Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation acquires Alexander von Humboldt's "American Travel Diaries"
Press release from 12/04/2013
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation has acquired Alexander von Humboldt's American Travel Diaries. Written partly in German and partly in French during his great voyage of discovery through Central and South America between 1799 and 1804, these unique and internationally highly significant historical writings are regarded as the second scientific discovery of America. There are almost 4,000 pages, densely written and with Humboldt's own sketches. The purchase of the travel diaries was made possible by the extraordinary support of public and private sponsors.
The acquisition and handover of the nine leather-bound diaries to the Berlin State Library will be honoured with a ceremony in early 2014, the date of which will be announced in good time.
Alexander von Humboldt's diaries are, alongside his letters, the most important surviving original documents of his travels. They are outstanding scientific, travel-literary and personal records of a universal scholar. Humboldt noted down everything he had seen, worked out, measured and compared and the insights he had gained. He used these notes for his publications after his return to Europe. However, while the travelogues "Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent" (Paris 1805-1839) only describe a third of the five-year expedition to America, the diaries that have now been acquired cover the entire journey. The diaries have not yet been fully edited. These sources on Alexander von Humboldt's knowledge, research and working methods are now available to the scientific community.
Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, says of the purchase of the diaries: "The preservation of these works for Germany as a centre of research was a matter close to my heart. Humboldt's notes symbolise the beginning of modern science with a previously untapped variety and quantity of observations. They are certainly among the most important desiderata of 19th century research. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation was only able to realise this once-in-a-century acquisition thanks to the comprehensive and committed support of public and private sponsors. My very special thanks go to them. I would also like to thank the seller, who refrained from offering the diaries for sale internationally and instead negotiated exclusively with the Foundation."
On behalf of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Director General Barbara Schneider-Kempf commented: "Alexander von Humboldt's American travel diaries are the perfect complement to the estate of the explorer and scholar, which is also part of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin's holdings. Digitisation and indexing projects as well as new edition projects will make the most important collection of sources on Humboldt's life's work available to a broad, interested public in the future."
Humboldt's diaries have had a chequered history. They were previously owned by one of Wilhelm von Humboldt's descendants and the owner of Tegel Palace, Wilhelm von Humboldt's former residence, from where, according to the known tradition, they were taken away by the Red Army in May 1945 and transferred to the Lenin Library in Moscow. In 1958, the government of the Soviet Union handed over the works to the German State Library in East Berlin as part of a major cultural property restitution programme. They were kept there as a deposit. After the reunification of the two German states and the merging of the state libraries in East and West Berlin, the diaries were transferred to the SPK in 1992. The SPK returned them to the seller as owner and kept them for him in the State Library as a deposit until they were returned to the archive at Tegel Palace in 2005. The negotiations for the current sale to the Foundation were conducted on the seller's side by art consultant Cristoph Graf Douglas.
The acquisition by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation was largely financed by public funds provided by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Berlin Lottery Foundation. However, the purchase was only possible thanks to the additional major commitment of other sponsors. The Kulturstiftung der Länder, the Würth Group Foundation, the Hermann Reemtsma Foundation, the Volkswagen Foundation, Deutsche Bank AG, the Robert Bosch Foundation, the Gerda Henkel Foundation and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation provided financial support. The Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation has also contributed by pre-financing a large sum so that the purchase price can be paid in 2013.
The seller will use the vast majority of the proceeds from the sale for the further preservation and maintenance of Tegel Palace, the burial site and its park, an ensemble whose importance as an intellectual-historical document of the life and work of the Humboldt brothers can hardly be overestimated and which is open to the public. It also houses an important research library on the brothers Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt.
From 2014, the University of Potsdam and the Berlin State Library will be conducting the ambitious research project "Alexander von Humboldt's American Travel Diaries". It is headed by the internationally renowned Humboldt expert Prof Ottmar Ette. As part of this project, which is supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the collections will be conserved, contextualised and digitised. Other research institutions such as the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities are also involved in the joint project.