German Place Names in North America (soon) > Featured Bios > Adelbert Chamisso Bio

A Life Between Two Nations

He was born in France. He died in Germany. In the 57 years between those two events Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838) led an interesting but often estranged life that took him around the world for several years. Chamisso was one of several Germans involved with Imperial Russian colonization efforts in Alaska, Hawaii, and California in the early 1800s. When he wasn’t traveling, Chamisso spent all of his adult life in Germany.

“I am a Frenchman in Germany, and a German in France, a Catholic among the Protestants, a Protestant among the Catholics, a Jacobin among the aristocrats, and among democrats a nobleman. I belong nowhere; everywhere I am the foreigner.” – Adelbert von Chamisso (as quoted in German on a memorial plaque in Berlin)*

On 30 January 1781 the poet, botanist, naturalist, and explorer Adelbert von Chamisso was christened Louis Charles Adélaïde de Chamissot de Boncourt at Boncourt Palace, the ancestral seat of the family, near Ante, Châlons-en-Champagne, France. Adelbert was the fourth son of seven children born to Louis Marie, Count of Chamisso, and his wife Anne Marie Gargam.
*Gedenktafel/Memorial plaque at Chamisso’s former residence (no longer standing) at Friedrichstraße 235, Berlin-Mitte

Portrait of Adelbert von Chamisso in 1831. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons

Eight years after Adelbert’s birth, in 1790, the French Revolution left the family’s home in ashes, with the loss of everything they had. Fleeing the Revolution, the family abandoned France via Belgium and the Netherlands, and then moved around in Germany before finally settling in Berlin in 1796, where the two older brothers were able to get positions as private tutors. The young Chamisso was fortunate in obtaining the post of page-in-waiting to the queen of Prussia. In 1798 he entered a Prussian infantry regiment as an ensign to train for a career as an army officer. In 1801 he became a lieutenant, now calling himself Ludwig von Chamisso. But he ended his military career in 1807.

The rest of his family had earlier returned to France while Adelbert remained in Berlin. Around 1810 Chamisso also returned to France, but his parents had died. He spent two years in France and Switzerland, becoming a member of writer Madame de Staël’s circle of friends in Coppet, near Geneva. There he also devoted himself to botanical research. In 1812 he returned to Berlin, where he continued his scientific studies. In the summer of 1813, he wrote the partially autobiographical fairy tale narrative (with a poetic introduction) Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte (1814), about a man who sells his shadow to the devil. This, the most famous of all his works, has been translated into most European languages (English by William Howitt). Also see the dual-language (German-English) edition from Amazon.com: Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte / The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl: German | English – Paperback – January 23, 2015 – by Adelbert von Chamisso (Author), Frederic H. Hedge (Translator)

Years of Exploration (1815-1818)
In 1815 Chamisso was appointed botanist to the Russian ship Rurik, fitted out at the expense of Count Nikolay Rumyantsev, which the Baltic German Otto von Kotzebue commanded on a scientific voyage round the world for the Russian-American Company, based in Alaska. His diary of the expedition (Tagebuch, 1821) is a fascinating account of the expedition to the Pacific Ocean, the Bering Sea, Alaska, Hawaii, and California. During this trip Chamisso described a number of new species found in what is now the San Francisco Bay Area. Several of these, including the California poppy (Eschscholzia californica), were named after his friend Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz, the Rurik‘s entomologist. In return, Eschscholtz named a variety of plants, including the genus Camissonia, after Chamisso.

On his return to Germany in 1818 he was made curator of the Royal Botanical Gardens (Königlicher Herbarium) in Berlin, and was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences. In 1819 he married a friend’s foster daughter, Antonie Piaste (1800–1837). He became a leading member of the Serapion Brethren, a literary circle around E.T.A. Hoffmann. As a poet Adelbert von Chamisso has an excellent reputation. Frauenliebe und -leben (1830), a cycle of lyrical poems set to music by Robert Schumann, by Carl Loewe, and by Franz Paul Lachner, is particularly famous. In 1831 Chamisso published his first volume of poems that he had written earlier. His account of his around-the-world expedition, Reise um die Welt in den Jahren 1815-1818 came out in 1836. In 1837 he published his analysis of the Hawaiian language (Über die Hawaiische Sprache), written during his years in the Pacific.

Several geographic landmarks in Alaska are named for Adelbert von Chamisso: Chamisso Island, a small island in Kotzebue Sound, in the Chamisso Wilderness, designated by the U.S. Congress in 1975.

The Berlin grave of Adelbert von Chamisso and his wife, with its stone marker. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commmons

Chamisso died of lung cancer in 1838, a year after the death of his wife. His Berlin grave is located in the Protestant Friedhof III (Cemetery No. 3 of the Congregations of Jerusalem’s Church and the New Church) in Berlin-Kreuzberg, to the south of Hallesches Tor. As he had instructed, only a modest stone marker with few words marks the site of his ashes next to those of his wife.

Although his native language was French, Chamisso wrote many successful works in German, including Peter Schlemihl. In his German biography of Chamisso, Robert Fischer called him an “early citizen of Europe” who “experienced the differences between two nations, and tried to unify them in his life.”

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