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Letters of Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense. / From 1827 to 1858. With extracts from Varnhagen's diaries, and letters of Varnhagen and others to Humboldt cover

Letters of Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense. / From 1827 to 1858. With extracts from Varnhagen's diaries, and letters of Varnhagen and others to Humboldt

Chapter 213: 205. HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.
By Alexander von Humboldt
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Essays, Letters & SpeechesGerman LiteratureHistory - Modern (1750+)

About This Book

A curated correspondence collects letters from Alexander von Humboldt to his friend and confidant Varnhagen von Ense, supplemented by diary excerpts and letters from other contemporaries. The missives blend personal friendship with professional exchange, discussing scientific observations, lectures, manuscripts, travels, and reactions to peers and events. Editorial apparatus preserves original phrasing and provides contextual notes and extracts that illuminate relationships and chronology. The selection highlights the writer’s methods of observation, precise descriptive habits, and modes of intellectual collaboration. Together the documents form a compact portrait of an engaged scholar whose private reflections and public endeavors intersect across a wide range of topics.

205.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.

Berlin, April 21st, 1857.

To my great regret, dear friend, I cannot accept the kind invitation of yourself and your amiable niece to a cup of coffee on Thursday, as I shall return late and much fatigued from Charlottenburg. During my illness, a number of unimportant matters have accumulated, which must be disposed of after dinner, because they are trumpery affairs of orders and dedications, a presentation of Betel in preference to gifts of money. The fourth class[93] operates like Betel chewing, it occupies the time, but affords no nourishment. On Thursday the King hopes to close and settle with me. Be pleased to write Professor Hoffmann, of Wuerzburg, that I am grateful for his torso, but no assistance is to be expected from the King, not only (what you must not write), because something like a holy horror of the Catholic zeal of Baader is rooted in the King’s mind, but also because all literary assistance dwindles down in the cabinet to a present of forty or forty-five thalers. In preference to the publication in the preface of a miserable letter of introduction, which may have been written in a moment of ill-humor, I enclose a memorandum as requested.

With the same friendship as of old,
A. v. Humboldt.

(INCLOSURE IN A LETTER FROM HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.)

You ask me, dear friend, what were the earliest impressions produced upon me by Franz Baader! I first saw him in June, 1791, while studying the art of mining in Freiberg, after the journey with George Forster to England, and after my sojourn in the Hamburg Commercial Academy of Buesching and Ebeling. For eight months I enjoyed the daily intercourse of this amiable and gifted man. Franz Baader had then published his work on caloric, and his inclinations were all of a chemico-physical nature, with a slight infusion of ideas on the philosophy of physical science. He was active underground, more occupied with practical mining and furnace operations than with geognostic researches; thorough in the observation of fact, cheerful, and satirical, but always with good taste, and not intolerant of those who differed from him. His imagination was not then specially directed to religious subjects. He was generally popular, and a little feared at the same time, as is so common where there is a consciousness of mental superiority. His political opinions were liberal. It was the period of the Congress of Pillnitz in our neighborhood—a time and a neighborhood which gave occasion to political utterances.