great minds of his time, among them the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and the writers Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (pictured center). Humboldt was especially impressed by Goethe's views on nature. The encounter led him to a holistic view of the world, linking botany, chemistry, medicine, geology and physics.

In 1799 Humboldt set out on his exploratory expedition to the Americas. He boarded ship at La Coruña in Spain. His first stop was the Canary Island of Tenerife. Humboldt climbed Mount Teide (picture), Tenerife's highest peak, measured the blue of the sky and classified plants. In letters he raved about the air, delightful location and exotic vegetation. It was his last stop in Europe.

Humboldt journeyed through Latin America for five years with his assistant Aimé Bonpland. On June 22nd, 1802, he climbed Mount Chimbarazo in the Andes (picture), at 6,310 meters (20,702 ft) above sea level, considered at the time to be the world's highest mountain. In a way, his precise geographical measurements and classification of flora made him — after Columbus — America's second discoverer.

After his travels in the Americas, Humboldt returned to the city that had won his heart, Paris. He collated his findings, gave lectures, rushed from one party to the next and maintained a lavish lifestyle. From his apartment on the Quai Voltaire, he had a direct view of the Louvre (picture).

In early 1827 Humboldt was 57 years old, world-famous — and broke. He had to return to Berlin. The Prussian king approved just one more expedition: to Russia. Hundreds of rock samples and finds from that expedition are now in Berlin's Museum of Natural History. Humboldt's pet, a vasa parrot, now stuffed, has also found its final resting place there.

Humboldt died at the ripe old age of 89 in Berlin. He was interred in the family burial plot in the garden of Tegel Palace. Ten years after his death, when he would have been a hundred, people around the world had not forgotten the famous naturalist and explorer. From Buenos Aires to Mexico City, from New York to Moscow, tens of thousands celebrated his hundredth birthday.

In Berlin, Alexander von Humboldt (picture), like his brother Wilhelm, the linguist and founder of the university, has a place of honor in front of its main building. Like no other pair of brothers in German history, the naturalist and the philosopher represent the close kinship between the sciences and the humanities.