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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 28: 26. 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.

26.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.

I came, dear friend, for two purposes: 1, to bring you the opinions of Minister Kamptz (casus in terminis, only twenty-five copies printed), which you, perhaps, had not seen before, and which has elicited a vehement reply from Herr von Oertzen, the Minister of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, burned in the Lord. Read (p. 30 and 32), how one can whitewash a person. I would beg of you not to laugh at me, when you are invited to-morrow to a lecture at the Princess’s. I can assure you there is less vanity, from which, by the bye, I am not at all free, than weakness of character and good-nature in it. Thus, I believed that I owed this satisfaction to the Princess; the daughter also pressed me, and she showed me a harmless list of ten persons. If you will propose or bring with you one or more persons, it will be agreeable to me; only bring no one who has heard me already. Your friends are mine; from yours I may expect indulgence. I insist upon it, that a man is not without merit, who after spending his life with cyphers and stones, has put himself to the trouble of learning to write German.

Yours,
A. Ht.

I hope also to procure for you the vehement “opus” of the Strelitz Minister, which is by far more spirited than might be expected.

Varnhagen remarks in his Diary, under May 3d: In the evening, at the Princess of Pueckler’s, the long-promised lecture by Herr von Humboldt. The lecture was very fine, and made an excellent impression. I had a conversation with General von Ruble on Humboldt’s genius. He totally agreed with me, saying, “When he shall have died, then only shall we understand well what we have possessed in him.”

Herr von Humboldt was with me yesterday, and brought me the little note of Minister Kamptz, of which twenty-five copies only were printed, “Casus in terminus,” in which he puts the best face on the French change of rulers, and in which he justifies the Mecklenburg marriage. So much in contrast with his old principles, that I could exclaim: “If he could only cut himself in two, he certainly would put one half in prison.” There is still no opposition wanting against the marriage. Duke Charles of Mecklenburg-Strelitz has formally intrigued against it, and tried to form in the Mecklenburg and Prussian dynasty an alliance, a covenant and obligation, against all marriages with the house of Orleans. There was even talk of a formal protest. All this is the most vehement opposition to the expressed views of the King. Duke Charles is now really sick from annoyance and trouble, not only in this but also in other things.