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
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.
Chamisso’s Voyage Around the WorldChamisso left Berlin by postal coach to Hamburg on 15 July 1815, arriving three days later. The sailing part of his trip around the globe would begin at the port of Hamburg. Before this extensive trip, Chamisso had never been on any ship or traveled beyond Europe. He sailed from Hamburg to Copenhagen via Kiel. In Copenhagen he met his friend and colleague Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz, who was the expedition’s insect specialist. The expedition’s members assembled in Copenhagen and got acquainted with each other and the Rurik, the Russian vessel they would call home for almost three years. The ship’s captain was the Baltic German Otto von Kotzebue. (Chamisso described the small two-masted brig as a “nutshell”/Nußchalle. He often suffered from seasickness.) He was fortunate enough to have one of the four berths usually reserved for officers. Everyone else had to sleep in hammocks in the main cabin.) Following delays caused by unfavorable winds, at 10 in the morning of 19 August 1815 the Rurik sailed from Copenhagen, along with 60 other delayed ships escaping at the same time, through the sound and out into the North Sea, arriving in Plymouth, England on 7 September. Following an 11-day delay once again due to storms, the Rurik sailed out into the Atlantic bound for her next port of call: Tenerife. Based on his book Reise um die Welt (1836), the Rurik called at the following ports and locations in the following segments between 1815 and 1818: Copenhagen to Plymouth; Plymouth to Tenerife; Tenerife to Brazil (Santa Catharina/Florianopolis); Brazil to Chile (Talcahuano/Concepcion); Chile to Kamchatka (Russia) [via Easter Island]; Kamchatka to the Bering Strait; Unalaska to California (San Francisco); California to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii Island, Oahu); Honolulu to Ratak (Marshall Islands; Bikini Atoll was previously known as Eschscholtz Atoll.); Ratak to Unalaska; Unalaska to the Sandwich Islands; Sandwich Islands to Ratak; Ratak to Guam; Guam to Manila; Manila to the Cape of Good Hope (8 days in Cape Town); from Table Bay (Capetown) Homeward. |
![Berlin grave of Adelbert von Chamisso](https://i0.wp.com/www.german-way.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/624px_Chamisso-Grab-Berlin.jpg?resize=624%2C600&ssl=1)
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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