The Silk Road and German Geographers

The Silk Road or Silk Route (Silk Routes, plural, being more accurate) was a network of overland trade routes extending between the Oriental and the Occidental regions of the Northern Hemisphere from the 2nd century BCE to the 18th century. This network of caravan (and sea) routes stimulated the economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between East and West. As with most historical matters, geographers and historians do not all agree on the significance or even the time period of the Silk Routes. A few even doubt that they existed in the way most historians claim. Some include the maritime routes as part of the Silk Routes, while others do not.

But there is no doubt that the first geographer to use the term Silk Road in print did so in German, in 1877. The German geographer and geologist Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen is credited with coining the term “Seidenstraße,” even if not all scholars to this day can agree on precisely what he meant. Since then various German and other geographers/historians have continued to use the term. The Silk Road’s name refers to only one of the many items that were transported via the Seidenstraße, but it was the most valuable item by weight, and one of the most desired items that the caravans and ships ever transported.

“The Silk Road, or Silk Roads, has proven to be a productive but at the same time elusive concept, increasingly used as an evocative metaphor. With China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, it has found fresh invocations and audiences. After it was coined by Ferdinand von Richthofen in the 19th century it might very well have been forgotten in the 20th century if it had not been used by Sven Hedin in 1936 as a book title.* And Hedin may not have used it if he had not worked closely with the German historical geographer Albert Herrmann. This paper explores these interactions, which have had enduring consequences.” – Håkan Wahlquist, in his Abstract for “Albert Herrmann: A missing link in establishing the Silk Road as a concept for Trans-Eurasian networks of trade” (See the web link under “ON THE WEB” below.)
*Hedin was not the first author to publish a book with “Silk Road” in its title. That honor goes to his mentor Albert Herrmann, whose The Old Silk Routes Between China and Syria came out in 1910, decades before Hedin’s 1936 title. Herrmann’s book was also translated into English. See more under “Albert Herrmann” below.

The Silk Road and the Red Baron’s Uncle

The World War I flying ace Manfred von Richthofen (“The Red Baron”) had an uncle who was famous in his own right. Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen (1833-1905), like his nephew Manfred, was a Freiherr, a baron. The Richthofen family belonged to the Briefadel (nobility of patent), and some of Ferdinand von Richthofen’s relatives served in high posts throughout the Prussian bureaucracy and military.

Baron von Richthofen was a German geologist, geographer, and traveler born in the Silesian village of Carlsruhe (today Pokój, Poland) on 5 May 1833. He studied geology in Breslau (today Wrocław, Poland) and Berlin. Although he began his career as a geologist, Ferdinand von Richthofen later traveled extensively as a geographer and geologist in Asia and North America between 1860 and 1872. He is known for being the first person to use the term “The Silk Road” (Seidenstraße) in his 1877 multivolume work about Asia and the route’s historical significance: China. Ergebnisse eigener Reisen und darauf gegründeter Studien (China: The results of my travels and the studies based thereon), 1877–1912. This 5-volume work plus two atlases was not completed before his death in 1905.

In 1860 Richthofen joined a Prussian diplomatic and commercial expedition to Asia. Between 1860 and 1862, the Eulenburg Expedition traveled to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Japan, Formosa (Taiwan), Celebes, Java, the Philippines, Siam, and Burma. Unfortunately for Richthofen, most of his records and collections from that time were lost. He wanted to continue his journey China in 1862, but the Yakub Beg/Taiping rebellion (1850-1864) made travel impossible there.

Instead he went to California, where he resumed his active engagement as a geologist in the silver and gold mining areas of California and Nevada. For the Sutro Tunnel Company in San Francisco, Ferdinand von Richthofen wrote a book (in English) offering his geological analysis of the Comstock silver mines in Nevada: Comstock Lode: Its Character, and the Probable Mode of Its Continuance in Depth (1866). (See a digital version of this book from the Library of Congress.)

Excerpt from the Comstock Lode Book (1866): To the Board of Trustees of the Sutro Tunnel Co. Virginia [City], Nev., November 22d, 1865. GENTLEMEN : In compliance with your request, I beg to submit the subjoined statement of my views in regard to the character of the Comstock vein and the probable mode of its continuance in depth, as well as the necessity of constructing a deep adit-level [entry level] for the purpose of drainage and ventilation. I have had, during my sojourn in the Pacific States, repeated opportunities of visiting the Washoe region, and have made its geology and structure of the Comstock vein, the object of my careful investigation. …

Following several years in California and Nevada, with the improvement in conditions in China, Richthofen was now able to travel there, financed at first by the Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco. From 1868 until 1872 he undertook seven exploratory journeys through 13 of the 18 provinces of the Middle Kingdom at that time. Upon his return to Germany in 1872, Richthofen was the most widely traveled European since Marco Polo.[1] He had spent a total of 12 years away from Germany in Asia and North America.

Baron von Richthofen and Josiah D. Whitney
When Richthofen arrived in California, he and Josiah Dwight Whitney (1819–1896), the state geologist from 1860 to 1874, became good friends. After graduating from Yale, Whitney had studied geology and chemistry in Germany (at Berlin and Giessen) in the 1840s. Richthofen’s China survey was Whitney’s idea, and the two men planned it together. They remained good friends and stayed in touch until Whitney’s death in 1896. Mount Whitney (14,505 ft/4,421 m) in California’s Sierra Nevada range, the tallest peak in the contiguous United States, was named for Josiah Whitney. – But Richthofen himself was honored by Mount Richthofen, the highest summit (12,945 ft; 3,936 m) in the Never Summer Mountains in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. The peak was named for the German geologist by an 1870 survey team.

Richthofen’s extensive exploration of the geology and geography of the Chinese Empire cast light on a mysterious region for Western academics and scientists. Much like Alexander von Humboldt before him, Richthofen revealed aspects of the natural sciences in the areas of climatology, animal and plant life, geology, human settlement, economics, and culture, while unifying and summarizing many aspects of his findings.

Ever the German, one of Richthofen’s primary objectives was an assessment of China’s coal reserves. With his detailed investigation of the domestic economic and ethnographic conditions, he hoped to open up this still undiscovered resource to German commercial interests. But his trip was funded by American and British business interests.

In October 1871, Richthofen set out from Peking (Beijing – the Germans still call it Peking) on his last planned excursion, heading in the direction of Canton. But near Chengdu his expedition was attacked and robbed, forcing the explorer to abandon his efforts, heading instead to Shanghai via Wuhan and Nanjing. From Shanghai Richthofen sailed home to Germany.

After his return from China in 1872, Richthofen served as president of the Berlin Geographic Society (Berliner Gesellschaft für Erdkunde) from 1873 to 1878. He became an advocate for the expansion of Germany’s colonial empire in China. His efforts included writing a personal appeal to German chancellor Otto von Bismarck. The chancellor reluctantly joined other European colonial powers in 1898. Germany was granted a 99-year lease in the Chinese territory of Jiaozhou and its port city Tsingtao (today Qingdao). But that all ended in 1914 when the Japanese drove the Germans out. The best thing to come out of it was Tsingtao German beer.

While still in California, Richthofen had been made a member of the Leopoldina, the German Academy of Sciences. He would receive many similar professional honors over the years. After teaching in Bonn and Leipzig, in 1886 Richthofen became the head of the Geography Department at the university in Berlin. Among his students there was the future noted Swedish geographer Sven Hedin. In 1901 Richthofen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his important academic works, Richthofen wrote about his studies of China’s geology and geography.

Richthofen’s Major Opus: CHINA

Following his return to Prussia in 1872, Richthofen would never again embark on a major expedition – to China or anywhere else. Ironically, the man who had literally written the manual for professional geography fieldwork (Führer für Forschungsreisende), and had once had a falling out with his protege Sven Hedin over his lack of field experience, would spend the rest of his life, more than three decades, completely away from fieldwork.[2] Hedin would later outdo his mentor, exploring parts of China that Richthofen had never managed to visit, conducting major expeditions that Richthofen had wanted to but never did. Hedin almost died on one of his desert expeditions.

Richthofen was still a relatively young man of 39 upon his return from Asia. But unlike his role model, Alexander von Humboldt, who was still exploring in Russia and Siberia while in his late 50s and never married, Richthofen chose to marry and settle into the more sedentary life of an academic. In 1879, he and Irmgard Gertrud Sophie von Richthofen (1853-1910), 20 years his junior, were wed in the Brandenburg village of Damsdorf.

The former explorer now devoted most of his time to writing his multivolume work about his expeditions and discoveries in Asia, most notably his epic China. Ergebnisse eigener Reisen und darauf gegründeter Studien, noted above. He also promoted his other interests, including trying to establish the Museum für Meereskunde (Museum for Maritime Studies) at the University of Berlin. The museum later opened under his successor, Albrecht Penck. Richthofen also served as rector of the university in 1903, when he delivered a notable address entitled “Triebkrafte und Richtungen der Erdkunde im neunzehnten Jahrhundert.”

Originally, Richthofen had intended to write CHINA as a summary of his expeditions and findings, as in “China: The results of my travels and the studies based thereon.” But the CHINA project turned into a five-volume work plus two atlases, much of which the author was unable to complete before his death. Several volumes were completed by assistants using their boss’s notes and artifacts. Ernst Tiessen finished the text of later volumes, while the maps were completed by Max Groll. The posthumous volumes were published with funding by the Prussian Kulturministerium. (See our links for free digital versions of CHINA and other books available from Amazon.com.)

Ferdinand von Richthofen is considered one of the most outstanding geographers of the nineteenth century. He set new standards for geographical research, and introduced new methods of investigation. He founded an influential school of geography and successfully organized academic events of note, and he acted as an advisor in German foreign affairs. Yes, he was a product of his time, reflecting Prussian/European colonial views, but his overall contributions went far beyond his survey of Chinese coal reserves. He helped shape the emerging field of geography by combining human, cultural, geographic, and geological factors in his “geomorphological” studies.

Berlin
Richthofen spent his later years teaching and writing in Berlin. There is a commemorative plaque at the site of his former residence in Berlin-Schöneberg (1886-1905). It was here that he died of a stroke at 72 on 6 October 1905. He was laid to rest in the Alter St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof cemetery in Schöneberg. But that would not be his final resting place. That cemetery was leveled by the Nazi regime in 1938/1939, and his mortal remains were moved to the Südwestkirchhof cemetery in Stahnsdorf (near Potsdam). His gravesite there was refurbished in 2007, the 130th anniversary of the publication of his first China/Silk Roads volume in 1877.

---

Other Germans Connected to Richthofen and the Silk Road

The following people had some kind of connection with Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen and/or the Silk Road. Richthofen and almost all of the geographers listed here were drawn together in the 1840s in Berlin, where Alexander von Humboldt, Carl Ritter, and other intellectual luminaries were forging new geographical concepts. Listed chronologically by date of birth.

• Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) | Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen credited Baron von Humboldt as a model for his own extensive travels, emulating in particular Humboldt’s 1829 Russia expedition to the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea, his last major adventure completed when Humboldt was 60. At the invitation of Czar Nicolas I, Humboldt journeyed from Berlin, and set out from St. Petersburg in a horse drawn carriage. Between May and November 1829 he traversed the expanse of the Russian empire from the Neva to the Yenisei, covering a distance of 9,614 miles (15,472 km) in 25 weeks. He felt too rushed to adequately carry out the studies he had in mind, but the Russians were financing and controlling his expedition.
• Carl Ritter (1779-1859) | Ritter was a German geographer who, along with Alexander von Humboldt, is considered one of the founders of modern geography. From 1825 until his death, he headed the Geography Department at the University of Berlin (today’s Humboldt University). Like Richthofen, Ritter was primarily interested in non-European areas, particularly Asia and Africa. Mount Ritter (13,143 ft, 4008 m) and the Ritter Range, a small mountain range within California’s Sierra Nevada, was named for Carl Ritter by Josiah Whitney, who had studied under Ritter in Berlin in the 1840s. Ritter’s masterwork was his 21-volume Die Erdkunde im Verhältniss zur Natur und zur Geschichte des Menschen (Geography in Relation to Nature and the History of Mankind), written between 1816 and 1859. Unfinished at the time of his death, “Erdkunde” comprised the greater part of his astonishing amount of geographical literature. Comprising 19 parts, roughly divided into six sections, “Erdkunde” covered: 1. Africa (I) 1822, 2. East Asia (II-VI) 1818-1836, 3. West Asia (VII-XI) 1837-1844, 4. Arabia (XII-XIII) 1846-1847, 5. The Sinai Peninsula (XIV-XVII) 1847-1848, and 6. Asia Minor (XVIII-XIX) 1850-1852.
• Adolph Sutro (1830-1898) | The engineer, politician, and philanthropist Adolph Heinrich Joseph Sutro was born to a German Jewish family in Aachen, Prussia, the eldest of Rosa (née Warendorff) and Emanuel Sutro’s 11 children. After his father’s death in 1847, he and one of his brothers began running the family’s textile factory. Following the 1848 Revolution, business was poor, and Rosa decided to move the family to the United States. In 1850 the Sutros settled in Baltimore, but Adolph was soon in San Francisco, eventually owning several tobacco shops there. He married Leah Harris in 1856. In 1860 he moved to Virginia City, Nevada following the Comstock silver discovery, planning to sell cigars. But he came up with the idea of a drainage tunnel for the mines. In 1865 he founded the Sutro Tunnel Company, for which Baron von Richthofen wrote his feasibility study (above). Following disputes with his partners, Sutro left the company, making a fortune before the Comstock silver ran out, and later with real estate investments. He became the 24th mayor of San Francisco (1894-1896) and built the Sutro Baths (destroyed in a 1966 fire) and his original Cliff House mansion (1896-1907) overlooking the Pacific Ocean. (Continued below…)

• Sir Aurel Stein (1862-1943) | Marc Aurel Stein was born in Pest (now Budapest, Hungary), Austrian Empire (Kaisertum Österreich, 1804-1867) on 26 November 1862. His Jewish parents were living in Budapest, but he was brought up in the Lutheran faith. At home he and his family spoke German and Hungarian, but he would later become fluent in many other languages. After growing up in Budapest, Stein studied at German-language universities in Vienna, Leipzig, and Tübingen (PhD in 1883). In 1884 he went to Great Britain, where worked in Oxford and at the British Museum. In 1888 he went to India to work for the government there. Most of Stein’s archaeological career concentrated on the Central Asian routes of the Silk Road. While in India, he led four major expeditions (1900, 1906–1908, 1913–1916, 1930) into western China. Stein was also an ethnographer, geographer, linguist and surveyor, but he has been accused of plundering the region, taking many artifacts and documents to London’s British Museum. His collection of books and manuscripts bought from the Dunhuang caves is important for the study of the history of Central Asia and the art and literature of Buddhism. He wrote several volumes on his expeditions and discoveries. Stein was influenced by Sven Hedin’s book Durch Asiens Wüsten (1898, in two volumes), published in English in 1899 as Through Asia. (See more about Hedin below.)
• Sven Hedin (1865-1952) | Although he was Swedish, not German, Sven Anders Hedin attended universities in Germany, and his Silk Road works were also bestsellers in Germany (published by the Brockhaus Verlag). Hedin was a disciple of Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen, under whom he studied at the University of Berlin (Oct. 1889 to March 1890, April-July 1892). It was Sven Hedin who would prove once and for all that Richthofen’s claim that the Russian geographer Nikolai Przhevalsky (1839-1888) had erred when he claimed to have discovered (in 1867 and again in 1885) the mostly dry salt lake known as Lop Nor in the Tarim River Basin of China’s Gobi Desert along a major Silk Roads route. Richthofen disputed the Russian’s find, asserting correctly that Przhevalsky had been too far south and had instead discovered the fresh-water lake Kara-Koshun. Hedin’s later exploration (1901) at the true Lop Nor proved Richthofen correct. – Hedin later had a falling out with the man he called “the celebrated authority on Chinese geography” over the issue of field work versus his university studies. Hedin’s 1936 book, The Silk Road, was first published in Swedish as Sidenvägen. En bilfärd genom Centralasien (English: The Silk Road. A Drive through Central Asia) and later translated into German and English in 1938. But, as the full title hints, the book does not actually concentrate on the Silk Road, being more of a travelog of Hedin’s road trip. But he did conduct four major Asian expeditions over several decades beginning in 1893. Politically Hedin had mixed reactions to world events. Hedin, a monarchist, favored the German side during World War I. In the Nazi era, Hedin admired Hitler, but rejected the Nazis’ anti-religious and anti-Semitic policies. Nevertheless, the Nazis tried to tie themselves to Hedin (who was now in his 70s) by granting him various honors and an honorary natural sciences doctorate from the university in Munich. Hedin did make serious efforts to protect Norwegian and Swedish Jewish academics, managing in some cases to obtain their freedom from concentration camps or deportation.
• Albert Herrmann (1886-1945) | Herrmann was a German archaeologist and geographer who specialized in the geography of the ancient Mediterranean and China. He also published a number of works theorizing on the location of Atlantis, viewed by most academics as eccentric and unscientific. He worked closely with Hedin (above) on various aspects of the Silk Road. Herrmann was born in Hanover, Germany on 20 January 1886. He studied history and geography in Göttingen and Berlin. Later, in 1909, he earned his doctorate at Göttingen with his study on the locations of the Silk Route. Herrmann authored the first book with the term Seidenstraßen (Silk Roads/Silk Routes) in its title: Die alten Seidenstraßen zwischen China und Syrien: Beiträge zur alten Geographie Asiens (The Old Silk Routes Between China and Syria: Essays on the Ancient Geography of Asia), Berlin 1910. Herrmann later published two major China-related works: Historical and Commercial Atlas of China (Harvard University Press, 1935) and Das Land der Seide und Tibet im Lichte der Antike: Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der Geographie und Völkerkunde (K. F. Koehler, Berlin, 1938).

For a good overview of German Silk Road scholarship, we recommend Daniel C. Waugh’s 2010 article: “Richthofen’s ‘Silk Roads’: Toward the Archaeology of a Concept” (University of Washington, Seattle), which is available online in PDF format. (See the link under “ON THE WEB” below.)

---

FOOTNOTES
1. From “Mythos und Erbe: Wie ein Baron der Seidenstraße ihren Namen gab” in HHLA Magazin (See web link below.)
2. In “Richthofen’s ‘Silk Roads’: Toward the Archaeology of a Concept” by Daniel C. Waugh, University of Washington (See web link below.)

BOOKS (Amazon.com partner links)
Titles either by Ferdinand von Richthofen or about him:

• Letters on the Provinces of Chekiang und Hganhwei by Ferdinand von Richthofen (Kindle, hardcover, paperback) – Reproduction of the 1871 book
• Entdeckungsreisen in China: Die Ersterforschung des Reiches der Mitte 1868-1872 by Ferdinand von Richthofen (Edition Erdmann, in German) Kindle or hardcover – A modern, edited edition published in 2013 in German with commentary. 400 pages (print version). Editor: Klaus-Dietrich Petersen. With an introduction by Lars Hoffmann.
• The Comstock Lode, Its Character, and the Probable Mode of Its Continuance in Depth by Ferdinand von Richthofen – Kindle, paper, hardcover – A 2016 reproduction of the original 1866 Comstock Lode book by Richthofen. 84 pages (print).

NOTE: Some of the titles above are also available in Germany from Amazon.de. Also see our links to free PDF or digital format versions of the 19th century books below (under “ON THE WEB”).

More | Featured Biographies

Related Pages
AT THE GERMAN WAY

• Manfred von Richthofen – “The Red Baron” was a World War I flying ace related to Ferdinand von Richthofen.
• Notable People – Brief biographies of people from the German-speaking world
• Mini Bios A-Z – More brief biographies of people from the German-speaking world
• Featured Biographies – In-depth bios of notable people from the German-speaking world
• Notable Women from Austria, Germany, Switzerland
• Famous Graves in Germany – Where are they buried?

ON THE WEB
Articles • Books • Websites

• richthofen.eu – The extended Richthofen family has their own website with information and genealogy related to the many Richthofens of the past and present. The information in English is more limited than the German version (below).
• Richthofen: Persönlichkeiten at richthofen.eu. This page includes Ferdinand von Richthofen and others (in German).
• HHLA Magazin: “Mythos und Erbe: Wie ein Baron der Seidenstraße ihren Namen gab” (hhla.de/magazin)
• PDF: “Richthofen’s ‘Silk Roads’: Toward the Archaeology of a Concept” by Daniel C. Waugh, University of Washington
• Abstract for “Albert Herrmann: A missing link in establishing the Silk Road as a concept for Trans-Eurasian networks of trade” by Håkan Wahlquist (4 Aug. 2020) – journals.sagepub.com
• Ferdinand von Richthofen: Werke (Literature) – Wikisource links to works by Richthofen or about him. In German.

The Staatsbibliothek Berlin
The following staatsbibliothek-berlin.de links allow you to read or browse through digital copies of Richthofen’s five volumes of CHINA, as well as his diaries from China. Various tools allow you to search for terms, obtain a PDF version, or print any page. It’s a marvelous free resource. In German.

• 1. China: Ergebnisse eigener Reisen und darauf gegründeter Studien (Band 1, 1877) – A digital copy of Volume One (Introduction) of Ferdinand von Richthofen’s book about his expedition to China. From the Staatsbibliothek Berlin.
• 2. Das nördliche China: Ergebnisse eigener Reisen und darauf… (Band 2, 1882) – A digital copy of Ferdinand von Richthofen’s book about his expedition to Northern China (Volume 2). From the Staatsbibliothek Berlin.
• 3. Das südliche China: Ergebnisse eigener Reisen und darauf… (Band 3, 1912) – A digital copy of Ferdinand von Richthofen’s book about his expedition to Southern China (Volume 3). Edited by Ernst Tiessen. From the Staatsbibliothek Berlin.
• 4. China: Ergebnisse eigener Reisen und darauf… (Palaeontologischer Theil) (Band 4, 1883) – A digital copy of Volume 4 (Paleontological Part) of Ferdinand von Richthofen’s book about his expedition to China. From the Staatsbibliothek Berlin.
• 5. China: Ergebnisse eigener Reisen und darauf… (Abschliessende palaeontologische Bearbeitung… von Dr. Fritz Frech) (Band 5, 1911) – A digital copy of Volume 5 (Concluding Paleontological Studies… by Dr. Fritz Frech) of Ferdinand von Richthofen’s book about his expedition to China. From the Staatsbibliothek Berlin.
• 6a. Atlas von China: Das nördliche China (1885) – Richthofen’s detailed atlas of Northern China to accompany Vol. 2 (Band 2)
• 6b. Atlas von China: Das südliche China (1877-1912) – Richthofen’s detailed atlas of Southern China to accompany Vol. 3 (Band 3) was completed by Dr. Max Groll. (From Harvard Library – Pages display slower than the links above.)
• 7. Ferdinand von Richthofen’s Tagebücher aus China (1907) – Richthofen’s China diaries – Edited by Ernst Tiessen

The Library of Congress (www.loc.gov)
A digital version of Richthofen’s COMSTOCK LODE book:

• The Comstock Lode: Its Character, and the Probable Mode of Its Continuance in Depth by Ferdinand Baron Richthofen, Dr. Phil. (1866) – Published by the Sutro Tunnel Company, Towne and Bacon, Printers, San Francisco

 

Legal Notice: We are not responsible for the content of external links.